Hearth & Home Vermont Meat Candy

Noticed that this is currently back ordered (Memorial Day weekend 2014) at Pipes &Cigars. Disappointing, because I need more and am reduced to rationing what little I've left of it! The "Meat" in the name may be off-putting to some.... fear not! It's delish. A better name might have been "Smokehouse Maple"... but wouldn't perhaps be as catchy.... This blend captures for me the essence of a Mapley-Hickoryish glaze.... not too sweet, but not bitter.... one sec...... smoking some now...... wow. Yep... these flavors just dance together here! I don't perceive any of the "chemical" flavors some other reviewers write about... my sample is full, rich,and to me a great balance of sweet and savory.... Seems that perhaps as has been mentioned, some reviewers got a different off- batch??? I see myself reaching for this often, when not wanting candy tobacco, and not being able to face a heavy English.... could Hickory cured Burley be my new Latakia? ... perhaps!. (This is a maple aromatic, yet the hickory smoked flavors come from the fire cured. Rather a semi-aromatic to me along the lines of a mapley Frog Morton, with fire-cured standing in for Latakia) Try a sample of this... I think many will be sold... and I need more folks to order it to keep it always available! Top notch stuff, and an imaginative blend.

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.

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!

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.

I absolutely love this blend. It has this delicious maple drizzled bacon flavor. It is sweet and a little smokey which makes you crave for breakfast! Well rounded, no bite, and burns to a nice white ash. I'm using this blend to break in my new pipe because hey, a little bacon flavor to anything makes it taste that much better!

Good stuff. I love dark fired and I love maple. Put then together and we have a winner. I'm not gonna go over the top and rave about how much this stuff resembles bacon and pancakes. You just can't replicate that sort of heavenly food in smoke form. But hell, it comes close. Burley aromatics are always a favorite subspecies of mine. They may burn a little hotter, but if you treat them right (i.e. don't overfill the bowl or puff like a raging crackhead), you're rewarded with much more flavor than a simple cavendish based aro. If I had one suggestion for meat candy, it would be for a little more dark fired in there. I like to mix this with a half flake of Mac Barens Bold Kentucky from time to time. Anyway, it's a pleasant aromatic with no excessive toppings or PG that burns cleanly with volumes of smoke. Room note and beard note are spectacular. Non-aromatic guys and gals ought to give it a test drive. It works for me any time of the day, and sometimes breakfast for dinner is just what the doctor ordered.

I'm not much of an aromatics smoker, usually focusing instead on naturals, VA/PER, flakes, and some English or American-English blends. But in honor of my dad and the pipes he left (probably from the 60s or 70s) I'm trying a few. My dad would have smoked drug store rum-maple and this stuff is nothing like that.

In a word, this is subtle. It's also beautifully integrated, the whole more than the sum of the parts. Moist to the touch but not sticky and needs no drying. The bag aroma is sweet, maple, but not Maple Street maple, a little tart, a very faint hint of vanilla, and a distant campfire. A very distant campfire. Packs nicely, lights easily and stays lit. I think I re-lit once or twice. The flavor is consistent from start to finish. Sweet maple, smoky notes and a little salt waft in and out. No tongue bite. Smokes to a clean white ash with no moisture left behind.

It doesn't so much TASTE like a lumberjack breakfast as feel like one: familiar and comforting. I just want more. I could smoke this all day, especially in cold weather.