Cornell & Diehl Burley Flake #2

Another great burley flake by C&D.

To me this may be the "mildest" of the three (No. 1, 2, and 3 of C&D), but is still on the strong side.

Here burley again dominates, but I taste more of the white or milder burley used in blends years ago.

Maybe closer to UK Edgeworth Slices (no, not the same), but rubs out more easy.

So far my favorite as it is milder and can be puffed more often if one choses.

What a treat if you like burley.

The tin note is slightly sweet and earthy. There are lightly pressed partially broken flakes that rub out to a medium-wide chopped ribbon and fish food. It is delivered slightly on the moist side of my preference, and I smoked it as delivered. I tried rubbing it out and just stuffing it in the bowl. It smoked well either way.

This is a full-on burley blend. It is earthy and woody with a slight bitter edge when puffed. The Virginia provides a little sweet. It is a very pleasant flavor profile, and I found it easy to smoke, keep lit, etc. Nicotine was a solid medium, and the smoking experience was very consistent. Sometimes burley can get ashy or harsh at the end of the bowl, and this did not.

This is easy to recommend, but the price point of the tins means it will be the sort of thing that goes on a Christmas wish list. It will not be the sort of thing I keep in stock.

Cornell & Diehl - Burley Flake #2.

To date I've reviewed Burley Flake #1, and #3. I gave #1 four stars, it was a superb smoke, but #3 didn't exactly suit me; with a push it managed two stars, only because I felt generous enough not to give it only one. So, Burley Flake #2?

I'll clear one thing up first, it's a broken flake. Some of the tobacco in the bottom half of the tin has the appearance of whole flakes, but they crumble into thick ribbons under the lightest of touches. The colour's medium brown, unlike its darker sibling #3, and the moisture's perfect.

The flavour of the smoke oozes quality. It has everything I want in a Burley: a touch nutty, rich, and rustic. I can't fault it. It takes until a little way in for me to be able to identify the Kentucky, and it's still miles behind the Burley. The Virginia gives a lesser flavour too, there could be some sweetness from it but nothing particularly indomitable. The burn from #2 is perfect, although it can become warm if strained.

Nicotine: above medium, and I'm indifferent toward the room-note.

Burley Flake #3? One of the best Burley blends available.

Highly recommended.

Wow. What is as good as burley flake 1 which is better than burley flake 3 ? Duhn da duhnnnn - you guessed it, Burley flake # 2!

Tin aroma is on par with 1 & 3, but toned down a bit and a little rounder. It’s the classic C&D burley note- smells like a barn and it’s not sweet nor hay like. It’s deep and raw - or maybe better to say unrefined.

Indeed as you have read, this is lighter than all the others. However I’ll say it’s still a strong heady smoke at the top of the charts, just not over the top.

The mouth feel is medium, dare I say even mild , at least comparing to 1 and 3. The retrohale and side stream is quite sharp and strong. This takes #1 and tones it down quite a few notches. Zero top note, all natural very very quality burley.

It deepens as you smoke down as it starts pleasant and ripe, but develops into a toasty rich mouth watering unison flavor.

I haven’t smoked a lot of this one yet. I still really love #1 but I will also be ordering much more of 2. This is the easiest on the palate and I’m yet to figure out if burley flake #1 or bf # 2 is the masterpiece. Yea it’s that close.

Hey, maybe sometimes you just have to admit there are two masterpieces in a scenario such as this one!

Five stars !

C&D- Burley Flake #2

Tin is dated 27Aug19, upon opening I was met with what I can only now call the C&D Virginia smell, slightly sweet, hay and barnyard type smell. This blend comes in the standard C&D flake, broken and not an actual flake.

The blend was ready to smoke directly out of the tin, no drying time needed. Nutty burley with a hint of Red Virginia’s, I think this blend will take over for #2 once aged, the Virginia’s need some age, as it’s added for sweetness but I never achieved any good amounts of said sweetness.

The burleys are nutty and have a slight spice to them , I never had any sour aftertaste, this blend smoked cool and the nic hit was medium although it may vary for others.

With age this blend could far surpass the other burley flakes, and due to the roughness of #1’s Perique, this one slightly edges it out.

Burley lovers should enjoy this blend.

Good God whoa momma! Wow...this blend is manly. It sneaks up on you. The tin note is woody and musty with a hint of cocoa. The mechanics are perfect, loose cut ready to smoke. And let me tell you, it smokes like a dream! The burley is powerful, walnuty, mildly sour and woody, with brilliant notes of coffee, espresso, cigar and leather. The sweet, bready, virginia offers just enough sugar to balance it all... but not consistently. There's an occasional flit of harshness that gets more frequent as the bowl progresses. It's forgivable though as the last half of the bowl brings a note of dark chocolate and the espresso/cigar note goes nuclear. It's at that same time the nicotine punches you in the back of the throat. A howling wind couldn't drown out the flavor or the ember. As for the nicotine, gentleman, I've smoked for 10 years and indeed this is a strong tobacco. Anyone claiming it's not, would have to be a regular user of Copenhagen (or something else capable of delivering massive doses of nicotine). Use a small to medium bowl. Even on a full stomach the nic hit slaps you across the face in the first 1/4 bowl. This blend is is something.

Being the Burley-Bloke I am I was more than excited when I received my first tins of Burley Flake #2 and #4. I couldn't help myself but to crack, no.. tear them open imediatly, just as a kid would ripping apart the box of its new GameBoy on christmas!

Inside the tin there are flake-ish pieces (i suppose they were flakes, but due to the rather loose density broke into flake-strands with shipping processes), neatly stacked, rich in colors and - typically for C&D's flakes - quite thickly cut. As DK stated: The initial tin note is odd. Spoiled milk and gym socks hits it quite well. But airing it out for 10mins it vanished and left me with a rich scent of Burley goodness. Nutty, slightly sweet, with some coffee-ish notes and lots of earth. It smells of pure tobacco, and a tame, natural sweetness. A bit moist fresh from the tin, but smokeable right away if you wish to.

In the pipe I was in Burley-heaven.... I instantly loved this weed! Some may consider this to be quite monochromatic, and I'm not really arguing that. But what flavors there are excellent, bold and rich! Richly earthy, with decent nuttiness and whole-rye-bread aroma. A note or two of freshly grinded coffee beans is everprensent in the background, so are mild notes of dark chocolate and cocoa. I've smoked unadulterated (pure) Virginia tobacco that didn't had anything added to them but water - no extra sugar. It tastes a lot, a lot(!) less sweet than the typical, blended Virginia tobaccos we know. Burley Flakes have the exact same very mild, natural sweetness, which leads me to belive this is most natural pipe tobacco. Not overly complex, but far from being boring! Not too much depth, but bold, rich and full-bodied flavors! If I look for complexity in my Burley blend I'll grab #4 or blends like Evening Rise or Riverboat Gambler!

#2 is not only rich in taste, but also in nicotine-strength! Albeit the smoke being mellow on the palate its nicotine kick literally can kick ass. I've once smoked #4 and #2 back to back when they arrived here and got a bit light-headed afterwards, which virtually never happens to me. So..this isn't an All-Day-Smoke, but A-Good-Bol-Or-Two-Every-Day-Smoke to me. All-Day? Nope! Repeatable? Oh hell yeah...! After a bowl of Burley Flakes I'm satisfied and don't bother packing another bowl for the next hour - but when I'm back on track to pack another bowl I'm instantly thinking *"pack some more of this delicious Burley Flakes!!!"*. Best to be sipped slow.. it won't bite, but puffing fast will destroy its delicate, lovely nuances. 4-stars and an insant All-Time-Favorite of that I'm sure after several bowls! Burley Blokes, stop lurking for a decent Burley Flake... C&D's Burley Flakes are the peak of Burley-goodness to me! We don't have too many Burley offerings over here in Germany, and I've grown to love the C&D Burley blends (and leafs used!). An institution in Burley blending!

Designed for a big bowl, this is a fine smoke rich in flavour and complex enough to keep me interested throughout the smoke. Sadly it turns a bit too harsh in a smaller bowl, and it is too strong in nicotine for me to handle the size that it favours. Highly recomended for those who can stand this beast of leaf, though it is not for us weaker ones.

Taste: Smokey, nuttyness, earth and coffee greets at first light. After a while traces of dark chocolate with a hint of chili pepper appear. Smoked in a rather large bowl, at a slow pace, this is fairly smooth and rich. If I did not know better I would have thought that it contained cigar leaf. In a small bowl and/or pushed it turns sharp and hot; this clearly feels designed for contemplation - if treated the right way it is rather complex and rewarding.

Mechanics: Comes at a functional moisture, ready to light, burns cool and clean with no bite. Rather strong in nicotine and a medium plus body.

I decided to let Burley Flake #2 serve as my introduction to the quartet of flakes that now form this little C&D collection. On paper, it appears to have the least condimental leaf, so it seemed to be a good place to get a sense of the base Burleys in these Burley Flakes. Luckily (or not…we'll see) I already own tins of the others, because if I'd based future purchasing on my experience with #2, I doubt I'd ever get around to adding them to the tobacco shelf.

The flakes are familiarly C&D—that is, fairly thick in the slicing and more loosely pressed than most other flakes. Tin aroma is slightly grassy with a mild, chutney-like sweet-and-sour quality. Moisture levels were well-nigh perfect and I decided to rub out the flakes on most occasions.

Truth is, nothing I did seem to make any difference with this flake. Rubbed out, folded and stuffed, rolled into a plug, fresh from the tin, dried, aged for six months…Burley Flake #2 remained irredeemably dull. On the palate, the smoke remained a little bitter and a little astringent. The smoking qualities were fine—dry, biteless, pleasingly smoky—but the flavors are painfully muted. I confess that I consigned the last half dozen bowls of the tin to rolling papers, and it seemed to fare much better there. Burley Flake #2 now occupies the top of my list in the cigarette-ish pipe tobacco category.

It's entirely possible that my expectations were too high for this flake from the start. I'm a huge fan of numerous C&D blends and C&D Burleys in particular—Epiphany and Old Joe Krantz, for example, are favorites. I suppose that in those tobaccos the condimental leaf rounds out the Burley base in ways that are more appealing to me than does the red Virginia in this flake.

It's also true that in the back of my mind, I may have been looking for a local competitor to my all-time favorite Burley, Solani's Aged Burley Flake. If so, Burley Flake #2 falls way short of the Solani standard. Where the Solani product benefits from the aromatic hangover of standard Burley casings such as cocoa and coffee, Burley Flake #2 seems pale and thin tasting because of their apparent absence. Some will no doubt prefer #2 because of this. But I'm afraid that I'm not one of them. I prefer more richness, depth, fatness, oomph...whatever you want to call it.

I'm still looking forward to hearing the rest of the quartet, but I can't say that Burley Flake #2 has lit a fire under my easy chair and inspired me to pop them open any time soon.