Smokers' Haven IN-B-TWEEN Mixture

Creamy and smooth as a mild to medium English blend can be. The Oriental/Turkish are lightly woody and playfully spicy, adding complexity to the smokey, woodsy sweet flavor of the Cyprian latakia. The rich brown Virginia is slightly citrus and dark fruit sweet, tangy, and earthy with very mild hay notes, and acts as a cooling base for the other components. Has a mild to medium nic-hit, closer to mild than to medium. It's more of a shag cut than a ribbon, and burns exceptionally well without burning fast and hot as many thin cut tobaccos tend to do. Won't bite. Has a cool, clean consistent flavor, requires few relights, and leaves very little moisture in the bowl. A well made all day English smoke that won't bore you, and the room note won't chase most of the ladies away either.

-JimInks

The name of this blend is really a description of the blend and where it places verses Our Best Blend. In-B-Tween is a very good quality medium English blend. It lacks the richness (and Latakia) that OBB offers, but it is nicely balanced and could be an all-day smoke for most English smokers. I don't seem to be able to single out the sweetness that others have pointed out, but my review is based on two newer tins and it may be due to the “newness” of my tins. Due to the very thin ribbons, it should be packed with care to get the best results. I am eager to see what a couple of years in the cellar will do to this blend. It is also great news to see its return to the marketplace! All in all, IN-B-Tween gets a solid three and a half stars for my taste.

What a delight this In B Tween Mixture is. Reading the reviews I thought it was going to be a reincarnation of Dunhill Early Morning but its not. The leaf used here is much smoother and milder than anything Dunhill has now. While I love Dunhills EMP which was my first English blend this IBT is just more complex, doesn't irritate my sinuses one bit and the room note is much more pleasant according to my other half... DRY, that's what EMP is to me, like a dry wine, this is a light /medium English that is the opposite. The use of the condiment leafs as just that -condiments- is to my mind like using salt and pepper on a steak. You want to taste the steak but also add a little something to enhance that steak flavor. The bread like Virginia flavor is dominant and every now and then the toasted oriental flavor comes through, all while the finest Smokey Latakia flavor adds its saltiness and aroma. Simply delicious and I'm telling you, If you haven't tried a Germain blend yet you are missing out on what is IMHO the best blending house still left. Its definatly more expensive than its peers at $13.50 a tin but I only smoke one bowl of an English blend before bed each day so I don't mind paying for the best...

Looks in the tin like the picture here and is mostly a shag. Smells like a light latakia/oriental blend in the tin, with a delicate mustiness. Loads like a shag, meaning you'll probably want to tear it in places to get it to load properly. This performed best at tin moisture, as shags are too thin to hold excess water. It came pretty dry anyway and further drying just destroyed it.

This one is a case in point as to why reviews based on a couple of bowlfuls are usually not helpful. The first half-dozen bowls were "meh". A light latakia flavor on top of what appeared to be characterless Virginias and not much of an oriental presence. Eventually somewhere around the halfway point of the next bowl, the orientals came out, and they are stellar, with a beautiful spiciness and depth. They ruled the show from that point and carried a lackluster blend into something very nice indeed. This is considered an English blend with the predominant flavor being latakia but I found the orientals more enticing and apparent at midbowl. The Virginias shored up well but provided almost no sweetness - more of a bready quality. It's a nice trickle down of SH's "Our Best Blend", which necessarily for me means a less enticing smoke. But this is a worthy blend if you like your English mixes more on the mild side, both in potency and flavor. I happen to prefer Exotique for it's more Balkan qualities but I seemed to smoke this tin rather rapidly, which I find meaningful. I enjoyed my time with it but don't miss it now that it's gone.

This is another wonderful Latakia blend by JF Germain for Smoker's Haven. I have now had the luxury of trying all of these blends. They are all different despite having very similar make up of Va, Lat and Or.

This one differentiates itself by having very little latakia presence and focusing more on the oriental components. Similar in the way that Select mixture does. I would put this below Select Mixture as my tastes go as the orientals in Select lean more to the woody, nutty side; whereas, IBT tends to come off as more sour to my tastes.

overall the fine Virginia used by SH carries these blends adding sweet hay and citrus. I like this one better than 20th anniversary, but that is about it. I prefer all the other ones over this.

I have not given any of these blends below two stars, because it is really splitting hairs to determine which one is better as they all are good and offer an enjoyable smoke.

Germain doesn't fool me with this blend. It's Penzance in shag cut form. At least, that's my guess. Very similar flavor (if not identical), with the middle of the road English taste made heavenly by the special Germain preparation of the components listed above. A beauty of a smoke!

We had an unofficial club meeting today. A few of us went out and grabbed lunch and settled down for a cigar or pipe or both. A friend of mine brought some of this in and I was lucky to get a nice sample smoke from it. This mild English had a sweetness in the tin note and the smoke but not sure of what. There is no flavoring added as stated on the website so maybe the sweetness is from the Orientals. I was smoking this in my Dagner Corn Cob and man did this put out a lot of smoke, I had a solid stream of smoke coming out of my pipe that looked almost supernatural, like a thick long white snake. This is a really nice blend. Pipestud thinks that this is Penzance in a shag cut, with over 1800 reviews I will take his word at it and they are both manufactured by Germain. Alas, this is no longer in production but always a pleasure to try something new, albeit if only a bowl or two. Interesting to me is that the last review on this one was 3 years ago.

In-B-Tween is another great blend from SH! This is a traditional English with high grade Orientals. Virginia’s and Latakia. The tin note is malty and at first your are greeted with Latakia with a VA’s following it up. The smoke is creamy and sweet. Latakia provides sweetness and some smokeiness and not overpowering. The Virgiia’s are earthy, sweet and slightly fruity. There is some toastiness from the Virginia’s as well that works very nicely. The Orientals are dry and woody with a slight spice. I have never had Best Blend but it must be loaded with Latakia if this is a mild version. I find this to be a nice English/Balkan, if it is in between it is a Lat bomb that is the comparator. Great blend similar to Exotique but milder and slightly less complex.

IBTM is the third SH blend that I have sampled and, I must say, it is the best so far. The current version has a mix of narrow ribbon, slightly wider ribbon and shag pieces. It is nicely variegated in its color range; a characteristic of medium English blends and yields a classical English smokey tin aroma that is neither too strong nor too weak - in other words, medium. The smoking aroma is wonderfully rounded and you sense all components working together in harmony. This blend in the current offerings from SH is the closest, so far in my sampling, to what I remember from the past and is, therefore, the most successful of the three blends I have tried: 20th Anniversary mix (least successful), Cognac (pretty good but a little too weak) and IBTM (four stars).

Having lived all of my life in the home of Smoker's Haven, I am partial to all of their imported English blends and am fortunate to have maintained a stock pile of them. In-B-Tween is a light English, perfect for a morning smoke or for a time when less strength and more sweetness is called for. It is cut in a fine ribbon and burns well. It has great balance. I've been smoking from a 2003 8oz. tin and it has enough Virginia in it to age nicely. A fine offering.