Samuel Gawith Kendal Cream Deluxe Flake

I smoke a lot of S. Gawith's blends, especially FVF, unscented twist and Cabbie's. So I thought I'd give this a try.

First the good bit. The tobacco quality is up to SG's usual standard, I'd guess mostly Malawi-grown VA and Burley and pressed into a fairly loose flake. Fairly wet in the tin but smokable immediately.

Now the bad stuff. I appreciate everyone's taste in tobacco is different and obviously some do like this blend. However, I've discovered I really do not like it at all, so if you do like this kind of tobacco feel free to ignore this review.

The smell on opening the tin is a sickly sweet concentrated blast of the sort of old-fashioned "pomade" barbers used to douse their customer's heads in (unless the customer managed to dodge first) half a century or more ago. Very sweet, very soapy and very floral.

Smoking the tobacco gives you mouthfuls of the same smell and little else. It's like G&H's aromatic brown flake on steroids except KCF seems to have less burley in it and is sweeter.

It will ghost anything you smoke it in very quickly and very strongly.

Two stars as it's obviously good at being what it is, so worth trying if you like this kind of thing. If you are at all put off by very sweet, heavily scented blends then maybe give it a miss.

This is from a couple of eBay tins dated 11/09. Pretty dry out of the tin, with a fair bit of whitish bloom on the bark-like flakes. Fold-and-stuff never worked too well, because the flakes wouldn't fold, they just broke in half. I had to rub out at least half a flake for tinder, and hit it a few times with the lighter to get it going. Once it got going though, I got that nice white layer of ash on top, it smoked very coolly, and bite was a nonissue.

Tin note is very distinctive: milk chocolate and powdered milk overlaying figs and smashed raisins, and beginning flavor follows the tin note with milk chocolate, powdered milk and a bit of figgy tobacco taste. Fairly one-note on the way down, although the chocolate and milk start deferring to the figs and tobacco. I would have preferred they didn't, given that this is a cream flake, but it wasn't unpleasant on the whole. The famous Lakeland flavor joins the party, and it comes through to me as "laundry powder". It doesn't sound good, and on its own or in large quantities, I don't think it would be. But as a team player with the slowly receding milk chocolate, it somehow works. A very mild, bright, spring-time sort of effect.

Smoked outside on a breezy spring day, this tobacco wanted a few relights, and that was unfortunate. Kendal Cream Flake doesn't like heat. Relit or puffed hard, a really disagreeable plasticky flavor comes out, along with an acrid ashen smell that burns the nose. If smoking inside is at all an option, I definitely recommend that. I don't retrohale this one either; the only flavor through the nose is burnt plastic and sawdust. Sipping slowly, you get cream, straight tobacco and a little ashy tang, among plumes of wispy but satisfying smoke. I came for the cream, but the honest straight tobacco is not going to drive me off. Tasty, if monotone. But monotone is not a bad thing, if the thing gets started off on the right foot.

The nicotine level is sturdy. Again, hitting this one too hard is not a good idea in my book. Sip it slowly, almost mincingly, and it carries you along nicely. Start sucking on it, and you'll feel it in the stomach and head. The bowl didn't burn all the way down, partly because I didn't rub it out as fully as I should have, but also because I didn't feel like finishing the bowl. It's just a little too much for me. A nicotine lightweight like me might get all they want from half a flake at a time, I think.

Kendal Cream is one of those things that is unmistakably itself. If what you want is Kendal Cream Flake, you're going to have to smoke Kendal Cream Flake, because there's nothing else quite like it (that I've smoked, anyway).

This needs a lot of age to smoke right. A light whiskey topping with some spices, and perhaps a little natural vanilla or oak sugar. New it is a bland, monochromatic and bitter smoke. Given a couple years, it gets a little floral, a little alcoholic, and a hint of cinnamon, nutmeg, and/or clove pokes its head out. If it did not need so much age I would rate it higher, but fresh out of a tin it is not very pleasant.

No matter how hard I try to begin to like lakeland style aromatics, I just can't. There are a few of them that ring my bell, and only periodically. This one, I didn't get to like after a whole tin, smoking only that. The soapy flavour at the beginning, is annoying, not the grandma's soap, nor fresh (as in the cleaning detergents) either, something in between, tonquin and something something else, geranium rose perhaps, no idea. All I know is that it's annoying as hell, and you eagerly puff just to get to the point where it's gone, and in it's place comes the tobacco taste. And the tobacco taste is good, obviously there are high quality VAs in there. Somewhere at the middle of the bowl, you get a good tobacco taste and start to enjoy. And that's only in a small portion of the bowl. Advancing down towards the bottom, you have to relight countless times. Also, comes very moist and if you dry it too much you'll get nasty smoke. If you leave it wet, prepare a brand new butane lighter, cause it'll run empty until you smoke your pipe. Bottom line: It is a good smoke if you cut it in cubes, dry to the point of perfect moisture level, and don't mind perfumish thing the first third of your pipe. Not my cup of tea.

A tobacco I really tried to like. The dark brown flakes are chunky, moist, and need to be dried and rubbed out fully. Tin note reminds me of baby powder, aniseed, cedar and roasted nuts. Pack this stuff loosely into your pipe. Be surprised with Burley's bitter nuttiness covered with something that might cause headache - and this casing is not as sweet as the name "Kendal Cream Deluxe (!) Flake" suggests.

Pros: - Quite "creamy" and full smoke. - tongue-friendly and cool. - delivers enough nicotine.

Cons: - SG-typical flakes are inconsistent in thickness and moisture level. - smoke carries a bitter taste which pretends to be cocoa. - unreasonably expensive (in Europe) for an average smoking experience.

I won't buy this stuff again, but it is still quality tobacco: 2.5/5

Although I appreciate what Gawith has done with this blend, it's not going to be a regular smoke for me. As an aromatic, it's too full; as a burley blend, it's too hot; and as a an aromatic Virginia blend, well, it's too damn flavored. if you are looking for a very sweet, fairly strong blend, though, this is your puppy. Note that even though this blend has Burley in it, it still smokes best if you smoke it like a Virginia flake--slow sipping is the order of the day. Fast puffing leads to a flat, bitey smoke.

Sampling notes: I have smoked about two tins of this blend in both meerschaum and briar pipes in several sizes. I find this blend works very well in a smaller briar pipe, which concentrates the flavor and offers a very sweet taste. In a larger pipe, some of the uniqueness of the blend is lost. I don't find that this blend works well for me in a meerschaum. And, as others have mentioned, a loose pack works best. This blend smokes much better when it is has aried and dried considerably.

Good points are that its creamy, sweet, lovely burley flavour and the topping is nice. The topping is like a mild ennerdale flake which I love.

Bad points are that I couldn't get this stuff to stay lit. I tried drying for days, rubbing out, cube cutting but nothing worked. As others have mentioned there is a nasty taste on relights so half the time that's what I was getting.

If this would burn I would have had a new member for the rotation. I know there are those out there that have mastered the SG flakes but I give up. If your after a lakeland this is definitely worth a try.

Wow, great tobacco. Wet as all SGs, dark and strong enough to complete a full dinner, or to join a black tea.

Now, you really must like PEPPER to smoke this. I went through the page looking for "pepper" and found only 1 occurrence! How can that be? I'm not the most nose-expert here, I have never been able to say "yessss there's hay... maybe figues... no no, dry figues...". So I'm not that kind of guy, but it's PEPPER here, lots and lots of pepper!

Smokes probably cooler than an average SG, as far as the "Lakeland" word still means something...

After a tin of Kendal Cream, once enjoyed the strong burley flavour, I love our poor "Italia" (italian kentucky) even more than I did before, because FVF+Italia will cost me less than this flake but will probably be worth much more in the end, I'll let you know....

Amazingly benign compared to other SG flakes. Cookie dough tin note is not all that bad, but the tobacco tastes like......warm smoke? Hard to say what it tastes like. It's not offensive, it just, to me of course, isn't much of anything at all. Like the artwork if that counts for something. Burley for sure, virginia in trace amounts. If you want to smoke and it's there, fine. If you want to enjoy a bowl of pipe tobacco, I'd grab at any number of other tins, pouches or canisters.