So you were just minding your own business and some Yankee sent you a new pipe and some tobacco samples eh? Now what do you do? You grab the pipe and stuff it full of the best smelling tobacco, then light it up and puff furiously to keep it lit right? Because everybody knows that cigarettes don't go out on you and a cigar sure shouldn't either so obviously a pipe is the same... right? And what do you do with those tobacco samples? Where do you put them? In your truck glove box? No, no, no!
This is some ‘Pipe Smoking 101’ so you don't have as miserable an experience as I first did.
First of all, go to the store and get enough pint mason jars to hold each sample of tobacco. I'd even jar up the tinned tobacco. Tins are infamous for sealing poorly and letting your tobacco dry out, especially if you only smoke occasionally and 1 tin will last you for years. (However they do fit in your coat pocket a far sight better than a mason jar.) If you have open tin(s) keep an eye on them and rehydrate as necessary. More on rehydration later.
Now on to the smoking...
You don't just grab a pipe and baccy and smoke like you would a cigar. I don't anyway. A pipe requires a little forethought and planning. You may want to take a minute to pull the stem out of the pipe and check for the presence of a filter. If it has one, I'd recommend throwing it away right now but that's up to you. If you do decide you want a filter, just take one of those pipe cleaners, snip it in half, fold one of the halves double and stick that in the stem where the filter goes. That will do just as well and you won't have to buy filters. But by all means, as soon as the pipe cools down take the thing out and toss it. Don't let it sit and fester in there... and for that matter, filter or not, take a pipe cleaner and swab out the stem. Then fold that same pipe cleaner in half and wipe out the bowl. But we're getting ahead of ourselves here... after all you haven't even lit the pipe yet.
Assuming you're starting with a ribbon cut, sprinkle out about a bowl's worth or two onto a paper plate or a sheet of printer paper and let it dry out a while. The time frame will vary from 20 minutes to several hours depending on the tobacco, temperature and ambient humidity. Test it by pinching a wad between your fingers. The tobacco shouldn't stick together in a slowly expanding wad when you let go. It should spring back into ribbons immediately. In fact, I like most of my tobacco as dry as it can get without crunching when when I pinch it. The baccy will feel almost leathery at this point. This will be a bit too dry for VaPers and Virginias. They will smoke sweeter if you leave them just a bit more moist. If you set tobacco out and forget about it and it gets crunchy dry, just add a fresh pinch from the tin or jar and cover the whole pile with a small bowl for 15 minutes or so. The dry tobacco will take up moisture from the fresh pinch and before long it'll all be at a decent level for smoking. (Don't worry about setting out too much. Once you've loaded your pipe, you can dump any remaining tobacco back into the jar it came from. The tobacco in the jar has plenty of excess moisture to rehydrate what you're returning and in the event it gets too dry it's easy to add a little moisture.)
If you're starting with flake tobacco, you'll have to select a flake and rub that between your palms to convert it to roughly ribbon cut before drying it out. There are many ways to smoke flake without rubbing it out but we'll get into that later. For now, rub it out and then refer to the above for drying.
Now load the pipe. The idea here is to compress the tobacco slightly but not go nuts about it. Take a test draw on your empty pipe. Fully loaded, the draw should be just a little more restricted than it was when the pipe was empty. For me, a full load is about 125% of the pipe's capacity in uncompressed tobacco. Sprinkle tobacco into the bowl and tap the side of the bowl to settle the tobacco as you fill it. That's called a gravity pack. Once it's full, place one last pinch on top and work that down into the bowl on top of the gravity pack, pushing the tobacco in from the sides to compress it slightly and pushing down only enough to work it down into the bowl. This is called ‘The Frank Method’ and IMO it's a good method to begin with. I usually work it down until it's about ⅛” below the rim but that's up to you. Take a test draw and see how you did. If it still feels empty, your last pinch wasn't big enough. If it's a lot more restricted it was too big. You can smoke a 'too loose' draw but if it's tight you're better off emptying the pipe and trying again. A tight pack is a miserable thing.
Once you're happy with the draw, you're ready to light the pipe. Hold a lit kitchen match over the tobacco and puff gently to pull the flame down onto the surface. Move the match around until the whole surface is lit. Notice how the tobacco expands a bit when you light it and how burning fragments are now falling into your lap. That would be why I load the pipe slightly below the rim... but of course that was up to you.
Now, sit the pipe down and let it go out. Ya, that's right. I told you it’s not like a cigar.
Once it's out, take your tamper and gently tamp the surface just enough to push those charred strands and superficial ash back flat. Then light it again but this time it's for real so don't stop lighting until there's a good ember all across the surface.
There. You're up and running. Slow down and sip gently to enjoy the best flavor your tobacco has to offer. Don't worry about your pipe going out. It WILL go out. In fact, pipes give you the best flavor when smoked on the verge of going out. When it does go out, just flatten the ash with the tamper and light it back up. You won't usually need to empty the ash but if it just won't light, loosen only the ash with the pointed end of the tamper and either blow across the top of the bowl if you're outside or dump it out if you happen to be inside. Then flatten the surface of the remaining tobacco and relight. Don't tamp hard, remember that you're only trying to flatten the surface. You're not trying to further compress the load in the bowl.
If you notice a gurgle while smoking, just cover the bowl with your thumb and shake the offending drop or two out of the stem. Get rid of it soon because it's nasty if that drop winds up in your mouth and even if it doesn't, chances are it'll wet the tobacco at the bottom of the bowl so that eventually it won't burn no matter what you do. Speaking of wet tobacco, if toward the bottom of the bowl the pipe sizzles and refuses to stay lit, my advice is to give up and dump it out. Trying to get wet tobacco to burn is the best way I know of to fry your tongue with a case of tongue bite.
A few odd notes…
Your new pipe will steal a good bit of the total flavor of the tobacco until it's broke in. It might also taste a bit woody (or corny if you happen to have a cob). Once it starts building a cake in the bowl (carbon buildup on the walls) it will deliver more and better flavor. It will smoke drier too once it has some cake… so don't go and scrape that out as soon as you see it.
A pipe is NOT a cigar and a cigar is not like a pipe. A cigar will fill your mouth with flavor. Be it good or bad flavor, it's hard to miss. Many cigars deliver huge plumes of smoke and some even smoke a lot while resting. Pipes deliver far more subtle flavor and usually far less smoke. You're going to have to concentrate at first and look for the flavor, especially if you're used to cigars. However, while all cigars taste... well... like cigars, the variety in flavors found in pipe tobacco is staggering; Virginia tastes nothing like latakia, an English blend tastes nothing like an American aromatic. And of course, aromatics can taste pretty much like anything (Well, cheap aromatics to me taste like nothing... although they all smell good)
Tobacco in mason jars is easy to hydrate if it starts drying out. Just tear a bit of paper towel - about an inch and a half square, get it wet and then stick it to the underside of the lid disk and put the lid back on. In a day or so, the paper towel will have released its moisture into the tobacco and it'll fall off the lid. Test the tobacco and repeat the paper towel thing until the tobacco does stay in a slowly expanding clump when you pinch it. It seems (to me anyway) that tobacco stores better in a condition too wet for smoking.
Hearth and Home Anniversary Kake is a VaPer. Newminster 400 flake is a straight Virginia. These are tobaccos that like to be smoked just a little more moist than 'leathery'. IMO when they're too dry they taste almost cigaretty.
Don't go and smoke bowl after bowl after bowl, one right after another in that same pipe. Pipes need some time to dry out between smokes - like a day or sometimes even two. If you plan on becoming a pipe chain-smoker you're going to need to buy a few more pipes. Piper guys call that a 'rotation' :pipe:
