Hearth & Home Vermont Meat Candy

I must have missed something. Most of the reviews were pretty positive, but what I received in no way aligned with what I expected. No particular flavor, no particular aroma, harsh, higher in vitamin N than I prefer. As I say, perhaps I missed something, but this won't be a repeat for me.

This is becoming one of my favorite aromatic smokes. This is maybe one of the only aromatics that taste just like it smells. The wife likes it too. You truly can close your eyes and believe some one's cooking bacon. If you like aromatics and you like sweet... you're gonna love this.” In my original post I state rank it up with RLP^. Revised... Far better than! It is one of the best aromatics I've smoked.

I would rank this up there with Lane's RLP #6, in that it smokes well, smells great and taste great all the way to the end. Many aro's start out with flavor and then peter out. The Vermont Meat Candy delivers a sweet flavor to the end.

Very pleasant buttery maple flavor that does not overwhelm. The hickory cured burley takes some getting used to as I would say it is the culprit for the “chemical” flavor I hear so many people mention in their reviews. This blend will leave your tongue dry, almost like a salty dry. No tongue bite at all. Pleasant nutty, grassy aftertaste. Not something I would want to make into an all the time smoker but certainly a nice novelty

I wish my palette was as sophisticated as some of these reviewers. I get a slight taste of maple and very little smoky flavor at all. That's it in a nut shell. Room note is decent and burns fairly cool. I wish I could taste what some of you folks have described but sadly I get mostly Maple and little of that.

2oz just arrived and I'm already on my second bowl! Subtly sweet and slightly smoky but of course no "real" bacon flavor. I didn't really expect any but this stuff is super tasty just the same.

I puffed this stuff pretty hard for a few minutes and it refused to bite. At least that was my experience. Packs well, burns well and I will definitely be reordering more soon.

It is flavorful but mild and I can imagine I'll be moving this in and out of my rotation regularly. Definitely worth the price to try it.

Update: moved to 4 *'s; smoked it all day Saturday while working in the yard. Never got tired of it. For my money and palate it's nearly perfect!

Here we have a pretty decent aromatic from Russ Outlette even if it doesn't really live up to its description. According to Oulette's marketing material, this blend "combines two great flavors - maple and bacon. We start with a Cavendish that's been given a deep, sweet maple flavor and then we added dark Burley that's been fire-cured with hickory wood, which delivers the flavor and aroma of hardwood-smoked bacon." Well…if Russ says so, I guess. I don't detect any kind of smoky/salty/"hickory" flavors in this blend at all. What I do detect is a pretty good dollop of maple. That's not a bad thing, mind you -- I've always tried to keep a decent maple aromatic around, but most of them are hot, biting, nasty products that I wouldn't smoke with someone else's tongue. Not so with Vermont Meat Candy. This is a quality product made of quality tobaccos that delivers a very sweet, natural-tasting maple flavor and aroma that's sure to hit the spot (if you're into this kind of thing at all, at least). I can't really find any major faults with this blend, and I don't hesitate to recommend it. So why don't I give it three stars? Because it's not Autumn Evening, which I feel is a full star better than this.

Just smoked up the last of my trial for VMC. Everyone should try this tobacco. Not because it is an exceptional smoking experience but because it has a brand new component not yet seen, the hickory smoked burley. I'll call it the American Latakia until somebody comes up with a better name. This is a very welcome flavor but in this first iteration of a blend it doesn't work that well for me. First off, out of the bag comes a super smoke aroma with a good measure of maple. Packing and lighting are great, very easy tobacco to work with. Now to the experience. I'm a fan of both aromatics and Latakia blends but don't like to mix the two. That's essentially what's been done here, a wood smoked tobacco plus a cased tobacco. The combination didn't do much for me and I didn't get any indication of a salty/meaty flavor. This isn't a surprise but the flavor is advertised as bacon/maple which is a stretch, maybe as close to bacon as one can get from a pipe though. For me it is mostly an odd combination of sweet and savory, like pickles and ice cream. Great separately but, in combination, not so much. Another bummer for this mix is the fact that it wanted to burn hot. Not a scorcher but if you aren't paying attention it will get you.

I'll be watching for more experiments with the new American style Latakia.

I'm not sure why I added this to an order, but it was interesting to try. I have to say, I detected none of the 'meat' (i.e. hickory) in this. The maple was certainly detectable however, but it was not overwhelming or really all that sweet. In that respect, a nicely balanced blend. The cavendish burned a bit too hot for my preferences, but not too much so. Overall, a decent aromatic for this non-aro smoker. I still wouldn't rebuy it, however.

I have finally found an aromatic I like. This stuff is great. The maple flavor and the hickory smoke blends great with the tobaccos. They aren't overly sweet and it has great smokiness to it, not in a latakia way, but in a smoked meat way. The flavors are simple, yet complex in the way they play off of each other. This will be a great tobacco for weekend mornings. I am looking forward to this with a cup of strong coffee before a day in the woods.