John Middleton, Inc Kentucky Club Mild

Of the three burley-based Middleton offerings I have tried, this is my favorite. These three--a triumvirate of excellent, affordable burleys--Kentucky Club Mild, Prince Albert, and Carter Hall are all delicious and well-worth the money and time.

They are all quite similar and have the nutty, earthiness characteristic of burley-based blends. They differ in nuances only, PA being caramel-ly with the nuttiness emphasized, while CH is creamier with hints of fruit (fig/raisin).

Kentucky Club Mild is harder for me to describe and is clearly a touch more complex or interesting than PA or CH in my opinion. It has a delicate floral quality or hay-like-ness that weaves in and out of the basic nuttiness. These tastes work amazingly together.

The 'Mild' in the title has more to do with the way it is blended or flavored than tobacco strength, I feel. I'm sure a primary, "foundational" blend is used for all three.

Kentucky Club is yummy, yummy stuff and great as an all-day pipe. Two enthusiastic thumbs up, as Siskel and Ebert used to say so many years ago.

The earthy, woody Kentucky burleys are very nutty with some molasses as the lead component. The Virginia provides some tangy citrus, bread, light sugar and grass as a supporting player. The toppings moderately sublimate the tobaccos. No chemical notes to be found. The strength and nic-hit are mild. The taste level is near the center of mild to medium. Won't bite or get harsh. Burns clean and mostly cool at a moderate pace with a very consistent flavor to the finish. Leaves little dampness in the bowl, and hardly requires any relights. Has a very pleasant after taste and room note. Is an all day sweet smoke.

-JimInks

I'm not sure my review would be the same if I had smoked this tobacco from a fresh tub (impossible now), but it is out of production. The tin I had was from the late 1980s and the cube cut leaf was brittle and very dark. The tin aroma brought back those early days of pipe smoking memories for me as did the presentation once lit. Mild, delightful Burley with a little old fashioned something to sweeten it up a bit without ruining the tobacco flavor. Nice smoke, especially for the price!

Just finished up the better part of a 14 oz tub. Tub aroma is plain old burley. The floral casing that others have described was so faint that I'm not sure it was there at all in my tub. Taste was basic burley nuttiness with a slight hint of sweet hay. It was slight and it was fleeting. 99.5% of the flavor I got was straight, honest burley.

I find this to be one of the, if not THE, best American OTC blends currently available. It started off with a whiff of that weird soapy character I get when I first fire up a straight burley blend and very quickly calmed down into the ever-popular burley descriptor of nutty. What elevated this one ahead of a lot of other basic OTC's is that this never got bitter down the bowl. It got a bit hotter but not too hot. No tongue bite overall but I did get a hint of sizzle at the match that lasted a minute or so.

The only issue I have with this one is that it's price is no longer as reasonable as it used to be. One can get a pound (16 oz) of C&D's Burley Straight at a cheaper price per oz than a 14 oz tub of this. I prefer the C&D, but only slightly, with regard to taste but the new cost of a tub of this makes the C&D even more attractive. I do recommend this to lovers of straight burley but I have to give the overall nod to the C&D version.

A friend of mine brought me a pack of this from a visit to the U.S.1 Surpisingly there are no pure burley blends available in the country I live and that´s a pitty for sure! Dark brown cube cup. Easy to fill in any pipe though I would prefer small headed ones. Easy to smoke and handle in all conditions, never bites no matter how you treat it. The taste is allways mild with lots of sweetness and the aroma of chocolate, cocoa and maybe a little caffee. The perfect all time and everyday smoke! Great! Highly recomended!

Great old-school burley. Cool burning unless you hammer the pipe relentlessly. Brief soapy feel at the charring light which quickly dissipated into a comfortable, no-frills, dependable, predictable burley. Sours slightly for the last quarter of the bowl (which I really don't mind in the least) which could almost be construed as increasing complexity if it wasn't so darn burleyish. Dry, white ash is all that remains. There are better straight burleys out there, but this one commits no damnable sins.

This is a basic burly ..medium brown in color. Not much of anything in the way of flavor. Slightly nutty and slightly sweet... perhaps a very light sugar casing which is well in the background. It can bite like a rabid dog if not smoked slowly.

All in all not too bad if you have experience with this sort of tobacco. I don't recommend it for beginners.

Don't expect much and you won't be disappointed. PA or CH will blow this away, but you can't argue with the KCM price.

I won't be buying it again.

UPDATE: 12/15/11

I added some moisture to KCM and it opened up a little .... enough that I am adding another star. It still bites a little but there is more flavor .... simple flavor. It still tastes like some kind of mild sugar topping. If you have the discipline to smoke it slowly it isn't bad. I still won't buy it again but if you fancy this type of smoke you will like it especially since it is cheap to buy.

KC Mild … Another old timer that is still quite popular. KCM has its own unique character, similar in strength to Sir Walter Raleigh, only this blend does not seem to have any noticeable added topping, more a straight tobacco taste and aroma.

Medium brown in color, mild with no bite or bitterness, very pleasant from light-up to bowl bottom. IMO one of the better, so called straight Burley's available. Nothing fancy here, just good old fashion burley pipe tobacco, tasty and simple. The only negative trait I found was its tendency to burn a bit fast/hot. So I found that a heavier tamp than normal for this cut, helpful. Overall I feel very confident in recommending KCM to those that find happiness in cob pipes and basic American tobacco's. For them, 3 plus stars.

I was recently given the chance to smoke from a 50 year old sample of this tobacco. This was labeled as "Mild", and suitably so. These OTC burley blends typically used a dab of either cocoa, honey, molasses, liquor, etc., to enhance the flavor. Sometimes in combination. I detect none of those here, with the possible exception of honey, or maybe some weak sweet tea with just a hint of lemon. Note from tin was also a hint of tea with lemon to me, (maybe that is what floral smells like to some. I did NOT smell what I consider a flower to smell like, but I am NOT a professional sniffer). As mentioned, I smoked from a vintage tub, so some casing could possibly have degraded away. I have read the comparisons to SWR, and agree with that visually, but the flavor is NOT like SWR in my experience. KCM didn't have the spiced raisin odor or flavor that SWR does for me. I would describe it as a lighter bodied PA, with a light honey topping. PA is itself mild to me, yet with a slight black pepper twinge to it. KCM, again, was milder than that with zero kick of anything except a slight sweet, and possibly a TINY sour tinge on the end like citrus, or very mildly lemon tea. I hate to say this, but it was in many ways like a sweetened cigarette tobacco. I missed trying this tobacco in it's heyday. Now, I'd put it at the bottom of the OTC Burley gang that I have tried. For the record, I have smoked some 40 and 50 year old samples of PA, and they shared some tea-like qualities with the KCM, without a hint of citrus though.

First off I'll say I'm biased toward this tobacco as it is what my grandpa used to smoke. That being said , KCm is a great all day weed that always satisfies and never interferes. Smells like an old time burley in the can, packs and light flawlessly, and has that old time tobacco thing going for it all the way until the end. I wish the vitamin N content was a bit more, there just isn't quite enough N in a cob full to satisfy but a second cob quickly brings nirvana. On it's own merits this is a three star blend for me but add nostalgia and I bump it up four. I still prefer Prince Albert to KCm in the pipe but for remembering old times and working/walking grandpas old farm, its Kentucky Club Mild.