Mac Baren Cube

Very strange indeed. But strange is not in itself all bad. This blend tends to do better if you let it dry out just a bit. Strange thing about this blend is that the taste changes through the bowl. Kinda reminds me of the old Seven-up candy bar I remember as a kid.

I gave this blend one star simply because if one likes aromatics you *might* like this one, although I doubt it very much if you have sampled any of the premium aromatics from sources such as Habana Premium or Boswell's.

This is definitely a Mac Baren blend as is evident upon loading your pipe. The tobacco is much like a broken flake in texture and heavily cased with some type of sickeningly sweet flavoring which seems to have a fruity essence to it. It could also use much drying out.

It seems to smoke cool and slow. Compared to other Mac Baren blends, this one seems to have slightly less tendency to bite.

The room note may be pleasant, but I don't smoke for room note. If that were the case, I would just smoke potpourri.

For the true pipe smoker, whether you smoke aromatics or not, this I cannot recommend.

THe only good thing i can say about cube is that the package i have was a free sample sent to me buy a gentleman running away from aromatic tobacco. I should have followed his heed, and run away from cube.

It has a great pouch smell, but thats where the pleasure ends. The burning tobacco has no real flavor to it, and the only time i got a strong taste from it was the 3rd time it went out, and then i was able to taste coconut when puffing on it when it was still out. And I managed to severly burn my tongue and mouth with this blend. after 4 days i still cannot taste anything other then vinager or super sweet earl grey tea.

Having just finished a complementary review, I was reminded by the fact that most of my critiques have been favorable. That track record ends now. MacBeran?s CUBE can easily turn a well-constructed piece of briar into forever damaged goods. One of my billiard ladies was violated beyond emotional forgiveness. This blend will seduce you with it?s fancy hazelnut coffee and milk chocolate-cherry aroma, but it also contains an awful artificial sweetness that remains undetected until you light this ghastly mix. Oh, it will bring the ladies running with its room note, but why, you?ll just send them scurrying when you light-up your strongest Balkan blend to quickly cleans your palate. If I could give it no stars, I would. Meanwhile, have a nice day.

My first bowl of this was appealing, I enjoyed the unique flavor combination of dates, coconut and the rich variety of tobaccos. The second and several subsequent bowlfuls were absolutely hideous because of an overwhelming acrid detergent sensation in my nose. I?ve read about ?soapy? flavors, which in aromatics have been variously described as perfumy or cloying, but this was more than soapy, this was literally reminiscent of detergent, as in when you weigh out sodium dodecyl sulfate (a.k.a. sodium lauryl sufate) in the lab and it?s fine dust rises to your nose and permeabilizes the olfactory epithelium. It is not pleasant. A piercing, sharp, bitter sensation. I can only guess that there is coconut extract in the Cavendish portion of the tobacco (sodium dodecyl sulfate is a component of coconut milk) and under some conditions, too hot, wrong pipe, whatever, the detergent concentration reaches critical micelle concentration and starts piercing membranes and denaturing proteins in your sensitive membranes. I?m totally guessing here with this image. But Cube has redeeming value. You can dilute it (maximum about a third Cube) with other tobaccos and it adds a very nice flavor without that acrid detergent onslaught. For this I give it two stars.

Oh, but the box is way cool.

To paraphrase a movie review, "For those who like this sort of tobacco, this is the sort of tobacco they like."

I'm not a big fan of aromatics for much the same reason that cannibals don't eat clowns: they taste funny. I prefer my smokes to have a strong dose of perique, so that will of course color my review.

My local B&M dealer, who knows my preferences and who hasn't steered me wrong yet, talked me into trying it. He was watching World Cup soccer on TV, so he may have been a bit distracted at the time. But since the price wasn't too outrageous, I bought a box. After smoking several bowls to clean out the taste of the Penzance I had last smoked in the pipe, I finally got just the taste of Cube.

To be honest, it is quite pleasant in both aroma and taste. Maybe I just have a funny sniffer, but in the pouch it seemed to smell more of chocolate than of coconut. And as Cellarmaster mentioned, it is indeed a nice "bump in the road." I also found it a bit difficult to keep lit. The room not is quite pleasant, however.

But as I said earlier, I'm not a big fan of aromatics. And even though it doesn't have any perique (sigh), I'll continue to smoke it, but not more than once a week or so.

Ad when it's gone, I'll have a nice box for storing my Kajun Kake!

This is an aromatic for when you want an aromatic. That is, it has a lovely, sweet, hard-to-define flavoring that so dominates that I can't detect any tobacco flavor at all. The flavor is very nice, it's just not a tobacco flavor. It seems like the leaf in this was carefully selected for its ability to support the casings, and to burn evenly and well, while not interrupting the enjoyment of those casings at all. I suppose it's possible that part of what I'm tasting is Virginia and that the overall taste is so balanced that it's essentially seamless.

If it seems I'm confused about how to respond to this, that's because I am. As a purely aromatic smoke, it's a great success. As a tobacco, it's... it's... it's not tobacco. If I could put whipped cream on it, it'd be a delicious desert, but as a pipe tobacco it's confusing as heck. Tobacco for people who don't like tobacco?

It seems to me that master blender Halberg has some working to do. The only good thing i can say about MB Cube is that you get a cool looking box when your done with it. I dislike this blend, a lot. when i first opened the pouch that's inside the box I smelled an overwhelming odor of artificial sweetness, similar to coconut. I packed a bowl and began smoking the abomination. the room note is very sweet, but not an identifiable sweetness, it just smells artificial. the taste at first was nothing noticeable, but as i went on the initial flavor on my tongue as i drew in was unbelievably salty. the taste then proceeded to change to an unbearable sweetness as i held the smoke in my mouth. I would not recommend this at all, i promptly threw out the rest of the weed and now i keep change in the box. The only reason to buy this is to get the box, but at 15 dollars, i think you could just go to a cigar store and pick up some free cigar boxes.

Straight to the point, this is an excellent blend! Anyone that is turned off by the marketing of it should disregard that bad decision and give it a try because the tobacco is top notch. I myself reluctantly tried it after meeting a rep of the manufactuer at a pipe show, and I'm damn glad I did try it.

The tobacco has one of the most pleasant aromas that I've come across while at the same time having real flavor. It tasted much like the Virginia flake that I regularly smoke in my opinion. I like to rotate my smoke from Va. to English to an occasional aromatic. Now as far as aromatics go, like most people, I feel normally they just smell nice, but don't have any flavor. This is where 'the cube' seems to break from the pack and has a great flavor to match the delicious room note.

You'll have to have an open mind because as I said, this is one aromatic that actually delivers on flavor too, but give it a try. Besides, buy it in bulk (I found it at Knoxcigar) and it's much more affordable. I think it will suprise some others as it did me, but then again, that's why we keep trying new blends.