Scandinavian Tobacco Group (STG) Clan Aromatic (Original)

This has been the first acceptable pipe tobacco i have bought since i got back to smoking pipe last month.

Since i'm new here and this is my very first review, and yes i have a rather short experience with pipe smoking. Nevertheless i shall share with everyone my experience, so you can take it in consideration if you are a starter, just like me.

I must confess that my first contact with Clan was at a local convenience store where i went looking for some tobacco to get back to pipe smoking. The owner told me Clan aromatic was one of his best selling brands - I must say it's package really got me for it's good looks.

I've been smoking Clan frequently now. At first it felt very strong and i got some tong bite, because of my lack of experience. It burns hot in my opinion, but as you smoke it regularly you start to understand how to best do it.

I've smoked it indoor and outdoor and feel quite pleased with it, making a good companion for reading.

I was hopping it would taste just like it smells, but it doesn't. Nevertheless today i can start to distinguish some of its flavors in the taste and aroma it releases.

Note: 23/02/2013 - Smoked after cleaning the pipe with some portuguese liquor called "Licor Beirão", tasted really sweet, and proved to be very tasty smoked that way.

I had this recommended to me by a special needs guy I work with who used to smoke it by the bucketload and loved the sweet flavour. I had never heard it before but decided to take my life into my hands and give it a go when I saw it in my local supermarket a couple of days later.

I was actually quite excited when I got the well packed, tartan strewn packet home, and the hints of caramel, with perhaps a subtle tint of mint, wafted up from the tobacco as I opened it up. The packing was, and has been since, very easy as has the lighting. The caramel flavour continued on into the smoke providing a pleasant, relaxing experience. Also, the general lack of tongue bite is a plus point.

I have to say, fair play to the guy I look after, he's been onto a decent tobacco. It's not a classic by any means, but for a good afternoon smoke it really hits the spot.

I've been on another forum, and many people don't like Clan, but I find it very pleasurable if you smoke it right. I smoke it with my Mr Brog no47. This pipe has great, smooth air flow through the pipe (with it's 9mm filter), and as long as you lightly sip @ the pipe, the Clan tobacco burns slowly enough to release the flavours & taste to the bottom of the bowl. Just allow the smoke slowly roll over your tongue & into the olfactory senses in the nasal cavity to appreciate the delicate but cool flavours. As Clan is a fine cut tobacco, it needs a slow flow of air to burn, otherwise if you draw on the pipe too strongly it will burn too quickly and turn to ash straight away and give that harsh, bitter back bite. You know when the smoke is over as you taste the ash.

Packet smell: aromatic heathery, herby with touch of pine forest.

Taste & flavour: similar to it's fragrance, aromatic, heathery, herby, touch of resinous pine trees with a hint of liquorice at the end. Can be a bit sickly, so smoke in moderation. Mr Brog no47 has a small bowl size, so no problem there.

Room note: Pleasurable and fragrant.

A dessert smoke as opposed to something like St Bruno, which is more meaty and savoury in nature.

I have avoided buying supermarket tobacco for years after an unpleasant experience with Craven Ready Rubbed. Recently I found I'd run out of tobacco and was faced with Clan as my only option. When I bought it I thought that I would not like it. I must say I was pleasantly surprised. I think this stuff is good. There are so many different tobaccos in this mix it's imposible to pick one out. I don't normally like aromatics but I liked Clan. The other good thing about this stuff is that it's readily available and It's cheap. I'll be smoking Clan on a regular basis from now on.

I see that this tobacco has had a lot of negative reviews. But I like it and I have not once had tongue bite, not one bit. After reading all the bad reviews I can't be sure we're smoking the same tobacco because I think it's really good. Oh well, try it because like me you may enjoy it. But many people don't like it.

I began pipe smoking around 1992, when I entered college. It was a time when tobacco wasn't considered a weapon of mass destruction, smoking was still considered to be a somewhat glamourous activity, and "Big-Cigarette-Tobacco" multinational companies hadn't started to buy and debase smaller blenders of pipe mixtures.

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.

I really enjoy this tobacco. It was always my fathers smoke of choice, so perhaps thats why I like it so much, the aroma seems comfortably familiar. Its a quite natural tasting aromatic in the Dutch tradition, very mild. The aroma is sweetenet with a subtle dose of vanilla, that does not mask the tobacco flavour, as in so many more heavily cased blends, but sweetens and adds to it. The tobacco is cut quite fine, into long even ribbons without too much stemmy bits, and is quite easy to pack evenly, due to the very even cut of the tobacco, although it helps to tease it apart a litle as you fill, rather than just stuffing it in. It lights as easily as it packs, and does not go out. This baccy does seem to vary a little from pouch to pouch in its moisture content, some can be a little damp, and so tend to gurgle, but this can be overcome by leaving it open for a while. Due to the sugars in it it is unlikely to get crispy dry though, so never really dries out in the pouch. A truly excellent aromatic.

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Update

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Not having smoked this in a while, I got a pouch, and immediately wondered why I had been wasting my time trying so many other aromatics. If there is a perfect aromatic this is it. Admittedly there are others that are sweeter, like a vannilla explosion when you light up. But they also burn hotter, wetter and steamier, with far less taste of tobacco. They also represent an olfactory assult on anybody in the room not unlike an overdose of perfume, which is all very well if people like vanilla/cherry/whatever else but some don't. The aroma of clan is indeed unobtrusive, sweet in its own way, but the sweetness is so artfully blended in that it cannot be told apart from the smell of the tobacco as with some sweeter blends. The tobaccos used in this blend are diverse, and the casings include rum, vanilla, and liquorice, in restrained doses. I've not found that anybody dislikes its aroma, but many people have told me that it smells nice, including a number of people with an absolute aversion to tobacco smoke.

Clan Original is one of the most bullished pipe tobaccos ever. It's like the Playboy/Penthouse magazine hidden in a doubled WallStreet journal: a lot of people do it, almost anyone admits it.

Its first "flaw" is its taste: a strange flavour across Soapy/Liquour/Black Cavendish/Burley. In its way is an Alpha and Omega that can work as everyday blend and/or a breaker along the day from a more stylish and delicate tobacco.

Its second "flaw" is its logistic: easy to find and cheap. Taste for money is one of the best ever with the St.Bruno, the Park Lane 7 and the MacBaren Scottish Mixture, the holy trinity of cheap but tasty tobaccos.

Its third "flaw" is its room note. Its fragrance is THE archetype of pipe smoking, take it or leave it. If you cannot at least admit it, go for the svapo crew,

Its real pain points are basically 2 for me (and because of those I give it 3 stars and not 4, as it should be): 1) it bites and cooks your tongue if you are not super-gentle burning it from the very first puff ppreparation; 2) its flavour sticks to your pipe forever, so try to dedicate it a pipe.

After one year in the bag it looses most of its fragrance, so put it in a glass made can if you don't finish it within 2-3 months.

Its magic is in its aromatic part for sure, but I believe that also its black cavendish part is very undervalued.

Excellent as second tobacco to start with as rookie, because it still cheap and tasty. You need something else first, that teaches you how to burn your tobacco without cooking your tongue (so start with Park Lane 7 which is a Flake, probably the best flake quality for money for pipe, because flake cut is more wet and it forces you to be patient and technically prepared to enjoy your pipe experience).

Welcome to the Clan!

Clan the go-to tobacco of many a fledgeling pipe smoker and a huge mistake by the novice is made from the off! I think it must be the name and the tartan tobacco pouch, it conjures up images of the highland games and a kind of strength, how sadly mistaken one could be!

I first tried this forty-nine years ago and counting and the resulting foulness of the smoke has never departed my cerebral cortex, nor has my tongue fully forgiven me the Clan experience, such was, is, the memorable and inherent tongue bite one gets courtesy of Clan tobacco.

However one smokes this horrible mixture, it burns quicker and hotter than an Australian bush fire, which leaves any room with an unpleasant miasma similar to the fabled London fogs of yore. How anyone can like smoking this is beyond my comprehension! One must have to be a masochist a lover of the cat of nine tails administered by some 18th Century ships Bosun! The tongue bite is akin to setting a small campfire on one's tongue. The taste is like one imagines a soiled infant's terry towel nappy soaked in urine and smoked in ones favourite briar tastes like, it is also as wet as the aforementioned and leaves your pipe gurgling like a cheerful baby in its crib.

How this tobacco has stayed in production beats me, but as stated elsewhere there must be masochists among our pipe smoking fraternity, or it's the new pipe smokers who get lured in by the name and packaging that keeps this ghastly blend going. When one thinks of the likes of all the great tobaccos such as Digger, Redbreast and the like that have bitten the dust and Clan just carries on biting tongues like a Rabid Pitbull terrier on steroids, leaves me amazed!

The smoke is unpleasant, hot, wet and has nothing going for it apart from the great name and Tartan packet. I'd personally wager that Clan is responsible for the decline in pipe smoking because when one smokes this starting out with a new pipe the taste and experience is enough to scar one for life!

My tip to anyone starting out on the pipe and who wants a cool smoking aromatic, start on any of the following three tobaccos, Condor, St Bruno, or Ennerdale Flake, that way you will not need to seek medical help for your severe tongue bite and your head will remain un-haunted from the foul taste of this ghastly mixture, also your pipe will not be permanently ghosted.

Due to Lockdown I was forced to purchase some OTC tobacco. With a degree of trepidation I bought a 50g pouch of Clan Original.

It’s burns extremely quickly, leaving nothing but ash in record time. My usual tobacco will last around an hour per bowl, this no longer than 20 minutes. There is no dottle with this blend. The room note is pleasant in that there is little discernible afterwards.

In addition to speed of burn, it burns hot and were I less experienced and less careful it would burn the mouth and create an overwhelming tongue bite.

The taste is rather innocuous. I did taste some flavour, cardamom and other Middle Eastern tastes, although none of the fuller flavours I love. An interesting taste, it is wholly inoffensive.

On balance, it burns too quickly, overheats the pipe, is too mild for my taste, and brings the risk of severe mouth injuries. I will not buy again although it has been useful in getting me through lockdown. That said, it is not as horrific as other reviews have stated but it deserves nothing more than 1-2 out of 5.