Mac Baren HH Old Dark Fired

this is simply one of the classic flakes on the market. If you ask any experienced pipester, this is in their rotation (most usually). And with good reason. Its a perfectly balanced blend with a nic hit at the high end of medium. It burns coooooool. Start to finish. Wont bite. And its flavor is surprisingly deep. Not exactly complex, but there are layers at work, but its rich and full tasting. The burley has a real nutty edge to it and there is likely a very mild and barely detectible casing. But the primary taste is tobacco. I love the stuff and always buy another tin when i am running low. It works better dried out a bit. A genuine classic.

First the tin, i love the small mac baren tins with flake. The look of the tin is a bit old school, as the HH line is, two lions with the logo.

The smell from the tin is amazing, i get more Kentucky than Virginia. The flakes is dark and i think the Virginias is the same as Dunhill RY. The taste is a pure tobacco taste, and i love it. Coming from Denmark where Mac Baren also is coming from, i have tried most of their tobaccos, i do smoke aromatics almost every day but not the ones from Mac Baren they are just bad. I was beginning to think what they should do to up their products and then HH line came.. wow.

I cant recommend this blend enough.

Wonderful, plum / Xmas pudding note in a tin of small medium cut flakes just the right size for a small to medium Dublin bowl.

Another tobacco that didn't set me on fire at first but 3 months in the jar was well rewarded with a wonderful mature plum / raisin / brandyish burley tasting smoke that had me rushing to the tobacconist to buy another couple of tins for cellaring.

The dark flake packs and burns perfectly with a cool burn and great taste to the bottom of the bowl which comes all too soon (must buy a bigger pipe for this one). Up there with the top 3 for me and sort of leading me away from the Latakians for the moment which have been very much my go to's for some time!

In short...buy some, open the tin try it and then jar for a couple of months and try again...you will reap the rewards as I did.

These flakes are beautifully presented in typical MacBaren style - they are a beautiful dark colour like Irish Flake, but seem to be a thinner cut and break apart more easily.

The aroma is a fresh rich earthy densness that just invites you to breath in deeply, hold, and very slowly exhale, before hurrying back for more. This is a quality tobacco, oozing class, but not afraid to rumble if the company requires it.

First bowl I did a fold and stuff in a beautiful Danish acorn, fairly loosely packed (as is my preference). Charring light produced a good quantity of smoke of a fairly solid consistency, full of flavour - a good tobacco honesty, with a healthy dollop of what I think was a virginia sweetness. Let it go out. Sit for a bit and admire the pipe, letting the tobacco rest.

True light and good, dense smoke, with huge amounts of flavour, deep tones, with what I can only describe as a fizzy sweetness coming through. A few draws in and it's out!!! Turns out it's a bit of a devil to keep lit. May be my packing, my smoking technique, the moistness of the flake, or a combo of all three. But, I never fight it, and don't care about having to relight.

The flavour seemed to be fairly consistent all the way down - a beautiful solidity that I can't quite put my finger on, with the sweet virginia singing gently along in accompaniment, maybe a little more softly towards the end.

A beautiful, smooth, strong smoke - immensely satisfying. Absolutely no bite or harshness, even when pushed a little. In fact, it was so good I loaded up immediately and set-to again.

Second bowl was rubbed out fully. It took light very easily, still needed a few relights, but fewer. Again, maybe packing, moistness or method. Reckon it was a bit moist, and I do pack light. I also like my tobaccos to get barely smoldering - gives me more flavour - so I tend to relight a few times anyway.

Fully rubbed out produces a sweeter smoke - but not vastly sweeter. The deep tones are still very much there, just the virginia is a little more forward. Just as smooth, just as gentle as the folded flake. This is completely at odds with the impression the flake gives when removing it from its packaging - it looks strong (it is), rough (nope), harsh (never), ready for anything (I think it is, y'know). This is a smoke you could use all day. Perpetration method produces enough of a difference to suit varying moods.

I think I have really fallen for this tobacco. I like dark, strong tobaccos, but have been getting into light, bright VA's lately. This has definitely drawn me back to the dark side - Irish flake didn't quite manage this and it's a beautiful tobacco - a good glass of mature, full bodied port after a heavy meal - ODF is the Christmas Ale you wish your local brewery made available all year round.

Fantastic burley blend here. I picked up a tin of this on my way to Florida when a fortuitous potty stop brought be within striking distance of a Strauss tobacconists shop. My wife had to let me go in. I purchased a tin of this based on all the good things I had heard about it, but perhaps the most influential part was that many forum friends said it was like Irish Flake. I got this response when asking for a less expensive alternative to IF.

Well other than being in flake form and containing similar leaves, I would say it is not too similar to Irish Flake, but it is very good in its own right. I still like Irish Flake better and am coming to the conclusion it cannot be cheaply replaced. But enough about that. This a review of ODF.

I have tried Burley London Blend and liked it, but I like this one much better. This is a deeper earthier blend. It gives off a chocolatey nutty taste, but not in the cheap topped aromatic sense. It is a very natural tobacco taste. The amount of body in this blend is perfect to my tastes; whereas, I find BLB a little light in that department. This is likely the dark fired Kentucky.

The use of the DFK is great. It doesn't choke you with spice or gum up your mouth requiring a jug of water to get down a group 4 bowl. It can be enjoyed in a contemplative setting on the porch or while doing the busy putzing stuff many of us do with a pipe hanging out of our mouths.

In summary, I will repurchase this often. While it doesn't supplant Irish Flake it is welcome in the rotation and worthy of four stars. I encourage everyone to try it and fill a big jar of it.

This is a very nice offering from a manufacturer whose tobaccos I usually don't much care for: substantial, earthy, slow-burning, tasty and satisfying, and completely without any kind of gimmicky topping. It's far superior to MacBaren's Virginia and Navy Flakes: tobaccos that always seem to me to lack 'body'. The neatly arranged flakes in a handy tin is a plus point also. I'm inclined to describe HH Old Dark Fired as a sort of younger brother of Peterson's Irish Flake: same "traditional" characteristics, but not quite so in-your-face. When I first tried it, I wasn't all that impressed; I guess I came to it expecting to be a bit underwhelmed. Then, rather to my surprise, its subtleties began to make themselves felt more and more, and I came to like it a lot. Incidentally, unlike so many MacBaren offerings, ODF will not bite you unless you positively ask it to. This is definitely one of those tobaccos that grows on you with experience. I don't expect to smoke it all the time, but it will find a regular place in my rotation.

Contrary to what some other reviewers have said, I would recommend rubbing it out rather than the fold-and-stuff method. It's smokable straight out of the tin, though - unlike so many dark flakes.

Edit - 5th December 2017: it seems that MacBaren have discontinued their tins, at least in the UK: HH Old Dark Fired now comes in a plastic pouch (with scary pictures on). This is a pity: it takes away a bit of 'class' from the tobacco, and it makes storage and ageing difficult. I don't notice any compensating reduction in price. On the contrary, in fact.

Update of 2014-12-07: Sitting with my laptop in front of me smoking a bowl of this and feel compelled to say that this is simply GREAT tobacco. Rich, tasty and unobtrusive yet with a very strong and confident personality. Incredibly satisfying and tastefully rich. Damn it's good stuff. So glad I went totally OCD on my orders a few years ago.

I've had a few tins of ODF and it is a consistent and excellent product. Well cured, well blended, well cut and, well, very enjoyable. Packs and burns with ease and to my most important criterion, totally satisfying. I love the taste that seems to swirl around in my mouth between sips and puffs, and the fabulous aftertaste (if that word can be used to connote an asset and not a liability). This tobacco is why I have smoked a pipe for so long now. ODF, and feel free to laugh, makes you feel like a man (and not in the "I just set the record for consuming a gallon of habenero sauce in 6 minutes and now I'm going to puke" kind of way. Along with a few other HH offerings (Mature Virginia comes to mind) MacBaren has come in from the cold and raised the bar. Good for them (and us).

when i saw dark fired i thought of orlik dark fired kentucky. i should have though of toilette paper. opening the tin, there was no aroma what so ever. reviewers complain of the mcclelland virginia "ketchup" smell, not realizing that virginia's ferment and that is the "smell". this tobacco was a zero. no aroma, no taste, zero. i threw the tin in the trash. and i do think mac make some great tobaccos.

Mac Baren has hit one out of the park with HH Old Dark Fired. I recently received two 100gm tins from Iwan Ries. The tin note is pure tobacco and very similar to Irish Flake and Highland Sliced as the flakes are earthy in their smell. They are very dark and tightly pressed as with IrF and HS (tightly pressed flakes is new for a Mac Baren flake) and similar in size to Ir F. They are stacked into three neat rows. They are cut a tad thinned than IrF which makes for easier packing.

The flakes were at a good moisture consistency for packing and lighting. In a blind smoke, I would never ever guess this was from Mac Baren. This is one fine smoke. IrF and HS are two of my favorite tobaccos ever and now I have a third in the same genre. HH ODF has a very rich, natural flavor profile with solid, pure tobacco taste. It exhibits a nice spiciness while smoking. Unlike the spiciness of Perique, there is no pepper notes at all, which is a good thing for me as I don't care for Perique. I don't think there is any casing, and if there is, I can not detect it. It has a healthy dose of nicotine that takes an immediate front row seat. By the way, this offering is a smoother smoke as it doesn't seem to have the harshness I sometimes experience with a bowl of IrF.

I have quite a bit of IrF and HS but I can see myself reaching for this new offering from Mac Baren when I want a rich, pure tobacco smoke. It is simply fantastic in my book. If you like IrF and/or HS, you will not be disappointed at all. I enjoy other Mac Baren tobaccos, but this one is way ahead of the pack and is a major player in the pantheon of fine smoking tobaccos. My hat goes off to the blenders at Mac Barens for introducing such a winner. 10 stars across the board!!

UPDATE 6-9-12: Close to finishing the first of two tins, I will have to ration this as I read on the Mac Baren's website that due to the overwhelming positive response to this new HH blend, Mac can't keep up with demand. They say it is not a question of increasing production, but ODF needs a long time to store. The end result is they don't expect any more supply at the earliest until 2013!

UPDATE 3-6-15: I've been smoking this from a tin that's just going on one year old. It's dried out sufficiently to pose no problems with lighting, staying lit, or other issues that moisture brings to the pipe. The tin note and pre-draw taste through the stem is that of a freshly opened box of yummy raisins - very delicious. As much as I enjoyed this when it was first released, it is just superb with some age and drying on it.