John Middleton, Inc Prince Albert

When you need a job done right, on time, and within budget, you don't take a chance with someone new. You call on "old reliable."

When your boss is coming over for dinner, you don't experiment with a new dish. You reach for that "old reliable" recipe.

But when it comes to that moment of the day where you can escape the clutches of the world... where you can sit and meditate in peace... where you can choose a tobacco to truly enjoy... why would you settle for "old reliable"?

I inherited a large can of Prince Albert recently. Lady Heseltine's grandfather departed this world, leaving her a legacy... and leaving me a half-empty can of "old reliable" tobacco.

And it says a lot that the "can" is now made of plastic.

Allow me to make an analogy: Prince Albert is to pipe tobacco what Kia is to automobiles.

There's very little to dislike about a Kia, but I can't imagine anyone truly desiring one. There's very little to dislike about Prince Albert, but I can't imagine anyone truly desiring it.

Yet it's widely available. It's cheap as chips. And it's pleasant enough to be inoffensive just about anywhere.

I would never fault anyone for smoking and enjoying this "old reliable" tobacco, but please don't let this become the extent of your piping experience.

The tobacco in the pouch smells pretty good, like dark chocolate. PA has great burning qualities. Burns cool and clean down to white ash with very few relights. The first half of the bowl is very mildly sweet and nutty. The second half, the mild sweet taste burns off and the nutty tends to bitter. It does have a very pleasant nostalgic room note.

Prince Albert is a classic old time favorite. I can remember as a boy watching old men roll their own cigarettes with this tobacco. My father also smoked it in his pipe and I loved walking into a room where it was being smoked.

I find it tastes a bit like its room aroma for the first half bowl. It is not a complex tobacco and is rather one dimensional in its flavor, as are all the classics - Carter Hall, Sir Walter Raleigh and Half n Half. But unlike the others, the Prince will suddenly drop its flavor about mid way down the bowl. It simply goes flat and if you keep smoking it develops a taste not unlike that of a dirty mop. Still, despite its flaws it is cheap enough that I can smoke it down to the point where the flavor drops out and empty the bowl and have another.

Of all the classics, Carter Hall is the mildest. Half and Half has the fullest flavor, with SWR sitting in the middle. The Prince is second in mildness to CH, but lacking in the flavor the others give you.

I'm one who enjoys a good IPA, or a stout, but sometimes it's nice to have a Budweiser. This is a Budweiser kind of smoke. I just finished my first pouch and I enjoyed every bowl. Because of the price and availability here in the States, this is one comes recommended and is a tobacco I'll keep on hand. The taste and smell do suggest cigarettes (as a former cigarette smoker I am particularly reminded of Camel lights). For those who could do without cigarette analogies, this is a simple burley tobacco with very little casing. If there are chemicals added, they don't show up in the taste. The description says "alcohol" casing, but compared to Half and Half or other drug store blends, this one is au naturale.

Edit 1/25/14

Well, I've had some more experience with burleys since my first review. After trying C&D's dark burley for example, my idea of au naturale has changed a bit. Now, to my palate Prince Albert has some obvious casing, and (as others have noted) it does get bitter and sticky around mid-bowl to bottom. I'm taking away a star, but it's still a good blender.

This blend smells and tastes like empty smoke. If you want flavor, go somewhere else. Most cigars and regular cigarettes have more flavor than this. Oh well, at least you can't say the smell is offensive. On the flip side, if you just want the act of smoking without having to worry about flavor, this might suit you. Another good thing is that it burns well, even out of the box.

Edit 6/5/14 Well, as it turns out I left home on a business trip with a sasieni full of tobacco and completely forgot my bag with all my other pipes and tobacco I planned on taking. If PA is one thing, it is widely available, and a gas station on the way had some for sale, so I guess I was destined to give this another shot.

I realized I was a little harsh on this one so I am adding a star. It wasn't as bad as I recall and this most likely has to do with experience and improved technique.

I still prefer CH and SWR to this, but it is not bad and will definitely do in a pinch should the need arise. I still will not purposely buy any more, but I reserve the one star reviews for those I can't stomach.

Original review:

I guess I made the mistake of buying some of this after I had bought a tub of Carter Hall. As I feel these two are similar in what they are meant to accomplish, I can't in good conscience recommend this blend as CH is better and is likely available right next to PA wherever you buy it.

I know, I know, . . . Your Grandfather smoked it, Your great grandfather smoked it . . . I get all of that, but did they have the internet? Did they interact with other smokers from all over the world bringing awareness to several blends previously unknown to these gentlemen?

It is a different time. And there are too many better and available alternatives out there. As for the PA itself, I was unable to finish a bowl of PA by itself. I just did not like the taste of it. Fortunately I only bought a pouch. I tried it a few times in a few different bowls and the experience did not change. Ironically enough, I mixed the remainder with a generous portion of the CH from my tub. This made it smokable to me, but I would still have preferred the CH straight. YMMV.

A resounding meh. It was a lot liking smoking a cigarette. From time to time I would get a nice taste of something sweet and tobaccoy, but it was merely a fleeting taste and then I would simply get cigarette. Perhaps that's the "pure tobacco" flavor people talk about, but it's not for me.

Open the pouch to a fruity aroma (half berry, half orange), a little nutty burley in the background - comes through the sweet casing as a sort of buttered graham cracker scent. After the pouch has been open a few minutes the fruit seems to evaporate somewhat, bringing the sweet cookie aroma to the foreground a little.

Packs, lights and burns great.

So mild and quite tasty. Cool burley, mildly sweetened. Nuts, cocoa, coffee. Simple, warm burley blend. I was surprised at the natural flavor of this tobacco, it has a little of that American burley blend soapiness, but not as much chemical taste as most of the drugstore blends. The room aroma is a little cigarette-like, and in a close space turns ashy and stale pretty quickly. Great for the porch and rocker - Damn! This stuff is turning me into my grandpa.

Not at all disagreeable, but not exactly exciting either. Plenty of nicotine. A pleasant, easy smoke. Great Price!

However, good or bad, life's too short for drugstore tobacco. Support your local (or online) tobacconist, and do yourself a favor.

It seems foolhardy to try a baccy that has 259 reviews warning me that it is really a cigarette tobacco composed of pure burly rather than a blend. However, I felt I should actually try it first-hand so I could malign it with authority. Also, it seems to be the standard by which all other cheap blends are judged so I needed to know exactly what the benchmark is.

Indoors it does taste like cigarettes but outdoors it does have a mellow quality about it and it is surprisingly good for such a cheap tobacco. It does have a heckuva nicotine hit that will satisfy your need for vitamin N for hours. It is not the sort of baccy that you would want to savor with a tumbler of quality bourbon as you sit in your easy chair in front of the fireplace late evenings. It is more the sort of stuff that you smoke while sprawled under a shade tree and sipping coffee with your bird dog resting his chin on your knee.