Hearth & Home Cerberus

After a mistake with an order from P&C.com back in 2012, my order was corrected and they generously included a sample of Cerberus. Although I was grateful, I suspected it was something they couldn't get rid of and through this tin in. How wrong was i, and I keep at least two tins on hand at all times. Great tobacco.

This blend is now my new favorite. As far as I'm concerned it's perfectly blended if you love Latakia prominent blends. It's heavy with just the right amount of Perique and orientals to give it an amazing flavor profile. I'm not quite sure why blackhouse is the favorite of this series when this exists. Fine with me though. Makes it easier to get. Excellent aftertaste as well. There is so much flavor here that to me it's an aromatic for English lovers. Great stuff!

Got a sample of this from P&C with my last order. Very full & very tasty. Holds it's smoky,toasty flavor all the way down. Reminiscent of Frog Morton OTT but a tad stronger. A very good blend that I'll include with my next order.

It was produced at the Sutliff Tobacco Company facilities until 2018, then moved under the wing of Scandinavian Tobacco Group for a couple of years, but soon returned to the Sutliff factory.

The tin was vacuum sealed, an uncommon occurrence for Sutliff. Also, unlike earlier editions, Cerberus was slightly "thinner" - the tin now contains 50, not 57 grams of tobacco. The tin was clearly packaged in 2021.

The contents of the tin are a mixture of coarse ribbon tobaccos, dominated by the darker varieties. The different tobaccos in the blend are easily distinguishable, you can tell that there is a fair amount of latakia, however, there is almost as much Kentucky. Judging by the composition, there is no point in aging this blend for years. Out of the can, the tobacco is a bit dry, despite the fresh kneading. I had to keep it in the glass for a couple of days before it reached normal moisture content. However, this is a common story with Ouellette blends. When the tobacco was moistened enough, I opened the jar and decided to try it.

The flavor turned out to be powerful and dense. The combination of latakia plus Kentucky reminded me of the peat bog fires that so plagued the residents of Moscow and the region in 2010. Freshly chopped chamois with its sour-smelling leathery smell, some chestnut, nutmeg, coriander, black pepper and allspice were added to this base. There was no Virginia in the bouquet, barely perceptible boiled fruit I felt only after a couple of minutes of inhaling the smell, a good rubbing of tobacco in my fingers.

The main flavor note was the smoke-enhanced peat. The blend, however, is not a latakia bomb, the Kentucky nicely smooths out its peaty flavor. However, by smoothing it out, it also nails the creamy note. The Orientals, with their tangy sweet and sour flavor, add nutmeg and black pepper to the flavor in the background. A bit of burnt sugar remains from the Virginia, but the tobacco becomes slightly sweeter as it is smoked. The sharpness of the perique, noticeable at the beginning, almost disappears by the middle of the pipe, leaving a little in the background. The taste of the tobacco is initially stiff, but doesn't bite, and becomes quite mild by the middle. Smokes dry, cool, and slow. The strength is medium, not higher - even in XL pipes I didn't get a nicotine hit.

The smoke from the tobacco is dense and persistent, the smell is still reminiscent of burning peat.

The general feeling is strange: "let's drop this one, this one and this one, and see if we get something". As a result, the doggie turned out to be quite a mess - after tasting the mix, a quote from Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Engineer's Finger" came to my mind: "As I supposed, Sherlock Holmes - still in his robe - was sitting in the living room, reading that column from the Times that publishes information about the search for various persons, and smoking a pipe. This pipe he used to smoke before breakfast, stuffing it with all sorts of leftover tobaccos-they were carefully collected and dried on the mantelpiece..."

Is this tobacco worth your attention? It's up to you to decide. I think once I finish a tin of it, I'm unlikely to go back to this blend. But someone may like it - it's quite mild, though peculiar.

Hearth & Home - Cerberus (Marquee Series).

Cerberus is mostly dark ribbons (about 20% lighter brown ones), the cut is quite coarse, it smells musty yet sharp, and on the low side was a touch dehydrated.

The Latakia has the most intensity, to me. The Kentucky's fire-cured flavour works well alongside the smoky Lat', causing quite a full flavour; again, in my opinion. There's a butyraceous, smoothness, from the Orientals, which brings a luxurious quality to the smoke. The Perique, although a lesser ingredient, gives enough spice to get noticed. Finally, the Virginia... completely lost in the mix. The other's seem a bit too bold for the Va to compete with; but, that's just my opinion! The slight lack of moisture hasn't caused too fast a burn, and I've had no bite.

Nicotine: quite strong. Room-note: not nice.

Cerberus? A blend I'll happily recommend:

Three stars.

This is a balanced and rather mild blend. The taste is what I call "buttery", most likely due to the high proportion of Latakia in connection with Burley. The Burleys round the blend up with some nuttiness, the Perique plays in the background, giving it an ever so light spicy note. The smoke is cool, there is absolutely no tongue bite. It burns well, even when slightly wet. The taste stays more or less the same through the whole bowl, with maybe some more spice at the end. Definitely an all day smoke, Cereberus should please both Balkan and English aficionados who don't like their blends too strong.

For those who like the taste but find the blend too mild I would recommend SG Balkan Mixture or Commonwealth Mixture.

This is a big lat. blend. Lat. is very forward and to me over takes the other components. That said, it is not quite one dimensional. The orientals do come forward at times and are a little musty, woodsy, with slightly floral notes that do help break up the monotony. The dark fired ky may also add to some of the nuance but falls behind this and never really comes to the front. The perique does add a slight spice but not much else and the VA's, although seen in the tin were never really present in the flavor profile for me. There is just too much lat covering things up. So all things considered this is not a simple lat. bomb that has nothing else to really offer but there is a time where the percentage of a tobacco crosses a line that it takes away from all that the other components have to offer. This did that for me.

On another note, one that I seem to be the only one with an issue with as well but I will say it for my own future reference. This tin in the Marquee Series came with a plastic rather than the standard cardboard paper cover between the paper and the tobacco. It looks like plastic, it had a basic plastic smell underlying it, it did not impart that smell into the tobacco but I know from experience that over extended periods of time plastic does do this so all tins in this series need to be opened and moved to jars IMHO.

This blend has a supberb flavor. Another home run by Russ. The closest others would be Brebbia Balkan and Bill Baileys Balkhan Blend although the latter is heavier in Latakia. The proportion of Dark fired Kentucky seems to be the ticket that sets this apart from the other heavy with Latakia blends. It smells mostly of Latakia upon opening the tin but once lit the DFK fills out the flavor profile very well. It was just about perfect for smoking right out of the tin with only 10 or so minutes of drying time for a bowl full. Produced a fine white ash with only a tad bit of dampness at the bottom of the bowl so you do not waste much as only very little is too damp to fire up at bowls end. If you have tried Orlik's DFK and liked it you will most likely enjoy this as it has all that goodness along with the added smokiness of the Latakia. I would not suggest this to novice pipers but highly recommend to the more experienced smoker who enjoys a plentiful serving of Latakia. I will be buying more of this some to cellar but it is so good new, although I would not say it is an all day tobacco, it might be hard to keep it in the cellar for any real lengthy stay. So, to summarize: Buy some of this if you like Latakia and/or DFK blends as I believe you will not be disappointed.

To be quite honest, it was the name and tin design that peeked my curiosity in this blend. The fact that it was a Balkan Style english was also a perk,as I quite enjoy this style..Alas, to my chagrin it was just another "gimmicky" sales pitch. The condition of the tobacco was atrocious. I like a drier tobacco just as well as the next bloke, however this blend is to the extreme. It being exceedingly "Crunchy" with the bottom of the tin filled with "coal dust". This being said, it have a pleasing taste, albeit quick and hot. Rehydration was no answer either. It compounds the taste with a very strong "brass-like" flavor. In the end, I was forced to dump the remainder of the tin in with my "Smoked Snargeloff" blend. Unless I happened upon a bad tin, which I highly doubt, I could not recommend this blend.