Ken Byron Ventures Deep House

The very floral, spicy dark fired Virginia cavendish produces some tangy dark fruit, earth, wood, vegetation, bread, sugar, herbs, moderate tart and tangy citrus, grass, and some smoke and sourness as the lead component. The rugged white and darker burleys offer some nuts, bread, earth and wood as supporting players. The sugary Green River black cavendish mainly acts as a flavor carrier for the toppings. The grass, citrus, and floralness from the other Virginias are faint. The deeply rich toppings are main attractions, though they don’t totally drown out the varietals. The vanilla leads the chocolate, marshmallow, and light whiskey additives. The strength is a slot past the medium threshold. The taste level is a notch past that mark. The nic-hit is a couple of steps past the center of mild to medium. No chance of bite or harshness, and sports few rough notes. Burns cool and clean at a reasonable rate with a very consistent sweet, floral, spicy, mildly smoky, lightly sour, savory flavor that extends to the pleasantly lingering after taste. Has a very pleasant room note. Leaves little dampness in the bowl, and requires an average number of relights. A mildly punchy, fairly comfortable all day smoke. Four stars.

-JimInks

Occassionally I smoke aromatics as a change of pace from English, flakes and plugs. I have previously been impressed with a couple of aromatics from KBV- Burley Morning pipe and especially King Black.

King Black is long gone, as the blender could not source all of the tobaccos needed to produce it on a regular basis. Deep House reminds me to some extent of King Black. They both have an interesting chocolate, vanilla, very slight cinnamon like flavor which comes on for the first half of the bowl; however Deep House is a bit less intense than King Black. Then in the second half the flavors of the excellent virginias and burley come through with just a hint of the aromatics which were prominent in the first half.

The cut of this blend makes packing easy and it will smoke to the very bottom of the bowl with no goop. I find no bite or harsh/ rough spots. Deep House is really excellent.