I’ve found yet another herbal balanced snuff which I absolutely adore, McC Fine Keg. I generally like the characteristics of beer. Which is a tricky thing to say, yes I love hops in their virgin state, I like deadened yeasts as well.

This stuff says “hello I’m a mixture of Germanic hops.” My brain fills in a a mild bready malty flavor, then in an instant; pine, grain, citrus, gain, pine, citrus and grain all at once. A bit boogery, but the aroma/flavor keep it out of the penalty box. Has decent staying power, a good three sniffs and I’m in flavor town for at lest 35/45 minutes.

Great stuff! If you like to cook sausage over fire and buy your kraut by the liter, this may be in your wheelhouse.

Skol!

I was just talking to Dave, of MrSnuff fame, about snuffs that are intended to be paired with food or drink.

Its a really interesting concept, and not one I was familiar with, that you could have a snuff that objectively was, for want of a better word, disgusting, but when taken with some specific food or drink, would enhance the experience with a synergistic interplay of sensations.

Dave reckons the Fine Keg does indeed enhance a hoppy beer if both beer and snuff are consumed together. Is this something that can be generalised?

I know an attempt has been made with the much maligned Epicurean range, but have the detractors been missing a trick? They are undeniably horrible snuffs, as snuffs, but do they work as intended? If you use these snuffs with their intended paired foods, do they enhance the experience?

I don’t know. I don’t even know if the concept has value. Can a specifically tailored snuff enhance a related culinary experience?

We are probably going to destroy our stock of Epicurean snuffs because they are not selling. There is some small part of me me that questions whether that is the right thing to do.

Snuff with a drink that has some sameness in scent/flavor, sometimes (fine keg is good with a hefeweizen for me). But not with food, ever.

Maybe it has to do with hydration or something?

Eating and using snuff don’t really go together for me. Same with smoking a cigar or a pipe and eating, it doesn’t work and its quite rude if others are eating too. Drinking is a different matter.

I drink non-alcoholic beer, and the one in the fridge is a barley malt. As for hoppy beer, the Lagunitas IPNA does register as more crisp with a schnoz full of fine keg. But Fine Keg stands on its own quite nicely, I like taking a sniff while in the kitchen it’s like it awakens aromas previously dormant. I spend about half my life outside. The threshold at my front door makes the impact on how I am able to appreciate what I sniff.

Hmm…I just realized that I eat a lot of Indian/Middle eastern foods (you know, human food) for lunch, because my love for Gold Rush does pair quite nicely with some naan, hummus and pickle. The lemon juice in the hummus pops and spices warm the flavor of the naan. I mean, find an Indian kitchen in which spice [masala] isn’t part of the atmosphere. Green Dragon is good with ice tea, but it makes Twinning’s English Breakfast taste like a warm cup of muddy clouds and depression…so PG Tips. Nutty-Ella I like to vape a custard flavor over, comes out like chocolate milk. But it does go well with the maybe 56 oz. a year of milk&sugar coffee I drink.

I know what tobacco tastes like, I don’t think that any exploration of tobacco flavors is going to find anything new and exciting. Tobacco is so closely aligned with smoke that I even find it enhancing of all the lovely atmospheric smog found in outdoor public places.

Go outside, keep is spicy mi compas.