Dan Tobacco Hamborger Veermaster

I really wanted this blend to work for me. I absolutely didnt get along with it.
Burned my pipe and my tounge so bad!
It sure is sweet and somewhat fruity. I just dont get along with the undeniable and surely boosted sugar content. It cakes your pipes when it doesnt bite the briar.
Wont finish the tin. K&K Meistermischung 88 is much more to my liking.

Dan Tobacco
Hamborger Veermaster

Blend notes: “ 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!" 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".

This is a mild but tasty straight Virginia. Dan products have a ‘closer to natural tobacco’ taste — while I suspect C&D, GLP and others use unmentioned casings this is definitely not the case here.

This blend is perfectly competent Virginia. As mentioned, it is mild — I would argue it is very mid — so if you are a smoker who enjoys a straight Virginia, likely unadulterated by any casing, this could be the right ticket for you. It is grassy with a bit of mild sweetness.

Burns easily. Rubs out well. Mild to medium in flavor and taste. Same with nic-hit. Pleasant room note.

There is a tiny bit of spice or perhaps wet hay.

3 stars out of 4.

Lovely dark brown flakes of Virginia mottled with other shades of brown. A zesty bready Virginia with a slight spice,this is supposed to be a straight Virginia but I am sure I can taste a slight perique taste in the background. A very good all day smoke and will last quite a while especially using the fold and stuff method. I will choose this above fvf by samuel gawith. Highly recommended. The flakes are not too wet but i prefer to dry them out just a tad.

This review is not for those of you who are avowed Virginia aficionados. This is aimed more at those who, like me, need a little extra convincing. In my case, I enjoy an occasional high-quality Virginia, but it’s got to have enough going on that I will willingly forego my favored Balkans and Burleys. A very few do that: Reiner Gold, Solani Silver, which both get four-stars by me, or even something like Astley’s 44, which is a strong 3-star dark Virginia. Veermaster doesn’t quite hit that level for me, but I don’t regret the time I’ve spent with it as a mostly mild and mellow Virginia.

My tin had three years of age on it when opened, and then another 18 months as I checked it out every now and then. From the very first I enjoyed this more than Esoterica Tilbury which tastes like boring white bread to me. But I don’t really see the comparisons to Dunhill Flake, which is darker, richer and nuttier.

I’m fairly certain that I detect some honey ginger in the casing. Remember, casing formulas aren’t declared as “added flavorings,” and it is an easy flavor-steering trick to just add a teaspoon of honey-ginger crystals per liter of water, or use the drop form with some bee pollen granules. It’s done all the time, and I’ve done it myself. If taken too far, as in C&D’s Shandygaff then you get an extreme flavor profile. But here it is subtle, and other than the slightest hint of honey on the palate, you notice the spicy tickle of ginger (and coriander from this type of Virginia) if you retrohale vigorously. That’s why I release the smoke slowly, otherwise I begin to get some nasal irritation. But don’t mistake this as a flaw, it adds to the pleasure once you recognize what you’re dealing with.

So, as for the debate as to whether this improves with age or not. Some say once the subtle top note is gone there’s not much left, others say it develops nicely with age. Yes, the subtle top note eventually faded, though even when the tin was first opened I never did get “upside down cake” as some have suggested. I would simply say that it was an exceedingly mild creamy fruit nuance. Then it seems to go through a hollow or dormant phase when the top note has faded but before any real depth from aging has developed. Finally, with a good amount of age the base tobacco does take on a nice round and satisfying maturity. So my best advice would be to enjoy a tin when it’s quite young, and have another tin sitting in the cupboard for 3-5 years down the road.

Veermaster is a mild Virginia with hints of natural sweetness and citrus. No bite, delicious sweet citrus retrohale, and great flake for beginners and experience alike. What I like is that it is mild yet still has good flavor representing a fine Virginia leaf.

This blend has a subtle sweet flavor similar to the same manufacturer's Mellow Mallard which I tried first. I initially thought it was the unique character of the African virginia's common to both. These blends are described as being naturally processed virginia blends but I have come to believe they share a similar light sweet casing. The flavor is simple, straightforward and lighter than average with a more pronounced sweet aroma of brown sugar, figs, honey, malt, oxidized bruised apple, sweet fresh cut grass and something darker like richer chocolate. It finanlly dawned on me that it may be Tonka beans/Coumarin. Despite this possible casing, I consider this blend natural enough and don't have much of a problem in augmenting blends in this way to make them more palatable. Contrast them with the harsher character of some of the Cornell & Diehl/GL Pease blends of purer tobacco. A very good, straight forward and uniform golden virginia flake with a touch of added sweetness.

I've heard for years, how great this tobacco is, so finally decided to pick up a tin. I don't know, maybe I got a bad batch, but I was severely disappointed. The only taste I could detect when smoked, was a slight peppery taste on my tongue....other then that, absolutely devoid of any taste related to tobacco. A total waste of money, as far as I'm concerned.

This tobacco was a disappointment.

Very similar to Patriot Flake and Former's Straight Grain Flake, a plain, almost bland tasting Golden VA which slightly bites the tongue from beginning to end of the bowl.

There is a sweet and citrus - like taste here and there. The remainder is hay.

My apologies, but I do not see the "buzz" created around this below average mixture.

There are much better offerings out there: Dunhill's Flake, for example.

Last week as the unbearable summer heat and stifling humidity pressed on, I found my favorite English blend was just too much, and my vaper wasn't delivering any great enjoyment. So I rummaged around my stock of tinned tobacco and chose Hamborger Veermaster. I recalled finding favor in this tobacco, but obviously not enough to have substantial back-stock. Because it is a flake, I cracked the tin open to flash off the moisture normally afforded to flake tobaccos, as well as, placed an estimated two day supply on the dash of my car for rapid de-humidification. I like my Virginians' dry. Well the result was my two day supply barely lasted a half day. I'm sure there's some rum and fruit topping on this weed but it didn't trump the tobacco taste. This isn't a tobacco of many subtleties, but rather just a light bodied smoke with ample strength. An inhale or two reminded I'm smoking tobacco. There may be a splash of Burley or even Kentucky- heck I don't care it just hit the spot. It didn't have the tang of say Hal O' The Wynd, but I wasn't looking for that component either. What a great break of pace- what a great tobacco, when I dry it out.