HU Tobacco Flanagan

The Flanagan Flake is a highly vowed tobacco over here with an interesting list of components like Kentucky and Zimbabwean Virginia. Received a generous sample from a friend and really was eager to try it.

The look of the flakes is very nice - so many brown tones from really dark almost black to beige and golden waves creating a nice Van Gogh like overall look. Flakes are a bit larger than the ones from Mac Baren so that one flake rubbed out fills a medium bowl but they are also stuck together a bit so that it is hard to remove a whole flake in one piece. Cold smell is decent sweet with some very restrained notes of flowers. Packs well after rubbing out and a short drying and burns incredibly slow and steady with a bit of attention needed at some time.

First taste that hit my tongue is really spicy and Kentucky predominant but also with a certain taste of cigarettes. When puffing slow and steady there’s some nice oriental spicy top notes showing from time to time and very little and subtle sweetness when the ember almost goes out. When puffed a bit faster there’s only spicy Kentucky that tends to get boring as the taste stays the same all the time. No Perique detectable in the smoke but only in the aftertaste when I stop smoking for a minute - wishing for that taste while puffing! But with a relight the cigarette taste comes back. After half of the bowl (almost an hour of smoking time) I get a sore, scratchy feeling in the back of my throat that won’t go away if I don’t let the pipe rest and even then comes back after some puffs. Makes me want to drink all the time. Also the variety of tastes gets lesser as I’m reaching the bottom of the bowl.

Can’t say this is a bad blend! Maybe just not my taste - had to force myself a bit to smoke the whole bowls after almost 2 hours. Could use bit more sweetness for me and less of that Kentucky that’s alway in the foreground.