I loved the smell of this 20 years ago..............when other people smoked it.

I tried it....and....well........err. It was like smoking rancid toxic waste sediment. It absolutely lashed my tongue as if it were beating a ginger stepchild at the gates of hell..

Cheap, rank, crap... Couldn't smoke for a week after trying this due to the bite symptoms..

The money you'd spend on this would probably smoke and taste better if you shredded a few of the bank notes and put them in your pipe instead.

I tried to smoke it very quietly, in relax and without strange worries. Kinda like "who cares about keeping lit, if it becomes too hot I'll let it go and cold down and then I'll re-lit"

wow! What a fresh and cool smoke! Not a single drop of wet, it smokes really dry, really nice aroma and good force.

Of course, be careful in filling the bowl and how do you smoke. If you are a hot smoker, bad taste is waiting for you.

In the end, very nice bowl, more than other famous aromatics and with a mildness grater than other "suggested" mixture, english or not.

Good.

For sure I'll smoke it again. It's a tobacco that wrote pipe history.

This is my first review on this great website and being new to pipe smoking I cant tell the differences between all of the different types.. yet.

I wanted to work my way through the various supermarket brands to find an everyday readily available smoke. Clan is NOT it!!

I tried this late last night but after having quite a few different tobaccos yesterday I put the tongue bite down to that. Today, having been up for a good few hours I thought I would sit back with a bowl of Clan and give it a proper taste. Taste wise, it is very mild with no real flavour to speak of, I was expecting more as it is labelled as Aromatic and a very subtle sweet smell coming from the pouch.

After a couple of puffs, my tongue was 'nipped' even though I was taking it slow and trying to get a good taste of it. After a few more puffs my tongue was bitten, so much so I put my pipe down to recover. After going back to it, and if I smoked it any more slower I would be relighting it tomorrow, I continued on and I am pleased I only filled half a bowl.

The roof of my mouth feels stripped of skin, my tongue is so bitten I cant taste my coffee and it moved me to sit down and write my first review.

In short, if you can get over the very HOT tongue bite the flavour is very mild, the room note is pretty much non existant and if anybody wants to buy the remains of a 25g pouch of this stuff then drop me a line.

EDIT 16th May: So I thought I would give this another try in case I was wrong first time around and loaded it into a corn cob. The tongue bite is so overwhelming you cant taste anything for ages afterwards. THIS TOBACCO IS EVIL & NASTY!!!

The tobacco's smell is downright off putting as it comes out of the pouch. Once the bowl is lit the subtle aroma does however bring some joy, though after just a few minutes it smokes very hot and tongue bite is imminent if one is not careful. This is a tobacco one must take time smoking, let it cool and light it often.

I have never gotten positive feedback on the room note after smoking this tobacco.

Having said all this, I do believe one should try it at least once. Been there, smoked that, got the tongue bite.

I love the packaging and name of this blend. The plaid backdrop on the roll up pouch has always intrigued me. The pouch I received was from a forum buddy in England who wanted to try 5 Bros, and it was very much on the dry side. I have experimented with it the last few weeks dry up to hydrated. It's in a shag cut not as fine as 5 Bros of all brown tobaccos. Upon first light, it tasted really, pretty good, kind of like a sour apple candy with a little chocolate backdrop. Not in your face aromatic but there. But after a few puffs, look out! Fire, Fire! This one must be smoked slow, slow, slow, or your tongue will look like beef jerky. I think it's the hottest tobacco I have ever tried. But, I liked the taste and have stuck with it. The room note is kinda sour and sweet and tolerable, not great though. It does light very easy, stays lit, and burns all the way down to a gray ash and no dottle. No moisture at the bottom of the pipe. I will smoke the rest of the pack slowly, but would not buy it again because it is so hot and you can't relax with it. But it's not near as bad as it's reviews and could be quite good if it was not so hot. I'm glad I tried it. __________________

The tobacco looks and feels a lot like Troost. Although the pouch aroma entices with some nice vanilla notes and the promise that this isn't a heavily cased product, the tobacco is a lot dryer and smokes hotter and faster. Neither is the taste and room note in the same league; Indeed, Clan smokes pretty flat and tastes rather earthy at best. In summary, it's very much like smoking a cigarette, without benefiting from any of the 'kick' associated with it.

If you like a lighter, all-day smoke, then this may tickle your fancy, but if your looking for a flavorsome aromatic, or a true tobacco taste, then it falls woefully short on both counts. I'll most likely be using this as a base to smooth out stronger tobaccos that I have - and nothing more.

Cheap it is, but your money is still better spent on something else.

Clan still has its devotees, even in a world so full of exotic tastes and smells. It's cheap and cheerful, at any rate (once upon a time it was relatively pricey). It certainly isn't 'cool and slow burning', though. Even smoked slowly it's very hot and quickly gone, and it will certainly barbecue the beginner's tongue. You either like the room note or you don't (it isn't as pronounced these days as it used to be). I don't, and I find Clan far too hot to be enjoyable. It would be interesting to know what the '14 different tobaccos' are. The name and packet design seem intended to suggest that Clan has a Scottish character of some kind. I wonder why?

Worth a try, I guess, like everything else; but not recommended: too dry, too hot, too odd and bland in flavour. It's a tobacco that, to my mind, is all negatives and no positives, and I can't imagine why anybody likes it; I'd rather bite off one of my own fingers than smoke it again.

I heartily endorse the remark of an earlier reviewer about BAT's policies. What possible sense can it make to knock the Dunhill brand on the head while continuing to produce dreck like Clan? More to the point, perhaps, why do supermarket brands, almost all mediocre or worse, become and stay popular enough to BE supermarket brands, available everywhere, whereas first-rate tobaccos are so hard to come by, and so often cease production? A deep question of economics, this.

My parents then offered me a small pipe smoker's kit, which included an affordable "Amphora Milos" dutch filter pipe, and a huge 250 gr tin of Clan tobacco, which was by that time produced by Theodorus Niemeyer (nowadays the Clan brand belongs to British-American Tobacco Company and is blended by Orlik in Denmark).

Those where the days of pipe smoking. Me and my colleagues would spend whole evenings discussing philosophy and reciting poetry ? enacting our own version of the "Dead Poets' Society". Clan, or better said that old version of it, will always be part of my nostalgic remembrance of such happy times. It seemed such an honest blend, so tasteful, so trustworthy ? even after I discovered a truly high-quality favorite, Dunhill's London Mixture.

After more than a decade without puffing any pipe at all, I stumbled upon the old Amphora pipe. Trying to exorcise the sadness of fleeting years, I polished the briar, bought a pouch of Clan, disappointed to know that London Mixture had been meanwhile discontinued. I filled the bowl full of enthusiasm and nostalgia?

And then I got a second disappointment. This is not the Clan I knew. This is not even a decent tobacco, however cheap it might be priced. Clan has become a meaningless name in a label placed upon pouches containing dry grass, chloride and god-knows-what. It scorches the tongue as if it had been cased with napalm, then paves it with second-grade asphalt. So many expectations of reviving a bliss, such an anti-climax.

(The first was Condor Original -- THAT was a mistake! That is very powerful for anybody who hasn't tried it and got the "Condor shivers". Again, very potent.)

With mild sweet caramel notes, this is best smoked slowly in a long pipe to avoid bite and burn.

Burns to a fine white ash and seems to build cake fairly well, again like a said excellent for a beginner, possibly not so much for a more "advanced", no wait thats not the word.

Urm, "experienced" -- that'll do.

Could leave the more experienced pipe smoker wanting a little more, in flavour and strength, nevertheless it's very widely available and doesn't cost the earth (well, not quite anyway!)

I believe everybody must try this for at least a half-pouch.