Mac Baren Honey & Chocolate

Not too bad of a blend. Sweet and nutty. Burns hot and sticky in the pipe. very prone to biting. Flavor and aroma wise its not that bad. However, it burns hot, fast, and wet. A decent attempt but overall not well executed.

As a fan and regular smoker of MB blends, I am trying to get around to all of them.

I found this blend to make a much better blending tobacco than smoking it straight. It does not burn the tongue, actually it smokes very smooth and rich with the cocoa coming through in the background and not in your face. It has a nice tin aroma, you can smell the cocoa in it as well as a little sweetness of the honey in it. It comes in a nice coarse cut that lights and smokes very well. I tried it fresh, found it a little too wet nd let it dry a few days and it became a nice smoke. It requires very few relights and burns down to a nice grey ash with little if any dottle. I just did not find this blend all that satisfying to smoke regularly, but when I started blending it with other tobaccos it performed quite nicely. It adds a fullness and richness to other blends. The room note is very pleasant, I never got any complaints and several people told me that its smelled great. While aromatic smokers will most likely enjoy this blend, I doubt smokers of non aromatic blends would. I only gave it two stars as it does not excel particularly but I really can find no fault with it other than it is not one that I will buy again.

This is probably one of the most "aromatic" aromatics that I have ever put in a pipe. It is certainly an acquired taste, and I honestly can't decide if I like it or not. I scored a tin of this from a friend of mine who gave me a ton of sample tins to try. Upon opening the tin, there is no mistaking the aroma: pure honey and chocolate, just like the label says. It's a fine cut of tobacco though, and I found it odd when packing a bowl. It turns a 3-step packing method into a 4 or 5-step method. It lit easily for me, probably due to the age. The taste, from top to bottom, is pure honey and chocolate. I honestly didn't taste a bit of tobacco in it, and thought perhaps that I might have accidentally packed some sort of confectionery in my pipe. It smoked cool though. About mid-way through the bowl I noticed that I had gained 15 pounds...this stuff is SWEET. It is almost TOO sweet for me, and I love sweet aromatics! Nevertheless, I enjoyed it, but in a strange way...much like I would enjoy eating a nice ice cream sundae for breakfast. If you can find a tin of this stuff around, get it - if for nothing else other than novelty. If you have a sweet tooth and love chocolate, then you've just found your tobacco.

I just realized I never reviewed this blend. I ended up giving the tin away to a fellow forum friend who liked it after I had about four or five bowls from the tin. I purchased this mostly because it was available at a B & M and I had heard they stopped making it. I remember my first smoke as I snuck away to by it at a B & M that was near the hospital where my wife was getting a minor procedure done.

I had along my John Barrett rockcob to test it out. (Great pipe for trying out tobacco btw) The chocolate immediately overwhelmed me. I couldn't finish the bowl. While the topping did calm down a little, it was just odd to my tastes. There was a glimpse of some underlying leaf giving the blend some body, so if the topping was a little more agreeable, I probably would have liked this one.

I think for me, chocolate and honey belong more in desert than in tobacco. It was my first go at a chocolate flavored blend, so I am not sure whether it is the use of the chocolate topping in this particular blend, or if I am averse to any chocolate topping. Time will tell as I will likely try more in the future.

I may revisit this review, but likely will not as the accuracy to detail will matter less as the last tins of it are consumed.

My tastes in pipe weed cover a large spectrum, neither being a snob on English blends, nor clinging for dear life to aromatics. I run the gamut from the strongest traditional styles to dessert-level pipe candy. That having been said, I wish there was a bit more chocolate taste to this blend. Tried mixing in a little cherry with some tonight (I don't know what the hell I was thinking when I bought the cherry baccy...I really don't care for any cherry blends...thankfully, I only bought 2 oz of that). The blend came out a bit too heavy on the cherry. Going to try to experiment with that and perhaps a mango blend to see if I can concoct something a bit more interesting.

This has a wonderful and distinct aroma of chocolate in the tin. Unfortunately, it does not transfer to the room note or flavor. The taste and smell of chocolate and honey in the smoke is so razor thin it is barely detectable. So I don't understand how anyone can possibly rate this as having medium flavoring. This is a pleasant enough smoke for people who don't like aromatics, but nothing particularly noteworthy. Not bad by any means. As an aromatic, I give it one star. As a non-aromatic, two.

Great tin aroma. Tons of billowing smoke--great for blowing smoke rings! No tongue bite. Burns quickly down to the bottom of the bowl. Not memorable taste, though--I am anxious to finish my first tin, to be done with it.

I am baffled by this tobacco from Mac Baren: there is no mention in the blending notes of what tobacco's are used. Now, I have been thinking a lot about this tobacco and I believe it to be a batch of Acadian Perique that has been reprocessed and flavoured and put on the USA market. I have compared Acadian Perique with this Honey&Chocolate and the basic tobaccos taste the same, same strength, same flavour but shrouded by the chocolate in this blend of course. Perhaps a first batch was flavoured with honey and MB decided not to use a honey casing in the final version. Add chocolate to it, turn it into a "very special kind of cavendish" and voilà: Honey&Chocolate I find it a fairly strong tobacco,just like AP, especially near the end of the pipe, but tasty all the same and indeed not goopy or moist. Worth a try. Rob

Let me start out saying I love MacB, especially Vanilla Cream, which I consider to be one of the finest vanillas I have ever smoked. I have never really noted the Mac Baren "bite" that people complain about in any of their blends - unless I puff like a freight train.

I hate to blast this one. I had very high expectations reading the reviews here.

First, at the tin: The aroma of cocoa leaps out of the tin. The mixture is quite dry for a MacB and fairly dark.

At the bowl: This tobacco packs easily and lights readily. It is not at all goopy and burns cleanly.

At the match: Um...

Almost no room note. No real flavor, either of cocoa or honey. Wife (a fan of tobacco in general and pipes in particular) says she can't detect any aroma at all even sitting right next to me.

The bowl actually gets a little harsh about halfway through. Unusual for a MacB blend for me.

I am only about a quarter of the way through the tin. Perhaps my tin is off. I will wade through the rest of the tin, but I don't expect it will get much better. I won't be buying it again.

This may be a good blend for beginners. It burns easily, stays lit, is very pleasant at the tin and entirely inoffensive in the room. As an aromatic fan however, I prefer to have some aroma (and some flavor). This one just isn't hitting for me.