Hearth & Home LJ Heart Burley

I smoked this blend in a General corn cob pipe. The description given by the Heart & Home is 300% perfect. Do not add adjectives. Just say, try this blend!

There's not much I can add to what has already been said here. LJ Heart Burley: dry, smokes very quickly (I found it ran a bit hot toward the last third), and tasty as hell. I have't smoked a lot of burleys yet, but this is easily my favorite thus far. I was very surprised at how bright it tasted, then I read that it contains Virgina, and it all made sense. Don't misunderstand, the burley is front and center here, but the added bit of Virginia and Cavendish keeps the flavor elevated. I find a complete burley blend to be a bit muddy tasting, so this is something I can really sink my teeth into.

I wish it burned more slowly and evenly, but I simply can *not* fault the flavor, and that alone forces me to give it full marks. Great stuff.

I never thought I'd say this about a burley blend, but this stuff just won't burn. Much like C&D Crooner, it's relight, relight, relight. I get tongue bite from the constant application of flame. It's not that it needs to be dried out, either, as the bottom half of the bowl, when I get tired of trying to smoke it and dump it out, is pretty much completely dry.

Something is seriously wrong with this stuff.

UPDATE Jan 20 2010: I dried some of this out earlier today for a good hour in front of my laptop fan, and after smoking 2/3rds, the remainder just absolutely will not burn, even with an Old Boy butane. I smoke pretty much anything, and usually give blends a good amount of time before I move on, but this will probably be the first bag of any tobacco that I end up giving away. It doesn't like to burn, and even when it does, the smoke to me is thin and acrid, probably due to the deer tongue.

I'm a little less enamored of this blend than most others, I guess. LJ Heart Burley is not at all a bad tobacco, but right now we pipe smokers are awash in intriguing, innovative and often excellent Burley-based blends. Burley is the new black, or something. Anyway, I can't see this tobacco as sitting anywhere beyond mid-tier in the Burley quality hierarchy.

The tobacco arrives exceedingly dry. So weightless is this stuff that a fruit fly passing gas nearby is enough to blow the little fish food flakes across the desk. I'm aware that most of us resent paying for water when we buy tobacco, but this is a bit much.

It's not the easiest tobacco to load, but it does behave well in the pipe. I found it curiously prone to bite, but that must be just me, given the bite-free experiences of other reviewers.

Where I fault LJ Heart Burley is in the lack of integration of its flavors, which seem to swing like a pendulum between Cavendish-induced sweetness and a dry and woody Burley flavor. I'm fond of Burley and fond of smoking it in cobs, but I have to confess that the flavor profile of this tobacco reminded me most of the taste you get when you start to smoke the shank at the bottom of a cob bowl. And that, my friends, is not a pleasant taste.

Not a bad burley based blend at all. I could have done without the Virginia, but still an exceptional blend. It's pretty dry out of the bag, contains no heavy casings and burns cool without mucking up your pipe.

Upon opening the bag, my nose is greeted by a nice coffee smell that taints the unmistakable burley.

This is an easy going smoke that burns evenly (the bag I've got came with perfect moisture content and didn't need drying) and is soft to the tongue. The taste reminded me of BR Genuine Pure Tobacco (baked bread and coffee), only with more burley.

If you like drugstore burley blends, give this one a try: your palate and your tongue will be forever grateful. It's well worth the extra penny.

12/29/2006 ? UPDATE - Nothing is as constant as change: I have to upgrade this blend to 4 stars. The more I smoke it, the more I like and crave it. Yes, it still can be a wee bit tenuous towards the bottom of the bowl but this is what one might expect from a stout, honest burley (the Virginia and Cavendish are in ever so discrete amounts). This can be overcome with a slower puffing cadence when you near the end of this delightful blend.

11/2/2006 - For me, this proved to be a medium to full-bodied, in your face burley blend that can present cigar like undertones. I thoroughly enjoyed this blend ?????..for the first two-thirds of the bowls I smoked. In the latter third of the bowls, the blend went south and the ?burley bitters? crept in. I can?t explain it but some blends I have smoked just aren?t as good in the latter third of the bowl whereas other blends are actually better in the latter third of the bowl. Is this one of pipedom?s great mysteries?

However, I discovered the ?bitters? were somewhat mitigated by smoking LJHB in large (1?) bore pipes and with a slower puffing cadence towards the bottom. Some pipesters may enjoy LJHB as an all day smoke as noted in the description. However, because of its strength, I much preferred it on an occasional basis as a great after dinner smoke where its qualities can truly be appreciated. Many if not most burley blends do not DGT well and LJHB falls into this category. I give the first two-thirds of the bowl a 4 star rating and the bottom third of the bowl a 2 star rating for an average rating of three stars.

A cigarette is to be smoked. A cigar is to be enjoyed. A pipe is to be savored.

I rate this blend 9.2 out of 10.

This is a great marriage of bright burley interspersed with fleck-strands of cavendish.

This jar has been sitting behind the other jars for about 6 or 7 months (or more). I recall initially this blend was a bit dry so I spritzed it with a sqyeeze if distilled water.

The taste is excellent - a profile of sweet grapenut goodness which goes excellent with a french roast coffee as the sun comes up.

Images evoked: an undead orphan wandering the world for seven years, culminating in the recovery of his great great grandfather's femur from a museum of antiquities.

Another freebie from Monsieur Frenchy. This is a burley blend for those who like some strength in their pipes. I found (fortunately) the presence of black cavendish has been kept to a discrete level, yielding much burley flavor, in this case deep and earthy, in conjunction with a zippy red virginia to perk the blend up. The room note is decent and the burn rate is good, even when smoked on the dry side. Inexpensive, tasty...all good.