Date 7APR15
Name Alligator Gar (Jim)
Tobacco TBA G&H Dark Sliced
Pipe Custom Bamboo Egg
Indoor / Outdoor Covered Porch

The tobacco is well packaged.
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Small black dime sized disks flecked with gold.
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They appear cohesive and are mixed with long strings of tobacco exhibiting the consistency of easter grass or excelsior.
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You can put this in my Easter basket any day.

I'm smoking this in my "best pipe", a custom bamboo egg a friend made for me. This is the pipe that launched my journey a couple months ago and I am familiar with its smoking characteristics.

After air drying the tobacco I rubbed out the coins and dried some more. I used the progressive packing and lighting method known as The Jim System, or simply The Jim.

Damp rain slicker that caught just the sleeve on fire. Pungent fermented sweetness, a little smoked raisin smell. It has a smell I've smelled before but I can't summon the words that describe it. Very frustrating.

Dramatic rise on the char.
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Tasting what I'm smelling on pre-light, a froggy must that is not terrible. Some Basalmic qualities. The tobacco occasionally fronts a sweet note that comes and goes based on how hard I'm smoking it. Retrohale is quite pleasant and sniffing the smoke off the bowl yields that same prelight scent. The ash is dark grey and sturdy and the smoke both prodigious and substantial. The mouth feel of the smoke is chewy and round with an aftertaste of toasted almond. A little gurgle is cured with a cotton Dill's. Both the cleaner and the book that suggest one could cure a gurgle mid-smoke came from Warren, so a knowing nod to him. The smoke changes to a more oily, bergamot infused experience towards the end of the bowl after my first of several late pipe relights. I am a habitually fast smoker and this tobacco will not let you oversmoke it without the usual warning signs (ringing ears, blurred vision and rectal bleeding.) It is a slow burning tobacco that wants to be smoked that way.

Since I have no reputation to stake I'll just come out and say it. This tobacco has some years on it. It has the characteristics age imparts--smooth smoke with melded flavors. It has a good strength that satisfies after dinner. I wouldn't smoke this everyday, but much like 965, there's a place for a full bodied smoke in my line up. I would not recommend this to an inexperienced smoker.

4/5 Would smoke again.