J. F. Germain & Son Germain's Brown Flake

Tin note is fruity and also dark and heavy, matching the way the flake looks in my opinion. It's a dark brown with very few light streaks and some birdseye and it looks as savory as it smells.

As for moisture, it's a little moist, but not too bad. If you lay a flake or two out for about half an hour before smoking, it's all good.

Fold and Stuff is perfect for this, as the flake (at least in my tin...) is pretty thin and easy to take apart from ther others in the tin.

Lighting is easy. Light, tamp, light again, tamp and puff away...

Then what you taste is peat, peat, a little hint of sweetness and then more smoke and peat.

Personally, I think if you like flavors that are deep and rich, earthy and musty, it's perfect for you. It also gets a little salty and seaweed-like at times, which I enjoy. It reminds me of the ocean. I love this in winter or fall.

Goes great with Guinness or strong black coffee and I imagine it would go well with Laphroig or any other Islay Malt.

EDIT MARCH 2018:

I finished half of the tin that I reviewed here and the other half was left in the tin and forgotten. Last week, I found it in a drawer and it was VERY dry, but still intact flakes. I used some distilled water and a clean paper towel and wrapped the flakes up in this and shoved it into a mason jar for 2 days. Then I let it dry to perfect smoking moisture and must say that this has changed quite a bit, or my tastes have.

It has a molasses or dark chocolate quality on smelling it - deep, fruity, dark, musty and sweet. The flavor is just that, as well. The peat is in the background and the main flavors are unsweetened chocoalte, earth, brown sugar, dried figs or prunes even. The smoke is insanely rich and mouth-filling and it burns slow and cool.

I love this and will be getting a tin or two more. Luckily, it's easy to come by here. Awesome.

Between the virginia flakes I have been trying, this one steps forward with its unique taste. It gives you the feeling of an old quality wine. Once I opended the tin I got that strong smell of "good old times" and mold. I took all the contents out and aired it for like an half an hour then I tucked everything in. The mold smell had gone away leaving the stage for "good old times"

The next day I took a pipe full and rested it for couple of minutes before I filled up my pipe.

When I lighted it .... That was the moment I fell in love with this baccy. Very unique, tasty, satisfying easy to smoke. My favourite of all times.

Highly recommended for experienced smokers.

I am a big fan of flakes and this is one does not disappoint. I love the flakes and how they rub easily. I am genarally more partial to S.G. flakes but Germain's will soon become a staple in my smoke routine. Highly recommended!!

This has to be the strangest tobacco I've yet to encounter. It was recommended as a good flake and very "popular" by a tobacconist. It was also my first Virginia flake. More about that later.

The tin descriptions below are right on, just as I found it. Smoking it was another matter. I rubbed out and dried a bowl and loaded it into my favorite Canadian. Touched it off, puffed and waited...and waited. Waited somemore. Basically what I got was the flavor of a nice Canadian cigarette and I was rather disappointed. I smoked about 1/2 the bowl and calculated that I could pickup a pack of rolling papers, roll some really expensive cigarettes and cut my loss. Then something began to happen. I got this incredible sweet/slightly salty sensation at the back of my palate that just made my mouth water and the straight tobacco taste intensified somewhat. Now that sweet sensation was something new to me. By the time the bowl was done I wanted to do it again. And I did. Struggled through the first half of the second bowl and there it was again. So I figured there was something to this VA, VA/Per, VA/Bur madness I was reading about, and so began my Virginia odyssey. And I've never looked back.

I finished that tin of BF and have since bought another, mainly just for old times sake. I have also found many more VAs that give me as much, if not more, flavor for an ENTIRE bowl. I still fire up a bowl of BF every now and then, still checking to see if there is something I missed. Nope. Still that "half-bowl wonder". And I did roll up a bit once in a cig paper. Pretty heady smoke.

6-27-11..OK, after reading Mr. Big's review above I do have to admit that you can teach a old dog new tricks. I tried nuking the BF and I have to admit it worked. Tho I never figured I would ever put tobacco in a microwave (back when I first started smoking pipes there were no microwaves)I gave it a shot. Whole different world! (My wife thought I was crazy. Not the first time). The stronger component kicked in right off (believe it's burley) and took over nicely. Nice nutty, woodsy feel, with the VAs in the background doing their sweet/salty/citrusy thing. Actually, a VERY nice smoke all the way to the bottom. This is a little stouter than your everyday VA flake but it is a nice change-up. Hmmmm... makes me wonder how others would react to microwaves. Anyway, I'm adding another star cuz this stuff is a lot better than I originally thought or experienced.

I have been trying some of the more obscure blends of late and this one is a very unusual Virgina offering by Germain. It is a Virginia blend but this blend has more body and much headier than most VA blends. It comes in a little rectangular tin and upon opening one is greeted with a sweet and very peaty aroma, like hay that has gotton wet. It is a dark brown flake with a little light leaf here and there and comes very moist. The flakes if dried break apart very easily and if left moist, are hard to get out of the tin without breaking them. They are composed of a very fine ribbon cut, about the thickness of cigarette tobacco. Because of this, it packs very easy in the pipe and is quick to light and keep lit. It also gives it more heat if puffed too fast and can bite you if not careful. If smoked slow, it is a very tasty blend, very much the cured hay like flavor of other good VA blends but it has a darker side to it. The peatiness comes out and offers more than just the sweetness, it also gives a creamyness that one usually gets with a burley. It is a very stout tobacco, not subtle at all. It burns down very nice without a lot of relights and burns to the bottom to a dry grey powder ash. It really is a satisfying smoke, plenty of "N" and lots of flavor and a full mouth feel to the smoke. The room note is typical of a VA, nice but won't draw admirers. I like this blend when I am wanting a VA blend but want substance to the smoke as well. I do recommend it, it is unlike most any other VA Flake I have ever smoked.

Update 06/11/2009

A year in the cellar did (predictable) wonders for this weed. It became much mellower, the taste intensified at the same time, and the beast is now but a humble pet. Currently the only tobacco I can (and do) smoke on a regular basis. It's indeed an outstanding offering, and a real keeper.

Original review 05/06/2008: When I opened the tin and inhaled the smell coming from it, I thought about Perfection. About the tin artwork of Samuel Gawith's Perfection, to be precise. Because the dog actually belongs here, on the beautiful small tin of Germain's Brown Flake which when opened smells of nothing less than an old Sammy, Maxie, or Chelsie shaking water off the back. Or Lassie saving a drowning child, if you'd prefer a more sentimental version. But it happened so that I bought this weed with serious intentions to smoke it and not just to stick my nose into the tin. So I took one flake off the bunch (this is only possible with a freshly open tin as mentioned by other reviewers, later on you'll have to make efforts to separate the flakes as they magically turn into a brick), rubbed it out and carefully loaded my 40 year old Comoy Guildhall. When the flame hit the weed, all doubts were gone. A strong, full tobacco taste was what was hiding beneath that smell, cigar-like sometimes, yes, reminded me of cheap El Guajiro Trompetas Natural I smoked in Spain - rough, musty, leathery, but with clearly pronounced woodsy undertones. A raw and honest tobacco. 'Sophisticated' comes from a language Brown Flake does not speak. It's an animal, and does not pretend to be anything else.

Brown Flake does not evolve much as the bowl progresses, it's as rough at the heel as it was on the charring light, but it incorporates such a powerful and peculiar taste that it's never a boring smoke. Not an everyday choice, but a delight from time to time is what I see Brown Flake can guarantee. A dedicated pipe would be appreciated by this beast. It's a domestic one, by the way, so not really inclined to bite.

Four stars, and five more tins ordered. Bow-wow!

I smoked this as an addendum to a Lakeland tour I'm currently on. Since on this tour I'm smoking Best Brown and Best Brown #2 (by Sam Gawith and Gawith and Hoggarth, respectively), I thought I'd try this to compare them.

I have to give this a mixed review. First, as to packing, lighting, and burning qualities, it's first rate. The flakes are very thin and stuck together. It is more like a brittle plug than a regular flake. I found it impossible to pull one flake off the stack without pulling it apart. This will be an annoyance to those who prefer the fold and stuff method for flakes. For me, however, this packed and smoked with ease when rubbed out into very fine, horsehair-like strands. So for "mechanics," I'd give it four stars for sure.

Especially when I had just popped the tin, the smoke aroma had a kind of molasses (sp?), brown sugar note with perhaps a touch of vanilla. This tended to fade as the tin had been opened longer, giving way to a kind of grassy smell with the sweet smell only coming through occasionally. Aroma gets three stars.

But unfortunately, I never tasted anything in the smoke except a grassy, peaty, bitter cigar or black coffee flavor. None of the sweetness smelled in the tin or the smoke came through in the flavor at all. Some people, I know, like grassy virginias more than I do (for instance, Orlik Golden Slices). But this really needed something, like a bit of sweetness, in the flavor to balance that. So the flavor gets 2 stars for being monotone and only slightly pleasant.

Therefore, overall it deserves 3 stars.

One more note which does not affect the rating is the nicotene content. I found it quite strong. Perhaps it will not compare to ropes or other famous Lakeland heavy-hitters like 1792, though that will remain to be seen for me. I am a 1 or 2 pipe a day guy and something this strong really hits me hard, at least until I got more used to it. But that is a matter of personal preference.

I would recommend this to seasoned smokers who like grassy virginias and don't mind lots of nicotene and some bitterness in their smoke. Otherwise, there are tons of better choices. For me, this mostly has whetted my appetite for Germain's Latakia Flake, which I will be reviewing later in the year.

I love Germain tobaccos,but I am not really a flake fan.That being said,this stuff is pretty good.It has that Germain casing and burns and packs relatively well.This is a much less stoved version of Stonehaven.My major reservation was this burns a little hot and never really takes off in the flavor dept.If you really want a treat get Stonehaven.There is a tobacconist in California who sells a lot of Germain by the ounce (bulk),The name is Briarpatch and their address is Briarpatch.biz.All in all a pleasant smoke but I would not go out of my way to get it.

I was not looking for what this blend offers, but I like it and have for a decade now. I have not found another flake like it. Reading elsewhere, some knowledgeable pipe smokers contend BF tastes like it contains Semois tobaccos grown in a region of Belgium in the Semois River Valley.

Semois is said to be an air-cured leaf, perhaps burley or Virginia, with cigar-like flavor, dry and cool on the tongue. That fits the way BF tastes when I smoke it. BF is cool and burns well, it also mixes nicely with a little Perique, Latakia and stoved Virginias. I suspect there is some other Virginia leaf in BF to round BF out yet in no way making this a sweet flake like one would find Full Virginia Flake or Germain's own Kingsbridge (Esoterica).