Mac Baren Amsterdamer

This tobacco is probably a best seller in France. Actually it's the most known. It's sweet and rather tasty. It's a good tobacco for beginners because of its low nicotine strength and its taste that isn't disgusting.

When I saw a pouch of this on the shelf of a tobacconist it was half buried in the midst of other pouches, I haven't seen it before (or, to say better, probably I always ignored it) and in effect this pouch was a sort of archaeological find cause it was produced by the French Seita no longer existent, so before opening the pouch I did a brief research cause honestly I was totally ignorant about it, what I found is that Amsterdamer is an historical tobacco on the classic Dutch genre (obviously due its name!) : shag cut, many tobaccos employed no one leading the theme but fused with other and completed with the traditional Dutch flavoring: tonka – coumarin-vanilla-mint. Well opening the pouch I found a dark brown tobacco with just a ghost of flavoring (yes, was vanished), the feeble tobacco smell was mostly reminding of “tropical” varieties such Java, Sumatra etc… so often present in Dutch tobaccos, sadly (how predictable) it was so dry to being powdery under my fingers, I smoked a couple of bowls just as it was then I tried to moistening the rest with almost decent results but the taste was in any case dull, a pity cause the trace of flavour still detectable tells me that it has been a pleasant tobacco, I don't know if it is still produced and I'm sad having not tried it years ago. I am very curious to know the thoughts of others about Amsterdamer.

Sorry, I'm not able to give a sincere rating based on a such poor test, just a Solomonic two stars.

I admit I am not an expert pipe-smoker. Rather the opposite. I tried this Virginia based tobacco as it brings me back to my earliest smoking attempts (full of mistakes) in my twenties. Overall it is not an easy smoke (it burns quick and the risk of tongue bite is high for a newby like me). The taste is mild, liquorice notes are clearly present. It needs to be smoked very slowly. Overall not exactly my favorite, but in any case the Amsterdamer is a classic to try once in a while. Could be interesting with a pinch of added Burley (in fact I think there is a variety ike that available).

That was my first pipe tobacco, because it is the easiest to find in France, and I'm glad I rapidly found better quality products. The taste is awful, and the tobacco itself isn't worth the try.

My experience with this tobacco reaches 80-s, when Amsterdamer was available lightly pressed in vacuum packed pouches, and was made in Switzerland, not in France. I remember this tobacco well, as relatively light, golden shag of a very pleasant, subtle sweet "grassy" flavoring. As I suspect, it was mostly kumarine. Just recently I had extremely different affair with this stuff. After a long gap, last week in Paris I've bought one pouch of Amsterdamer, which surprised me as dark, harsh, of cheap impression tobacco, something like really bad cigerette. Previous aroma was not detected at all, another one was barely present, but in any case it was nothing pleasant. Generally, it is different and significally worse tobacco than 20 years ago, made by different company, of different tobaccos and with different (if any) flavoring. It is bad thing, which shouldn't be considered as pipe tobacco.

Lo fumavo da ragazzino...ora non credo si trovi più, almeno in Italia. È legato ad un sacco di ricordi. Un tabacco abbastanza povero, franco però in fumata. Ricordo lingue ustionate, ma molto probabilmente ero io che tiravo come Ava Devine. Per quanto mi riguarda mitico!

I rather like this tobacco. No tongue burn. Easily lite and smokes down and leaves no residue. Nice nicotine hit. It reminds me of the samois valley tobaccos and is much easier to find. I find the price to value excellent. I only smoke outside and there is no way to indicate that under the room note heading.

I would recommend this as a more then decent inexspensive pouch to smoke. A bit to strong for me for a morning smoke.

I surely recoment the smoke.

I believe that the picture on the pouch is meant to be a Dutchman in 19th century clothes.