I am ashamed to admit that over the past year I have become a bit of a snuff snob and had a bias against this American snuff, probably because Swisher, the manufacturer, also makes vulgar sweet cigars. The George Washington Helme Tobacco company, originally from Helmetta, New Jersey is now part of Fat Lip Brands of the Swisher Empire, located in Wheeling, West Virginia. Quite frankly, this snuff is great. When you open the tin, it smells like pulverized pipe tobacco. Powder dry, this light khaki snuff consists of 88% American tobacco and 12% foreign; it has a low burn and a high nicotine kick. Without artifice, Honey Bee Sweet is honest and tastes, simply, like tobacco and honey. Very pleasant on the uptake, I imagine it well suited to focusing the mind and sharpening the senses at 5AM, whilst sitting in frozen duck blind with a 12 ga semi-automatic and a thermos full of Folgers’ coffee. I found it paired particularly well with Bulleit Kentucky Straight Bourbon and Hemingway’s “Across the River and into the Trees”. Americans do many things particularly well and this snuff is definitely one of them.
I’m afraid I’m not a huge fan of the American sweet snuffs. I have had Honey Bee and it’s just too sweet for my nose palate. I do have a bit left, but take a bump “once in a blue moon”. Tuberose, though, I like as I find it sort of semi-sweet. I much prefer the smoky intensity of the non-sweet American Scotch snuffs such as Dental Scotch and the like.
I’ll have to dig out my Hemingway paperbacks, the Nick Adams stories are amongst my favorites. I love the idea of reading those stories whilst getting a modest buzz with an unlimited amount of snuff at hand out on the porch of my off-grid camp up in Northern Maine.
He hits on sacks of Pöschl in “True at First Light”.
But I do agree, that where he mixed canned beans and canned spaghetti while eating raw onions in “Big Two Hearted River” is an outdoorsman’s dream.