How much does weather play into your tobacco selection?

[Isaac]

I often hear about people putting away their English blends during the hot summer months. Ive never really thought about doing that at all. I suppose they are a heavier blend, but I cant imagine the ambient heat being too much for an English smoke.

Do any of you have blends that are stickly winter/summer and why?

 

[DC_MPA]

That’s a great topic/question!

I actually do adjust to weather. Fall time I seem to smoke Old Ironsides, Lancer Slices and smokier blends with some aromatics. Winter I smoke more heavier blends like FVF, Penzance. Springtime and summer I’m smoking mostly aromatics. The one tobacco I’ll smoke all year long is Bobs Chocolate Flake. That’s my island tobacco.

My pipe tobacco is a lot like my drinks during the year. Red wine and bourbon/scotch during cooler and wetter weather. Ice tea, water or a beer during hot weather.

 

[Benzadmiral]

Well . . . I only took up the pipe again after more than 15 years in January of this year. And I have only 2 seasons where I live: January-February, and SUMMER. So it's a little early for me to say. Of course I'm investigating English blends now, wouldn't ya know it. Perhaps I'll find them incompatible with sticky wet heat.

My Anglophile imagination pictures Conan Doyle or Somerset Maugham smoking an English blend during a winter snow in their snug libraries in front of cozy fires. Not so much during a tennis party in July.

I'm inclined to say my desire to smoke a pipe varies with the weather. Cold and/or wet, load a pipe; hot with sticky yellow sunlight, nah, not till later.

 

[RookieGuy]

The outside air temperatures tend to make a difference for me, and for exactly the reason you mentioned. Those days where the heat and humidity have their daily race to 115, that's not the day for a heavy blend. Those days usually call for something a bit lighter. Like an aromatic English!

 

[Ponycarman]

I tend to stick with burley, Virginia, and vaper blends through summer. They just seem more light and refreshing. Alot of the english and oriental blends come out more in tbe cool weather. They are more harty and warm. But this isn't something I stick too religiously. Just depends on how I'm feeling at that moment in time. Kinda go through waves of what I smoke more of and when.

 

[KellyG]

I don't relegate any particular blends or blend families to particular months or seasons. I do find I smoke more Balkans in the colder months but do smoke them occasionally in the warmer/hotter months, usually at night.

 

[8 Track]

My house is a smoking establishment so the impact of weather on my tobacco selection is negligible.

 

[ylekot]

I certainly don't have the experience with any real tobacco that isn't drugstore stuff I just smoke the same stuff all the time, I'm not real adventurous

 

[AimlessWanderer]

I'm finding that the blends that are not suited to "year round" use, are also blends that I will tire of before I've finished a tin/pouch. This is mainly because I only want a few options open at any time, and don't bounce between a vast array of open blends.

For the most part, I'd rather smoke a second bowl of a milder "year round" smoke, than have "occasional use" tobaccos drying out, and being nigh on unsmokeable when the urge finally comes round. As such, the more robust blends either haven't been selected for my ageing stash, or are staying in there until they've mellowed considerably.

 

[Columbo]

I tend to smoke my English blends most in fall and winter, when it’s cooler and damper. They just taste best then to me, especially when my bones ache a little more that time of year. And I tend to smoke certain stronger aromatics around the Christmas season, primarily for the uplift of others tucked away indoors.

But most of the year, and most of the day, I smoke a handful of daily standbys. Those are primarily Burleys, Virginias, and various combinations thereof (some with a dash of this, or a dash of that; VaPers, VaBurs, etc., etc.). The usual fare. I could not imagine puffing away a bowl of Nightcap out in this 95F+ furnace weather. But a little LLRR or some Escudo out on the park bench isn’t so bad. Tonight, for instance, a steamy day will end with an easygoing Sutliff match (and a diet cola).

There are, of course, the occasional treats and desserts. The bowls of Scottish Mixture with a late movie, or several DFKs or perhaps a lat bomb to every so often clear the mental ledger. A little surf and turf helps break the monotony of chicken and beef … and promotes a balanced and varied palate!

Were I a sporadic or occasional piper, I might partake differently.