This pipe tobacco comes pretty moist so i guess if it dries out it’s no good, correct? Do you guys keep the tobacco in tins or put them in something else?
For longer term (and for bulk) I use glass jars. If it’s a tinned blend I smoke regularly, the tin usually holds it fresh long enough (couple of weeks - month). Round tins are more airtight than rectangular ones. Pretty much the same storage advise as for snuff. Airtight and dark place. Same goes with rehydrating. Dry tobacco can be brought back like snuff. Either spritz w/ water or let the baccy absorb humidity from a towel placed on top top of the tobacco container. It may lose some of the aroma, though.
tobacco stores often sell “pouch buttons”, which you soak with water (preferably distilled water) and then put in the pouch for 20-30 minutes to re-hydrate the tobacco.
Ball canning jar in my closet. Not only does it keep the moisture right (it loses a small amount and stays steady) it also ages the tobacco which I think is well worth the wait. Some blends don’t fully reach awesomeness untill a month or two later. Also smooths out the taste a lot. Less bite on your tongue. Some people like bone dry tobacco (sherlock holmes for one). Some blends I like dry. one of my favorite aromatics is best bone dry the brebbia allegro really hits itls stride when dry as a bone.
Treat it like snuff - if it dries out it can be re-hydrated, although it never quite tastes the same in my experience. Also store it long term like snuff - not in the original tin unless its absolutely airtight. For packets and pouches that you carry around I used to keep a piece of apple in there - seemed to help.
I agree it’s important to know what level you like your tobacco dried out to. There is a good medium. I admit I like them dried most way to bone but not quite.
Samuel Gawith tobaccos come very wet, but I just put them in Ball jars and store them like that. When I put them in a pouch they get right to smoke in a few days. GL Pease tobaccos come ready to smoke so after they have been opened a few days I have to put one of those little humidifier wafers in them.
Plus it helps to experiement with little bits of a new tobacco to see how it smokes with diffrent humidities. For example the brebbia allegro which is a very nice aromatic smokes best in my opinion when it’s dry enough to crumble when you try to pack your bowl, most other tobaccos aren’t so great like that.
There’s a recent article about pipe tobacco and moisture here on pipemagazine.com by Greg Pease. It’s quite insightful.
nice article.
I prefer my tobacco to be quite dry.
Me too usaly. I find it doesn’t burn too quickly if you don’t lay too heavily into it.
I also am letting my moist baccies dry out a lot more than I used to, but here’s a re-hydrating method I came up with recently. First I bought a mesh pencil holder at the stationers. Fortuitously, it just happens to fit down inside my tea kettle and is held by the rim on the holder. I put a couple or three inches of water in the bottom of the kettle, put a couple of ounces of the tobacco in the holder, put the lid on and heat to a boil. Let the baccy steam for five to ten minutes, take off the lid and grab the rim of the holder with needle nose pliers and remove from the kettle. When the whole works is cool enough to touch, I put the tobacco back in the tin or jar. This also works quite well with snuff, where I just set the snuff tin down in the pencil holder and proceed as above. On bulk: I’ve got a pound of burley mixed with some latakia which came bone dry. I spread it out on a newspaper and spritzed water over the whole lot and returned it to a humoungous glass peanut jar I have to age. I also made some hydrating balls out of tea infuser balls by cutting a sponge to fit, wet them nicely put the sponge into the balls and fire them into the jar. This works quite well too. As this pound ages in the moisture it is developing into a very nice mixture and I got this plain blending backy very cheap, so it’s a win situation all 'round. Hope some of you might find this useful, cheers eh?
Very interesting indeed for a pipe newbie like me.
Worthy of note; storing or aging humidity is generally different than smoking humidity. In other words pipe tobacco is normally stored with a decent amount of humidity but most smokers will let it dry out a little before smoking. It really depends on the tobacco, the pipe, and personal preferences. Experience can pay off big in this area.
If you ever get a 3.5g tin of McC’s Clove, or zip never throw the tin away when empty. Drill a few holes in the lid and bottom place some fresh potato, or even a wet tissue inside. Now you have Snuff Heads patented humidifier.