4noggins Britt's Balkan

This is a very good English blend by the 4 Noggins folks. It is very flavorful without being harsh or strong. It has a touch of sweetness that is nice and does not make it an aromatic by any means. I received this as a free sample when I ordered some Dunhill 965 and Early Morning Pipe, and was frankly surprised at how well this compared to the Dunhill classics (or former classics as some believe).

I highly recommend and English smokers try this, especially if some of your English blends taste harsh. This compares favorably with GL Pease's Maltese Falcon.

This is a truly great tobacco by Rich at 4noggins who has acquired his own reputation as a master blender by now.

Smells smokey and nice in the bag, but a bit moist to smoke right away .

A nice medium American English with a marked sweetness not unlike Frog Morton ATP. I thought I could detect some vanilla topping in the first puffs but it could have been ghosts in the bowl. A lot of nuttiness towards the end of the bowl and that slight irritation in the tongue root that I get from Burley told me this one has enough Vitamin N to make itself felt!

The Orientals makes this a great smoke, a nutty earthinees that (almost) convinces me there must be Burley in this one (there is none) among the VA(Yellow Lemon? or Red? or both?) and enough Latakia to give that camp-fire smell and taste that I love so much.

A great smoke all in all, the BB is full and satisfying without being overwhelming. A perfect all-day smoke for the seasoned American English lover.

Aother bulk offering from Rich at 4noggins, one of the most friendly and trustworthy internet suppliers of pipe tobacco. Britt's Balkan is a very satisfying Balkan type of pipe tobacco, with a good balance between all the ingredients. While it does not stand out between similar offerings from other makers, it is nonetheless a solid and safe smoke.

If you are less sensitive to additives and humectants than I, the basic blend here is enjoyable in a sort of uncritical way. Probably three-star territory for most. But I can’t get past the truly odd flavor here that has nothing to do with any natural tobacco tastes (as an avid blender I’ve done my share of processing natural leaf).

As we all know, there is more than one type of humectant permissible for use in pipe tobacco – propandiol, propylene glycol, triethylene - and additives may legally account for up to 2.4% of weight by volume. I’ve noted in a couple of other reviews a soapy taste, especially during lights. This is more of a baby powder taste, and if you ever breathed it in when over powdering your slippers, you know the distinctive taste and how much effort it is to get it out of your mouth and sinuses. No, I haven’t used any in years, so that’s not the issue here, but one never forgets that taste.

As I said, the basic recipe here, with a little spritz of vanilla, seems perfectly acceptable for a slightly sweeter style Balkan. Honestly, the vanilla is so light that it only registers as a slight sweetness, especially on the retrohale. The only method I found where I could get through a whole bowl of this was a rather extreme solution: using the chalk and charcoal method in a meerschaum pipe. Most experienced pipers will know this trick to make a non-filtered pipe act more like a filtered pipe, using a little piece of chalk on the bottom of the bowl, and sprinkling the charcoal bits out of a 9mm filter. In this case I had to use two filters worth to clean up the taste enough to derive some enjoyment. And no, my taste buds aren’t off, because I did a little side-by-side comparison with Arango Balkan Supreme and C&D Super Balkan – both enjoyable.

Final point, which is kind of disheartening: some of the best blends on my Top Ten are from boutique blenders who mix in small batches. But some of the worst experiences I’ve had are also from the small blenders. This is because only the large-scale manufacturers like Mac Baren and Kohlhase Kopp have the resources to maintain a fairly strict quality control. To sample every blending component before it is used. So I’m always wondering when I give a negative review if maybe the batch I received had a little too much spray, or that some ingredient didn’t get measured correctly. Maybe that explains the positive reviews elsewhere. But it also makes me wonder why hardly any other reviewers ever mention this issue, that there is an assumed confidence that what they tasted ten years ago remains unerringly the same to this day. As I said: disheartening.

I guess crossover Balkans aren’t for me. The sweet topping doesn’t play so well with the Turkish- and Latakia-forward flavor that I’m looking for. This is one of those cases of subtraction by addition - I’d be much happier with Britt’s if they left the top flavor off.

And who decided that Balkan blends needed to be sweet in the first place? It’s kind of jarring in a way that doesn’t happen with balanced English blends that have been given the crossover treatment. The sweetness doesn’t belong.

There’s a quality smoke suffocating underneath all that vanilla, which is a shame. But there’s 1,000 Balkan blends to try, no need to waste your time with this one.