John Middleton, Inc Prince Albert

It's not bad for a drug store blend. Light casing, more complex than most of the "sticky" blends like Captain Black, but still not anything to write flowery poetry about. A good cheap smoke for when you're in the mood for something less sugary but you're broke or isolated from your tobacconist.

Nostalgia and tradition be damned....this stuff is cigarette tobacco. That's all. Never again!

My luxory Pouch smelled of chocolate covered raisins, while my cannister reeks of coffee. But when mixed 50/50 pouch/cannister it smells like fresh cut alfalfa to me.

Personally i feel the tobacco from the cannister burns and tastes better then the luxory pouch. At light up it can taste ashy, and drawing to hard during a relight introduces an ashy smell and some minor tongue bite.

Ive found that the cannister smokes verry cool when i keep moisture from going down the bit to the filter. This means that when i start detecting moisture in my mouth, i just spit like crazy till the moist feeling is gone. And afterwords i find the filter to be bone dry.

When i smoke I avoid puffing into the pipe as that shoves spit down the stem making a soggy filter that seems to sour within minutes. Making sure to pull the filter out as soon as possible and drying it seperately has let me keep the sour taste away i had when i left the filter in over night by accident.

I have many jars of four-star blends here, but for some reason I keep buying Prince Albert whenever I go to the grocery store. It's cheap, plain, good old burley.

Actually, I like to keep some burley around for mixing in with other tobaccos and for just smoking it in its own right. Prince Albert is a good pleasant smoke when you are in the mood for some mild puffing . It has a woody or nutty sort of flavor that is rather subdued. It lights easy and doesn't tend to scorch your tongue at all.

I often take some of this and mix it in with a straight virginia to cool it down a bit and reduce the bitey character of the virginias. All in all, its a good base tobacco to keep around the house. I think its one of the best drugstore tobaccos and considering its wide availability, low price, and decent quality.

In my "battle of the drugstore burleys" the nod goes to Prince Albert. I reviewed Velvet yesterday. Nice, but a little too mild for me, though it was easier on the tongue. I like Prince Albert. It is a once match light and it burns to the bottem very nicely. It does burn a little hotter than Velvet, but it did not give me any tongue burn, and I puffed rather vigorously at times.

It has a decent tobacco taste. And I especially enjoy the aroma of the smoke. I went back into my car a couple hours after smoking a bowl of PA on the way home. I was treated to a wonderful toasted, roasted, nutty tobacco odor that was most pleasant. Maybe I will try Kentucky Club next, if I can find a pouch.

An Aside:

Talk about being limited in your tobacco selection: At the prison where I do indeed serve as chaplain the only tobacco that is readily available from the prison store is Bugler. The men get a bag of tobacco with enough papers at a price most men can afford. That is one acrid, foul smelling tobacco. They do carry a couple selections of ready rolled smokes, but very few can afford them. You really need a smoke to smoke one of those. They disallowed pipes and pipe tobacco as someone ruled that a pipe was drug paraphanalia. Sad.

I was on an unexpected road trip when I first tried Prince Albert. Since nothing else was open at 2:00 A.M., out of desperation, I purchased a pouch from a convienance store. I was not expecting much due to my past experiences with other "cheap" tobacco's I found myself wondering why I would even bother. Boy was I surprised!

I packed my old Comoy Poker, lit up and got back on the road. Imagine my very pleasent surprise when the thick swirls of smoke went up and the flavor was nutty and cool with absolutely no tounge bite. While PA is a very inexpensive tobacco, I certainly won't call it "cheap" in terms of quality. Sipped slowly, this leaf is very smooth, with a creamy flavor perfectly rounded with nutty tones. It lights easy, burns clean and smooth to the bottom of the bowl.

While I of course still smoke my other favorite burley blends frequently, I now keep a large tin of PA on hand at all times and find myself smoking it more and more. Sometimes I even get a craving for it. There is definately something to be said for a simple straight burley.

PA impressed me enough that I really want to try Walnut blend now. I just wish I could find it locally. 🙂

Ah, the good Prince Albert. I knew the "Do you have Prince Albert in a Can?" joke long before I knew that it was a pipe tobacco. For some reason as a child I thought it was condensed soup. In any case, this venerable classic has run such a gamut of reviews here, I felt compelled to try it. I've recently developed an interest in Burley and Americana blends; the whopping $2.00 for a pouch at Walmart convinced me that today was the day to meet the good Prince. And when I checked out, the rather voluptuous nubian damsel behind the counter said with extreme elegance..."Oh Prince Albert...has someone mentioned it to you?" Odd, perhaps she is a latent oracle. Or a closet pipe smoker.

The red box and pouch hints at a slightly indecent thrill. It is the color of a light beckoning from above a brothel doorway. Amazingly dry to the touch and only slightly stale sweetness of tobacco within.

I packed up my favorite "cheap" burley pipe and up the smoke went. Thick, cool curls. Oh my - it is actually quite pleasant. Far and away better than the $9.00 pound of black cavendish pudding I tried to smoke my first time out. A bit more mellow and less processed tasting than Granger. No candy flavor, just burley. A bit of bitterness - sure! But it is burley, and likely not quite the most delicately cultivated crop. I do agree that relights are quite harsh. But I didn't find it sitting around unsmoked to be an issue. While inexpensive, I can't call it "cheap" tobacco. It does burn mighty fast though. So that ounce and change may not last *too* long if I choose to smoke this regularly.

And I could except for one thing - the nicotine hit me rather squarely. I smoke Haddo's and Nightcap with some frequency. Some of Mr. Tarler's blends can deliver quite a kick in the @$$. But this stuff really made the room move. Aside from that, it was a completely satisfying smoke. I won't give up Cumberland or Margate for it, but if the Good Prince were my only company, I would still smoke a pipe with pleasure.

Ok, so this is my first review ever of any tobacco and I thought it would be a good place to start. I'd like to add first that I've smoked a pipe regularly for about a year now but I've smoked pipes on and off for about 14 years.

We all know that Prince Albert is burley and more burley and there is really nothing that exceptional about it but IMHO that's what is good about it. I think it's a good way to start the day when you are just waking up. It's like an old friend and just as reliable to boot. It's easy to pack, it does not leave you feeling scorched and if you're in a hurry you don't feel bad about not finishing the bowl.

But I would not recommend this as an all day smoke or an evening smoke in one of your better briar pipes. I've tried smoking it in one of my briars at night and found that it just was really kind of boring that way. Somehow in a cheap corn cob pipe in the morning ( at least for me ) it takes on a different ( better ) character and provides some nostalgic pleasure.

Cheers!

Prince Albert, named not for Victoria's husband but rather their son, the future Edward VII (yes, he has a cigar named for him, too), is a very straightforward tobacco. It is plain, unadorned Burley. Period.

Now, if this is your type of thing, PA is the way to go. As an unabashed aromatic lover, I thought this might make an interesting alternative to latakia, which I frankly detest. My first bowl was a pleasant change of pace, but something bothered me about it. After my second bowl, I knew what it was; by my third and final bowl, there could be no doubt: PA tastes and smells pretty much like cigarette tobacco (after all, it is also used in rolled cigarettes), and I do not appreciate the ashy, nasty aftertaste this left on my palate.

I will never again buy a pouch of the Prince, but compared to the revoltingly tangy, barbecuey taste and smell of latakia, this really is a prince among tobaccos. But I'll stick with my Mixture No. 79, thanks.

(And before all you latakia lovers send me hate mail, note that I don't disdain other people's blends--I just can't stand the stuff myself. So rest easy and smoke another bowl of Nightcap, gents!)