Dan Tobacco Hamborger Veermaster

(3.13)
A genuine and classic English Virginia flake, just as the "sailors" on the "windjammers" (tall ships) loved to smoke it: The taste of genuine tobacco, not too mild, yet still "seut un' sacht" (sweet and mellow). The slow and cool burn offers the best premises for a quaffable, aromatic-mellow smoking pleasure! "Blow, boys, blow!"
Notes: Regarding the name of this blend, which some people mistakenly think is 'Hamborger Beermaster' because of the typeface used on the tin (a variation of blackletter known as Fraktur where the B and V are easily confused); the ship on the front is a German four-masted windjammer, called a "Veermaster". This coupled with the fact that Dan Tobacco, the producer, lists this blend in their price lists as "Hamburger Veermaster".

Details

Brand Dan Tobacco
Blended By Dan Tobacco
Manufactured By Dan Tobacco
Blend Type Straight Virginia
Contents Virginia
Flavoring
Cut Flake
Packaging 50 grams tin, 250 grams bag, one pound bag
Country Germany
Production Currently available

Profile

Strength
Mild to Medium
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Extremely Mild -> Overwhelming
Flavoring
None Detected
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
None Detected -> Extra Strong
Room Note
Pleasant
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Unnoticeable -> Overwhelming
Taste
Medium
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Extremely Mild (Flat) -> Overwhelming

Average Rating

3.13 / 4
48

49

16

8

Reviews

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Displaying 1 - 10 of 121 Reviews
Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
May 14, 2002 Mild Extremely Mild Medium Pleasant
If you want a toned down dose of Orlik Golden Slices with more flavor, then this is the flake for you! It is very mild, yet tasty. A slow burn is necessary to fully appreciate the flavor, which is unrelenting in variance. The leaf is of good quality, and the flake rubs out easily, but, is too moist at first. I let mine air dry for a few hours before plowing into a second bowl.

If you want a bit more punch to your puff, go elsewhere young man. If, on the other hand, you enjoy smoking a Virginia as laid back as an old Bassett Hound, well, here you go.
50 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Dec 30, 2013 Mild to Medium Extremely Mild Mild to Medium Pleasant
The quality golden Virginias provide some tart and tangy citrus, tart lemon, a little honey, wood, earth and bread, a lot of hay/grass, and a touch of tangy dark fruit. The strength and taste levels are around the center of mild to medium. The nicotine is just past the mild mark. Won't bite or get harsh, but has some roughness and acidity. May need a little dry time. Burns at a slightly slow pace, cool and clean with a very consistent fruity, grassy, lightly sour, acidic flavor. Requires a few relights, and leaves little dampness in the bowl. Has an unattractive lightly sour and sweet, acidic after taste. Has a pleasant room note. An all day one dimensional, unobtrusive smoke that suffers from depth of flavor. May make a decent starter Va. product for those trying this genre for the first time.

I have found that a few years makes a world of difference with this blend. The hay/grass and acidity calms down, and the sweetness level rises a bit. Age it if you can. I give the aged version three and a half stars, and my current rating reflects that.

-JimInks
33 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Sep 17, 2005 Mild None Detected Mild to Medium Pleasant to Tolerable
Notes: The stylized Germanic font on the tin leads some to mistakenly call this blend "Beer Master." The name refers instead to one of a class of four-masted German sailing ships, which in a once popular German song headed for America for the Gold Rush to strike it rich. I have smoked several ounces of this in various pipes and found I liked it best in a very tall thin Danish chimney pipe with a narrow bowl I can barely get my pinky finger into to tamp the tobacco down.

Appearance: It used to come, as Marlin flake (another nautically named blend), as a one-foot flake folded in a can. Lately, I have received it in tins where it is cut into 2-inch squares of medium to darkish nut brown tobacco, which rubs out to a thinnish ribbon. It is not very moist in the tin and ready to smoke right away.

Aroma: Fresh hay and tobacco, honey, malt, milk chocolate, vanilla, plums, pineapple upside-down cake!

Flavor: A pronounced rough-hewn flavor of woodchips and sawdust. Nuts, walnut shells, a hint of sweetness, woolen blanket, clean linen, chocolate wafers, homemade marshmallow.

Comparisons: If Hal O' The Wind epitomizes a refined nutty Virginia blend, then Hamborger Veermaster is the acme of the honest blue-collar end of the spectrum. Woodsier than most nutty-style Virginia blends, like Gawith's Best Brown Flake, and more savory but also less delectable.

Bottom Line: For those who favor the nutty Virginia blends, perhaps the ultimate "working man's" flake.
14 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Aug 01, 2014 Medium None Detected Medium Tolerable
Original Review 8/1/2014 Update follows

This is a very solid Virginia. I was given a healthy sample of this from a friend of mine. I had wanted to try it for some time. Based on all the reviews I had read, I was sure I would like it. I was not let down in the least bit.

My favorite Virginia is Dunhill Flake and I still prefer Dunhill Flake to this, but it is close. They are also very similar in flavor profile. This, like DF, has that citrusy sweetness to it that compliments the natural hay taste of the abundant bright leaf. I had thought of giving this three stars as I definitely recommend it, but it is so close in flavor to my favorite va and favorite blend, that I will add another star.

As another bonus to this, it is available in bulk. A bad point is, it is hardly ever available, which is saying something as well.

Update April 29, 2021

I just finished a tin of this that was about 5.5 years old and then followed it up with a tin of Dunhill Flake that I am presently working my way through. And I have to say that while it has the depth of flavor and body of Dunhill Flake, it lacks the sweetness and citrus I get from Dunhill Flake.

I still feel that HV is a solid Virginia, but in the 7 years since I first reviewed that blend I have had the opportunity of smoking so many great virginias and awarding the same with four stars that I feel, for sake of consistency, I need to pull down a star on this one. So while I still recommend it, there are many others I prefer to it.
PurchasedFrom: gifted from friend
13 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Sep 09, 2017 Mild to Medium Very Mild Mild Pleasant
Dan Tobacco - Hamburger Veermaster.

I'd expected to open the tin to be met by two or three rows of flakes, as is customary with a lot of blends. But, H.V. is presented as the widest flake I've seen: one singular, wide, stack. The flakes are a darker brown than a lot of straight Va's, with a good hydration to them.

The smoke: It gives a care-free, nonchalant, flavour: rich, sweet, and not at all harsh. The sweetness seems a touch high to be emanating from just the tobacco: there's a honey, almost caramel like, character. Whatever it is, it tastes lovely! H.V. burns well, slowly and consistently, giving a cool temperature smoke. To me, the taste is steady throughout a bowl, without much variation in the weight of the few ingredients.

Nicotine: quite mild. Room-note: pleasant enough.

Hamburger Veermaster? A four star Virginia:

Highly recommended.
Pipe Used: Atinok Meerschaum
PurchasedFrom: Smokingpipes.com
Age When Smoked: Five months
12 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
May 26, 2002 Medium to Strong None Detected Medium Very Pleasant
Because I found this somewhat heady, I classified it in the "medium-to-strong" range of strength; the taste, though, is somewhere between the mild FERNDOWN Mild Brown and the more robust RATTRAY Marlin Flake. Meaning that HAMBORGER is a delightfully supple and savoury Virginia, without a hint of the bloated quality of some stoved flakes, yet flavourful and very present.

This is much better than Limerick (with its unnoticeable ghost Périque, bah!), has more personality than WESSEX Brigade, and is less predictable than Tordenskjold Virginia Slices. All told, one of the best pure-Virginia flakes I have ever smoked.

Its room redolence is delectable.

[P.S.: longer familiarity with this utterly delicious tobacco has only enhanced my affection for it. Highest recommendation. 5/'02]
11 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Dec 20, 2017 Mild to Medium Extremely Mild Mild to Medium Pleasant
The more I smoke Virginia tobacco, the more I seem to be drawn to blends of this type. Delicate, yet substantial with a clean, crisp understated taste that doesn’t leave my palate feeling spent. This is how I would categorize Hamborger Veermaster, a bright, lightly pressed Virginia flake that is a perfect candidate for the fold and stuff method, as it takes to flame with ease. The flavors are toasty & grassy with some tangy citrus peel high notes. As the bowl progresses, a deeper tobacco flavor does develop and the finish becomes a bit spicy, lending credence to the idea of a there being a touch of perique in this. The side stream is pleasant and has a tart fruit quality to it that echoes the plum and dried-apricot scent of the tin note. Altogether I found no big crescendos or amazing complexities while smoking this, but in my books Hamborger Veermaster is a fine Virginia flake tobacco. Any piper looking for a mild, non-temperamental, high quality Virginia flake might very well enjoy this blend. Ages very well but it's also quite good fresh.
Age When Smoked: 5
10 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Oct 08, 2012 Mild to Medium Very Mild Mild to Medium Pleasant to Tolerable
I hear about this one a lot on various pipe forums but I don't see the numbers of reviews I expected. Only one other review this year - interesting. At any rate, this came to me at almost perfect tin moisture and I did not have to dry it out any further. Thin flakes running the VA color gamut and a nice sweet hay tin aroma.

I can't decide if this one is flavored or not but I'm leaning towards a very mild sweet topping. It didn't inpede the virginia flavor, however. This one did lean towards the high notes and middle register without providing much in the way of bass range. This was clean and refreshing without overdoing the citrus notes. Not much in the way of complexity here but not exactly a one-trick pony, either. It didn't really live up to the hype but it was a very fine smoke. I'd like a little more spice and darkness but this one is certainly recommended to those who enjoy the lighter virginias. I'm really happy I got to experience it, as it's been tough to find lately!
6 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Jan 08, 2017 Medium None Detected Medium Very Pleasant
My tin must be 2 or 3 years old. I had it laying around the house for some time and only decided to crack it open as it caught my attention. I left my tin open for one day before packing my pipe, but the moist content seems about right. Upon inspection, I noticed microscopic sugar crystals all over. Not that there is no casing, but I cannot detect any. This tobacco smokes like a straight Virginia and feels like a straight Virginia. I am surprised a "Danish" manufacturer has produced something down these lines. I can detect sweet undertones with grassy/citrusy qualities. I am not sure if they added any stoved Virginias here, but the taste is borderline medium to full. It is not as complex and demanding as other virginias I have smoked in the past, but it wants to be sipped anyway. Highly recommended to all Virginia lovers.
Age When Smoked: 2 or 3 years
4 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
May 04, 2015 Mild to Medium Extremely Mild Mild to Medium Pleasant
Dan Tobacco's Hamburger Veermaster is a mild Virginia flake lacking in complexity which nevertheless offers a very satisfying smoke.

The flakes are beautifully formed and lend themselves both to rubbing out or folding and cramming in. I have had success both ways. I personally find the flakes a tad moist upon opening the tin, but I suspect most can manage well without a drying out time.

The smell upon opening is nice but not attention getting, a mild Virginia aroma with a hint of citrus to it. I find no difficulty in getting an even light nor in keeping the pipe going through the smoke. The room note is pleasant. It does not have the attention getting effect of an aromatic, but it has a very nice natural tobacco quality that is not likely to draw objection from non smokers.

There is no notable flavoring component to HV, although I suspect is has just a tad of sweetening which enhances the citrus note. The nicotine content is low, and whether that is a plus or a minus depends upon the individual smoker. The tongue bite factor is quite moderate for a Virginia offering. This tobacco burns to a dry, light gray ash.

The taste is quite mild and the tobacco (completely Virginia so far as I can determine) has no complexity; it tastes the same from the beginning of the bowl until the end. The monochromatic nature of HV might be a drawback for some smokers. As for me, although while smoking I am not thinking how great this tobacco is, at the end of the bowl I always find myself well satisfied.

I normally smoke Virginia or Virginia forward mixtures in a variety of mid priced pipes which I do not use for aromatics or latakia laden blends.
4 people found this review helpful.
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