He will be missed

Reiner Barbi, Germany's best-known carver generally recognized as one of the foremost stem makers in the world has passed away. Suddenly... He was also regarded as one of the most versatile shape creators. From semi-traditional to avant-garde.

Barbi's fame is partly due to approachability, both of the pipes and the person - his communicative nature and the very reasonable prices of his entry-level pieces ensure an ever-growing following.

Along with Cornelius Mãnz, Rainer is a favorite among German smokers. Despite huge diversity of design, he maintained a coherent style - more so than many carvers with a much smaller shape repertoire.

A bit made by Barbi must be felt to be believed. It surpasses anything produced elsewhere. His pipes include horn or Cumberland bits and silver mountings. Since "Barbis" are often very light and always supremely balanced, the overall effect is one of total smoking ease.

He will be missed....

Below is a short

For 25 years the master has created and finished objects of the pipe maker’s art, year by year seeking to create works of the most supreme elegance, which in support of the elements of classic harmony combine filigree delicacy with perfection of line. As a champion of a timeless, simple elegance, Rainer Barbi produces without ornamentation or add-ons the creations. With a dreamlike sureness the master recognises the sensitive individuality in each and every briar block, and applies his natural discovering in timeless, tension-filled art. These precious items are distinguished not only by a striking poise, but by their perfection of finish. The working of the surface of the wood and the mouthpiece command the immediate attention of every connoisseur and the formation of the bite of his mouthpieces awake in the users of his creations a feeling of well-being at the first contact. He also attains the ultimate in bringing out the inner life of his pieces, of the finest handwork, which no machine could approach. This perfection, love for detail and unmistakable personal style are the basic secrets of his success.

Rainer Barbi was born on 26th June 1948 in Hannover, and lives and works in Worth, a picturesque village in Northern Germany. After gaining his school leaving certificate from a liberal arts school in Hamburg, Rainer Barbi nurtured his love of pipes during a study visit in Jura. Beginning as simply a pipe smoker, Rainer Barbi began to design his own creations, and taught himself to express his faculties of handicraft and creativity. His humanistic studies had endowed him with a critical spirit, and through his own response to that art which reduces the classic lines with their transparent beauty to the essentials, his demands on the creations which he himself fashioned continued to grow.

In this way his path towards perfectionism and the aesthetics of the modern classicist in the world of the pipe was a logical outgrowth of his own striving towards the absolute. Only to the greatest embodiments of the creative spirit is it given, through the search for purity and focus on the essential, to attain timelessness. Thus are the works of Rainer Barbi sought after internationally, and highly prized as works of unsurpassed beauty.

What to do to learn about your favorite hobby

What to do in order to learn about our favorite hobby… smoking…

If you want to really learn about your favorite hobby its important to frequent the same venues other guys and gals do. Bloggs, Forums, News Groups and your local cigar club and pipe club…

Today, because of all the smoking restrictions it has become difficult to congregate at a bar or a restaurant and in many instances, clubs to meet new people who enjoy a good cigar or a bowl of tobacco.

So we, cigar and pipe smokers around the world, have created the means to do that. Lets start with the club… men and women who enjoy a good cigar usually enjoy good wine and good company…goes without saying…lol If you want to meet people who know about cigars, join your local cigar club. These people will at least, once a month, do a cigar tasting and enjoy it at a venue where they can smoke, drink and eat to their leisure.

How? Contact your local smoke shop, in this case us! Benningtons of course. We know who’s who and where. Same thing goes for the pipe club, which in fact there are more pipe clubs than there are cigar clubs. Because of the nature of the pipe, its smoker tends to be more of a listener and ponderer. Therefore there will people talking about the more artistic side of the hobby, the pipe is an “objet d’art”. Many pipe smokers will shell out $1000 or $2000 for one pipe.

For pipe smokers there is more information to gather than there is about cigars. It’s a two part, or two level Intel to find. The Pipe is one; where it was made, who made it, what kind of briar and the finishes and shapes. Then the tobacco; is it English, which there are a huge number of blends, or is it Aromatic, which has an infinite number of blends too. Then there the accoutrement… tampers, scrapers, pouches and so on.

For the cigar smoker we look to find out about the location of the tobaccos, how many in the blend, who produced it and who stores it for sale. This is a biiiig deal in regards to the cigar. If the cigar is improperly stored I, as a customer will go find who does in this case Benningtons! Of course…lol

There are also the on-line locations: Forums, clubs, and people like me who

created a blogg to always keep you informed about our favorite hobby smoking… Like Zino

Davidoff used to say….. “Smoke less but smoke the best”

Long ashes guys…. Till next week

How to develope tasting skills for cigars & pipe tobacco

Its impossible to transfer to another human being how or what we feel, with the exception of the use of language. All we can do is describe things and people, and possibly our memory resulting from the descriptions will direct us to different cigars or pipe tobacco, creating enough curiosity to risk leaving our comfort zone of what we already know.

The only way we can make sense of the many reviews and descriptions we encounter is to create a mission. Find our ideal cigar…create the ability to recognize characteristics in taste, aroma and texture.

This is a “talent” that is learned and developed over time. Like everything else.Take heed “grasshopper”, it’s not the final objective you should work towards, but the journey, the cigar mindfulness.

The human mammal has the ability to recognize 5 basic flavors without much effort; bitter, tart (between bitter and sour), sour, sweet and salt. Mind you though, that we also depend on our noses, our olfactory sense to define or refine certain flavors. Keep it simple and don’t stick to the first smoke you find yourself comfortable with. There is a myriad of cigar brands, and each one has many cigar lines. Not to mention the different sizes and shapes in each line. For the pipe tobacco the differences come in the blends of English or Aromatic tobaccos.

Where an English tobacco will not be “cased”, i.e. have sugar.

A cigar is made of 3 or 4 parts, depending on how simple or complex the blend is.

1 – Filler (can have 1 or 2 tobaccos). Usually has 3 to 4 leaves; produces flavor and a little combustion

2 – Binder (holds the filler together). Produces combustion and sometimes aroma.

3 – Wrapper (wraps everything together). Provides: taste, aroma and combustion.

Same thing goes for the pipe tobacco. A blend will have tobaccos for taste, aroma and combustion. If a pipe tobacco only has Cavendish it will never burn correctly, the blend will need a dryer tobacco for combustion, to enhance or cut the flavor.

One thing I learned, when I was being trained by Davidoff, was that we look for balance.

Read everything you can get your hands on about scotch, bourbon or wine. Wine will be the beverage where you will find the most abundant possibilities taste-wise. “Wine for Dummies” is a fun and informative read. It will educate you on how to use the palate. It is totally relevant to cigars and pipe tobacco.

Reviews, there are millions out there. From all walks of life. Read them; knowledge is power. Develop your vocabulary; find the most evidence for the use of certain flavors in the description of a cigar or pipe tobacco. Full-bodied cigars tend to have nutty and coffee notes. You will also discover leather (for aroma), fruit (for aroma and taste) and flowers (for aroma and taste). A side-bar… many tobacco growers plant fruit, nuts, herbs and flowers around their tobaccos. Or, the tobacco will be put in a oak barrel to age, from scotch, brandy or wine.

Notice the aromas that surround you, how can they influence your tasting of your cigar or pipe tobacco? Wine tasting might sound like something outside your reality, but it’s a great way to start training your palate. Someone said that “our palate is like a high-def apparatus with only basic cable”. As you develop the new skill, you develop a new language. Smoking cigars and pipe tobacco is also about memory. It’s about what we like and dislike. If you are a fan of pepper or “hot” food, then a Zino Classic or AVO XO will be right up your alley. Its their nature to be peppery, its how they were blended. From our 5 basic tastes there are an amazing number of possible combinations; where you can identify the sweetness of honey or maple in a cigar or pipe tobacco; or even the taste of a certain tea… like black Indian tea. Its all very subjective…

What you like, what you enjoy is the next best cigar or pipe tobacco. Hopefully we will develop a precision instrument, capable of detecting nano particles of familiar or long forgotten flavors in the short span of the enjoyment of a fine cigar or a bowl of pipe tobacco.

Blockages and airflow problems in smoking pipes

Closed off draft holes

What do you do when your pipe. Even after careful cleaning, doesn’t smoke as well as it did when you got it the first time.

There are a few techniques you can try at home to bring your new or old pipe to how it smoked before.

Before we begin there a few rules of thumb concerning any Do-it-yourself repairs. Firstly, if you are not sure send it to a professional, Inexperience and rashness may sometimes lead to disaster. Second, always use common sense, never forcing and always doing a little at a time. And lastly, start with the least invasive approach, like running pipe cleaners.

Checking for airflow problems : - Constriction of airflow in the draft hole from bowl to bit is one of the most common problem. Blow through the pipe to determine if the draw is constricted. Thin piched sounds or whistled are indicators of blockage. Next, blow through stem and stummel separately. This will determine where there is a blockage. Running a pipe cleaner from the stummel (bowl and shank) to the mortise (exit at end of shank) and feeling where it catches will many times tell you where you problem lies.

The throat, where the bowl hole begins would be the first area to be examined. Because of the minimum size of the hole in the throat, when the cake built up, it can also build-up around the throat slowly closing the airflow, diminishing good airflow, which most of the time is not obviously noticeable.
The last solution for a choked throat, after bristled pipe cleaners, is a handheld drill, a dull one. Using the third rule of thumb, using the least invasive approach, start with a drill bit that is likely the smallest.

This bit should slide through the shank. Increase the size of the bit until one will feel rather snug as you work it into the shank. Do not use this method if the bit feels tight in the air hole, you risk altering the original bore of the shank and even cracking it. In this case send it to a professional.

Having chosen the correct bit for the ork ahead, carefully work it into the air hole toward the chamber. Do not apply pressure on the bit, it will work as you turn it. Observe the bit emerging inside the bowl , stop turning the moment it does. If you work the bit further into the bowl it can create an undesired trench into the floor of the chamber. As the bit appears inside the chamber, pieces from the cake should come out with it.

This technique will also work with shank that hasn’t een proper cleaning for some time and re-establish its original bore.

Tobacco Bugz

Tobacco beetles can not only eat your cigars down to dust, they can cost you a pretty penny. While not a new pest for cigar lovers, it is the leading insect that threatens stored tobacco. These critters do not discriminate. They will attack tobacco at any stage of manufacturing, up to retail and travel to your humidor.
Though it is the most common, the tobacco beetle is not the only predator that preys on tobacco. Several other insects such as the tobacco moth, the tobacco worm and at least12 other species of insects feed on the plant. Many of these insects were trapped either in tobacco factories, warehouses or found on cigars left in room temperature inside homes.

The tobacco beetle, which is larger than the cigarette beetle, is mainly a tropical species. It is identical to the cigarette beetle except that it is larger and is black instead of brown. The tobacco beetle attacks cured tobacco in much the same way as the cigarette beetle. The tobacco moth is sometimes a serious pest of flue-cured tobacco on the farm, farmers say. Infestation may begin even in the curing barn and continue until the tobacco is marketed. Most damage occurs in the pack-house, where the tobacco is bulked before being graded. Infestation may develop from moths flying from commercial storages or farms nearby, or it may be already established on the farm and carried over from year to year in scrap tobacco, peas or beans, stock feeds or other host foods. Tobacco dealers and manufacturers constantly practice insect-control measures and maintains damage-free on insect infestations. Experts recommend that the farmer should market his tobacco as soon as possible to reduce the possibility of the crop becoming infested with the cigarette beetle or the tobacco moth.

By adequate sanitation, he can do much to prevent insect infestation. Immediately after the crop is sold, the packaging and grading room should be thoroughly cleaned and the walls brushed. All scrap tobacco should be hauled away and destroyed. Neither feed nor seed should be stored in the pack house. The loss of goods to a manufacturer when a consumer buys insect infested merchandise is difficult to evaluate. There is also no estimate of the amount of tobacco damaged yearly by stored-product insects. “I wouldn’t know where to begin,” said Bennie Cochran, an Entomologist at North Carolina State University. “This one thing I know, it is far more than anyone can imagine. I would bet that every avid cigar smoker who stores cigars in their homes, at one time has been a victim of the tobacco beetle, bud worms or tobacco moth. These insects attack the principal types of cigarettes, cigar, chewing and snuff tobaccos, as well as most forms of manufactured tobacco. Burley and Maryland tobaccos are less likely to be attacked, but occasionally these types are severely damaged by the insects. The larva burrows through the tobacco, making rather clean-cut holes, and leaving a fine powder behind. Flavor is impaired and the cigars and cigarettes are further made unfit for smoking by the holes on the wrapper or paper, which prevent a satisfactory draw. The larvae, sometimes known in the industry as worms or grubs, are almost microscopic in its initial stage, The worms are caterpillars that begin their lives as eggs hatched into larvae at the top of the plant. These larvae feed on the plant, and unless quickly detected, will eat away a box of a dozen cigars in a matter of weeks.

BELOW ARE STEPS TO ERADICATE TOBACCO BUGS IN YOUR HUMIDOR AND HOW TO PREVENT THEM FROM RETURNING

1. First, double bag all the cigars that were in the humidor with the contaminated cigars, even those which don’t have holes. They probably have eggs and larvae. You can also use tupperware containers. One inside the other (Because of the extra moisture produced by the freezing, the extra bag or container will act as a deterrent for the moisture the freezing might produce). In a regular frost free freezer the temperature should be 10 F. to 15 F. above Zero. If in a deep freezer the temperature should be -10 F. Keep the cigars in the regular freezer for 30 days and in the deep freezer for 15 days.

2. While the cigars are in the freezer, clean your humidor with a vacuum. Leave it empty and open for at least a week. The bugs will die without its food source, the tobacco.

3. When it is time to remove the cigars from the freezer, transfer them to the refrigerator for 24 hours. Then let your cigars reach room temperature as they sit outside for another day. Return your cigars to your humidor and humidify them again. Be patient, don’t try to speed up this process.

4. When ever you come across Cuban cigars freeze them immediately, following the steps above. Better safe than sorry.
Long ashes everyone.