Okay, duly noted abut the AP and AO not really being toasts or scotches. but If its all the same to anyone, I am just now trying the AO right for the first time as I type this, and I’m getting the exact same “beef jerky” smell and taste, even if much more faintly, as I get from the the Kendal Black Twist of tobacco (on either just smelling it as it is as a whole twist or actually tasting it orally by putting a little piece in your mouth). very interesting stuff, both of these, and even if they aren’t even toasts or scotches at all, I’m thinking they still just might be of interest to other scotch/toast takers. Sorry for the bit of derailing with this. Please continue the actual toast discussion, I’ve actually been looking for exactly this sort of conversation to take place quite for some time. Not to be a complete idiot (‘some assembly required’ heh) but just whats the deal with ‘high’ written on toasts anyway, are there any other types, maybe some sort of ‘not-so-high’ toasts?
From snuffbox.org Irish High Dry Toast is a very fine snuff, and fine in every sense. It has a wonderful delicate flavour: but sneezy! Gawith’s “Irish `D’ Light” is the genuine traditional Irish High Dry Toast. Wilsons, Sharrow offers various kinds of Irish Toast. There are various romantic stories about the mid C18th origins of Irish High Dry Toast; e.g.: Lundy Foot of Essex-bridge, Dublin, manufactured snuff, drying the tobacco stalks in kilns watched over by “Larry” - or “Michael Larey” - who got drunk one night, allowing the tobacco to be over-roasted and apparently beyond reclamation. Next morning the furious Lundy Foot kicked and beat poor Larry and denounced him as a “blackguard”. Having milled up the roasted remains in the hope of selling it cheap to the impecunious, he found it delicious; and made a fortune by marketing it under the name “Lundyfoot Irish Blackguard”. Only later did it come to be called Irish High Dry Toast. (The details of the various stories vary; but, no doubt, like the varying stories of the loaves and fishes, they all preserve a kernel of truth.
"Not to be a complete idiot (‘some assembly required’ heh) but just whats the deal with ‘high’ written on toasts anyway, are there any other types, maybe some sort of ‘not-so-high’ toasts? " High and Dry - a bit a nautical slang there shipmate. Like the beached wooden ships of jolly Jack Tar snuff may also be left high and dry. The characteristics of high dry are: dry, unscented, fine (fin), biscuit coloured and before the tobacco stalks are reduced to powder, they are subjected to a roasting process in closed cylinders, which assists in imparting the peculiar smell by which these snuffs are characterised. If the snuff doesn’t match these conditions then it is not, in my opinion, high dry toast. It is associated with Ireland owing to the most celebrated of the Irish snuffs that was manufactured by the firm of Lundy Foot and Co., of Dublin. The best genuine example is arguably Irish High Toast 22 by Wilsons of Sharrow. ‘Irish ‘D’ Light’ by Samuel Gawith is very similar to Professor Phillips Griffith’s much lamented ‘Irish ‘D’ Snuff’ by Carroll of Dublin. The former has, in the past, been bought and re-sold as Griffin’s Finest Irish High Toast and as F&T HDT, making a nice little profit for the middleman.
PhilpS, I’m not entirely convinced: any sources for that origin of high, dry? While you’re pondering that, what about “top mill” and “bottom mill”? I’d google it, but not 'till I find out the origins of the word “grog”.
@whistlrr: Latakia is cured using open fires which give it the smokey “beef jerky” scent. In fact Latakia was originally produced in Syria, but no longer is legal to produce there because it used so many trees and Syria is semi arid and can’t spare the trees. So in the sense that both toasts and Latakia snuffs are fire cured, there is some relationship. The smokey scent in latakia is much stronger as I am sure you have noticed.
@Alcyon: Don’t quote me on this but I’m sure I remember reading somewhere that it’s simply the location of the two Kendal mills - one is up a hill from the other, hence “Top Mill” and “Bottom Mill”.
"PhilpS, I’m not entirely convinced: any sources for that origin of high, dry? While you’re pondering that, what about “top mill” and “bottom mill”? I’d google it, but not 'till I find out the origins of the word “grog”. " @Alycon - Whether high-dry/dried brown malt (for dark beers) or high-dry/dried snuff any kiln dried product is left high off the water mark like the ships from which the term originates. BradMajors is correct about the origins of high mill and low mill. The origin of grog is as follows: Old Grog was Edward Vernon who in 1740 introduced the mixing of water and lime with the sailors rum ration. Vernon was called old grog because he habitually wore a grogram coat, which is made from a coarse fabric of silk mixed with wool.
PhilipS, are you trying to make google obsolete?! But “water mark” “kiln”? I don’t understand. is water involved in kiln drying? Is the mark from the leavings of the moisture in tobacco? My input to google didn’t lead to any result other than interesting very off-topic forays. While Sharrow did make a bottom mill, how did those liverpudlians J&H Wilson end up with a top mill? That origin of the word grog is the one most often cited. But it’s not without controversy. I like it the best though. And it beat the story that a workmate trying fobbing off…
I believe that he is refering to the idea that snuff was dried in a kiln, or atleast the High Dry Toast was dried in a kiln. Maybe J&H Wilson’s original mill was on the top of a hill, hence Top Mill.
I was verging on scoffing, only to myself, mind. I was thinking “yeah, loadsa hills in Liverpool, I bet!” Then it came to me: perfidious Imperial Tobacco is involved here, I better check. Sure enough, the modern package says Liverpool, the family company was Westbrook Mill of Kendal. So the top/bottom thing could be true. Don’t mind me: where there are origins of words or phrases, there are often interesting stories or history to go with them.
Westbrook Mill was in Sheffield, not Kendal. Just of Sharrow Lane if memory serves me correctly. I’m pretty sure Imperial still has a factory in Liverpool where the J&H snuffs (and probably the Hedges) are produced.
“While Sharrow did make a bottom mill, how did those liverpudlians J&H Wilson end up with a top mill?” @Alycon - Joseph and Henry Wilson were established in Sheffield. Westbrook Mill is a grade II listed building in Sheffield. It was built in 1833. In 1953 the business was sold to Imperial Tobacco and placed under the management of the Ogden branch in Liverpool. Unless you kept up to date with journals the transfer was seamless and made little or no immediate difference to the end user. Quite recently the mill was closed and production moved to Liverpool. The Sheffield mill was converted into offices in 1997. The Bottom Mill snuff by Wilsons at Sharrow Mill suggests that the mill was lower in a geographical sense (upstream or downstream of the river Porter) to J&H Wilsons Top Mill made at Westbrook Mill. High off the water mark (the tide at high water) leaves things (including ships) dry - hence high and dry. The phrase is used figuratively.
erm - was the top and bottom not to do with the fact that the mills at Sharrow were on two floors?
For me it goes F&T HDT Toque Natural Toast Wilsons #22
Surely a mill - however many floors it has - is entire and of itself, and ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ must mean two different buildings?
I’m glad I didn’t bring up the term “highmill”, for example the S.Gawith SP No.1 High Mill that I’m enjoying right now.
I think “high” and “top” are the same thing.