Mouth Tastes Like Licking an Ashtray?

[Mister Moo]

Not here. Not once, I'll bet.

A blog I recently stumbled across had a semi-buried comment from poor old "chip." I doubt chip is here but, if so, please feel free to chime in and set me straight if I'm off base. Poor chip said pipe smoking smells good but the next day, just like cigars, it makes your mouth taste like you've been licking ashtrays. This gave me pause to think that, throughout various pipe forums and herfs I've wandered through I never, once, heard anyone say that pipe smoking made them feel like they'd been licking ashtrays. Poor chip!

So that made me think about they ways you could (mis)smoke a pipe and feel like you'd been licking ashtrays. I suppose some combination of bad oral hygiene, smoking a really dirty pipe, improperly filling a pipe, grossly overheating a pipe and/or using Bugler Boy Burley for cigarettes would do the trick. Fair to say there are plenty enough old farts and wise enough not-old-farts here to make sure new forum members are spared such blunders.

Forums really do impart a huge skill-set for whatever area of interest you explore. I suffered like poor old chip when I first misused a pipe and tobacco way back in the pre-internet 20th century. Pipe smoking from A-to-Z isn't exactly an intuitive exercise - you will benefit by meeting the right people and getting pointed in the right direction. Witness all the forums and scads of advice offered, some good and some bad. But the fact is, without someone first willing to stand up and cover "cello on or off" in a post(i) then you never get around to figuring out if seven-year-old madagascar vanilla(ii) is real or imagined.

So what does it all mean? Not much except, thanks to a handful of folks here (and there), I learned a lot of tricks about coffee roasting, pipes and cigars fast, cheap and easy. Y'all have made life more enjoyable with nary a hint of licked-ashtray taste. Thank you and keep posting, here-and-everywhere, all possible information in good spirit, courtesy and respect.

(i) Cello on
(ii) Imagined

[dmkerr]

My question has always been, who has licked an ashtray? Try as I might, I can't come up with one good reason to do this, even if it's to protect a well-worn analogy.

I share your sentiments about all the helpful folks on the pipe boards. One of the reasons I think of these days as the Golden Age of Pipe Smoking (despite all the Carrie Nation-inspired laws) is that it's the Age of Information. The kind of info I pick up here in 2 minutes used to take months of schmoozing the B&M boys and their pals to extract. Many of the questions posed here are things I never thought to ask and the answers provide benefits I never considered.

Smoke up, gentlemen! It truly is a great time to be a pipesmoker.

[Mad Hatter]

Yep, it was great getting into pipe smoking at the time I did and then several months later finding the forums. It was a community where most people were at the same level and we all learned while bouncing ideas off each other. Dust rose and dust settled and still we live/we learn.

[Mister Moo]

Originally Posted by dmkerr

My question has always been, who has licked an ashtray?

Chip, I guess.

Poor old Chip.

The Chipster...

Chipp-pah...

Chip-O-RAMA...

The ChipsMeister.

[MarkC]

What does a cello have to do with vanilla? You lost me on that.

[Mister Moo]

Originally Posted by MarkC

What does a cello have to do with vanilla?

It's a cigar forum thing, Mark. Sorry about that. Cigar grasshoppers invariably ask, "Is it better to store cigars with the cellophane wrapper on or off?" If you're a good cigar guy you answer that question often. More likely you make pithy references to the "Search" function, all in CAPS. Haven't been over yonder in a while. Don't really know what they say now. Probably pithy stuff about "Never heard of a search function?" I guess.

Cigar community code (which we lack - pipers are code free) for those flavors, real or imagined, detected way way way deep in the amphibian brain of people who are little too involved with their spanish cedar humidors and Xikar cutters might reference "a hint of seven year old Madagascar vanilla on the backside of an upwind exhale."

In Pipeville, land of the mellow and the home of the ghost, an answer (if somewhat less assaultive) is always there for those who ask, "How do you get cake?" or "Should I store my pipe with a pipecleaner in the stem?" and so forth. Point being, people here constantly, selflessly and courteously answer those same/same questions so that everyone has a chance to move on to greater pipe enjoyment and, presumably, harder questions.

[madurolover]

Originally Posted by Mister Moo

It's a cigar forum thing, Mark. Sorry about that. Cigar grasshoppers invariably ask, "Is it better to store cigars with the cellophane wrapper on or off?" If you're a good cigar guy you answer that question often. More likely you make pithy references to the "Search" function, all in CAPS. Haven't been over yonder in a while. Don't really know what they say now. Probably pithy stuff about "Never heard of a search function?" I guess.

Hey, I don't do that Dan! I actually have a text document in Notepad with an already written answer to several of the most common questions. This way I can just copy and paste. Saves me a whole lot of time for doing nothing.

[Z.Kramer]

Originally Posted by dmkerr

My question has always been, who has licked an ashtray? Try as I might, I can't come up with one good reason to do this, even if it's to protect a well-worn analogy.

I hope you don't mind if I use this quote for my signiature.

[Roddy]

In over thirty years of smoking I can't say my mouth has ever tasted like I licked an ashtray.

I did get hold of some cherry stuff once that tasted like I licked the inside of a toilet bowl. I won't go into great detail as to how I can compare the two but it involved a night of heavy drinking.

[Mister Moo]

Originally Posted by Roddy

I won't go into great detail as to how I can compare the two but it involved a night of heavy drinking.

I had that happen with Paladin Black Cherry and a few too many mojitos. It's tough.

[juni]

"Should I store my pipe with a pipecleaner in the stem?"

Well, should I?

I've never licked an ashtray but the other day I tipped the Peterson half-way through a bowl (as instructed by dubinthedam's video on how to maintain a pipe). Big mistake! The cr*p in the "system" part spilled into the stem and it felt like drinking tobacco juices.

[MarkC]

He sat there, sagely knodding at the others, hoping to hell that none of them realized he'd read 'cello' as a musical instrument...

[dmkerr]

Originally Posted by MarkC

He sat there, sagely knodding at the others, hoping to hell that none of them realized he'd read 'cello' as a musical instrument...

...while sawing madly on his 18th century Klotz, so as not to disobey the original command, all the while thinking "What the hell does this have to do with the pipe???"...

[dmkerr]

Originally Posted by Z.Kramer

I hope you don't mind if I use this quote for my signiature.

You mean you like that better than "It's a shame what you see when you're not packing heat"????

[dmkerr]

Originally Posted by Roddy

In over thirty years of smoking I can't say my mouth has ever tasted like I licked an ashtray.

I did get hold of some cherry stuff once that tasted like I licked the inside of a toilet bowl. I won't go into great detail as to how I can compare the two but it involved a night of heavy drinking.

They have tobaccoreviews.com and this site for reviews of pipe tobaccos. Are there any sites that review different tasting toilet bowls? Just curious....