D & R Tobacco Ryback

As I sit puffing a bowl from a fresh bag sent over by pipesandcigars I find the questions a little difficult. How do rate a blend of the finest leaves cured and flavored by a time honored tradition of flue curing. No sprays of casing to cover up sub par tobacco. Mr Ryan single handedly saved a struggling industry of top shelf tobacco farms including Perique and brings simple tobacco to wonderful flavors. I like it natural and the moment you open the bag you are greeted with a heady aroma of wood smoke in a pure danish tradition smoking very smooth in a full mouth of bittersweet and complex tast. Each puff begs for another to pick out the different flavors. Wonderful stuff!

I first tried this blend as a replacement for Drum RYO as Ryback was half the price while offering, in my mind, a higher quality DFK blend. It didn’t occur to me to try it in a pipe until much later when I realized that D&R actually takes it’s new pipe tobacco designation seriously. I’m pretty glad I did. D&R is a serious tobacco company and their products are high-quality and affordable.

Ryback in a pipe gives me that nicotine blast in an easy to smoke, no nonsense cut. As a sucker for DFK, Ryback delivers that woody, musty-sweet taste, with a healthy sweet VA component to back things up and tame the DFK which can be overwhelming. I’m guessing that there is a straight air-cured portion of burley in here, too, as there is a rather dry, classic nutty taste as well.

If anyone out there is a 5Brothers fan, give this stuff a try. A similar smoking shag, but with more depth of flavor and a little more “controlled.” Ryback burns like hellfire due to the shag cut, so an easy puff is in order...however you’ll still get plenty of flavor out of this no nonsense blend. One of my favorites and at a pound for less than $30, you’re looking at a winner in my book!

Ryback has a medium strength nicotine hit and medium taste with a slight added sweetness, I think. More complex than Two Timer, not as strong as Don Giovanni Sigaro or as Picayune. As with all D & R blends you may wish to hydrate it to slow down the experience. I smoked it as it came from the bag, found it to have a slight tendency to bite me, and some hydration lessened that. As with Two Timer this could be an all day smoke in my opinion.

These D & R blends are a great value and so far have exceeded my expectations for tobaccos in this price range.

Finally, I’ve got a blend I can smoke in public! I, for the first time, smoked a bowl of Ryback. This blend is perfect for me because it has a nice tobacco flavor, smokes cool, and the room notes are similar to those of cigarettes. It would not surprise me to see the average cigarette smoker smoking Ryback in a pipe because it has more flavor and inhaling is not necessary to taste this blend. This is another wonderful blend by D & R. Tobacco.

I did a week long research project on RYO Roll Your Own. The Best for Cigarettes from myself and two others who've tried roll your own. Just a notch below Marlboro Red 72s. A couple notches above Marlboro Gold. The type of cut flows extremely well through a PowerMatic II plus or Powermatic 2 + cigarette machine. As for the machine and this tobacco we have passed Feb 8 2016 at 1650 cigarettes made without a failure.

Shag cut is really truly and fine ribbon curl for D and R Bulk tobaccos. It packs perfectly into a tube by barely a press down with fingers into the cig makers trough or press.

A very high quality dark fire cured, additive and casing-free tobacco. Very fine cut which helps the flavor and smoothness, also allowing you to pack it a little more firmly while still giving an excellent burn. It's really a blending tobacco and mixes wonderfully with the thicker cut tobaccos, helping the blend burn better. As it's a fine cut and clean tobacco it is of course excellent for RYO/tubes as well.

I haven't encountered any bags or tubs of this that were too dry as a couple of others have mentioned. I have found a bit of variation in the moisture content with D&R's tobaccos, but just throw a couple of 72% boveda in the bag and leave it sealed up for a week and it will be perfect. I usually buy the 3.5oz tubs or 40g tins, so perhaps these are more reliable in terms of moisture content and less "shake". The difference found with most pipe tobaccos is they are drenched in casings and flavorings and oils from more exotically processed tobaccos in a blend etc. This has none of that so it will dry out much more quickly if not looked after. A bonus of packing the tobacco with a lower moisture content however is you get more weight of actual leaf for your money. Companies packing their tobacco very moist are actually bulking up the weight so they sell less tobacco for the same price.

Trying a Shag Cut for the first time with this D&R Ryeback in this Thompson Bent. Smells like Copenhagen Snuff in the bag. Has a kick like 5 Brothers. Not bad - might even grow on me as I like Dark Fired Tobacco.

I know I am treading into one of those love-or-hate scenarios here, but I am a fan of these thinly cut tobaccos (shag) that contains Burley and Kentucky (Five Brothers, Dark Birds Eye, Kendal Dark, etc.). They are quite easy to pack, and smoke really well releasing plenty of flavour. The combination of these three tobaccos seems quite balanced in this rendition, and I cannot detect any toppings or added flavours. Because of the dark profile the burley-based tobacco gives this blend, some smokers might mistakenly interpret it as having a sharp edge or tongue bite, but nothing could be further from the truth. This is a full-body blend that needs to be smoked slowly with a nice cup of coffee to fully appreciate it. My only complaint is that these types of tobacco smoke best when they are properly hydrated, and it is needless to say most of the D&R's blends come to the consumer bone dry. Mark Ryan told me once this is because he won't have the customer pay for water, and I agree with him. At the end of the day, all you have to do is rehydrate to your own taste and specifications and move on. I am not going to give you a description of the different flavours I can detect because this is highly subjective, but one word that pops to mind is "molasses." All and all this is a nice tobacco and I highly recommend it if you are a burley smoker and have some appreciation for shag tobacco.