Thanks for the update! I hope they repair the quality control issues with Mississippi River. I haven't had a chance to try it yet and it has such a strong following that I really want to try it at some point. I'm glad I didn't get my first taste of it when the quality was suspect.
My first exposure to this blend (SPC MR) was a video by Jay Dagner. He was doing back flips over it. I got a tin and found it to be so tasty I considered it tobacco candy, because it was just that sweet and tasty without being actually 'sugary'... The problem with falling in love with particular blends, as I see it, is that the blender depends upon the consistency of the agricultural process, and that is subject to change on a regular basis.
Bradley; Just started watching your great videos and I really enjoy them! This one on Miss. River is interesting. I mostly get my Miss. River from Pipes & Cigars and I've always thought their bulk Miss. River was better than the tin. However, they have been on back order the past weeks. You bring up great points and has me wondering. Keep it up and I'll keep watching!! :) Thanks! Dan
Hi Bradley, great videos thank you. Typically for me, I've just had 425g bulk of Mississippi River delivered to me here in the U.K. last week to see what all the fuss was about! Such is life :-)
Just got my first tin of Mississippi river in on monday! I think its great! But all the hype surrounding this blend i must say i thought it was going to be the best tobacco ive ever smoked!
Hey Bradley, Thanks for the info. I have asking 4 Noggins for an age about M/River with little feed back, as they are the only folks that will ship to the U.K. I hope it comes back soon as I am down to the last few bowls.
Thanks for the report. Would be interesting to hear more from recent buyers of the blend. I wonder if the Smoking dagners know any more about it. THis was his favorite blend
Bradley, I've never tried any of the SPC blends. None sounded that interesting to me, and the price is pretty ridiculous. That aside, there likely was a drop in quality back when you recorded this. When Pipes and Cigars was located in New York, Russ Ouelette did a lot of their blending, and he would ship mass quantities to Sutliff or Cornell and Diehl, for tinning. When orders exceeded P&C's capabilities, the blending was contracted to Sutliff. Somewhere along the way, Sutliff was bought by Altadis, in France, and the quality went to hell, as it did with all of Sutliff's accounts. I'm surprised Iwan Ries even survived. Sutliff is now owned by MacBaren.
Yeah man. Thanks for the clarity. I got a tin recently of M.R. and it was really bad. I was wondering how so may people could like this stuff while it was lost on me. Granted it was my first time trying it based on all the hype it's gotten but it smoked like a bad aromatic with no flavor anywhere. Tried 3 more times with different dryness in different bowls and nothing.. Kept searching and searching through the bowl and never got anything to speak of. Now the plum pudding, however, was wonderful...but I'd love to try the real M.R.
Russ at Pipes and Cigars seems very concerned with consistency and QC. They used to make a blend called Virginia Night and was one of my absolute favorites, but they discontinued it because they couldn’t get the same quality ingredients. I think this is a good thong.
I spoke with Richard over the phone the owner and runner from 4noggins in late February when I got the last 2 ounces and he told me both blends won't be available until mid may and tins only no more bulk!..and I spoke with him a couple more times since then and now he says late may to mid June at the latest hopefully... But yes I do miss it I believe Jayson dagner pretty much advertised the shit out of the stuff. and everyone went crazy and ordered tons of it so it's no wonder there having problems keeping up with high demands so I'm hoping when it comes back out stock ppl take it easy and leave some for other ppl to enjoy what's the harm in ordering a couple tins until you run out I miss breaking up those amazing Lil nuglets of crumble cake and that smokey tasting sweetness
I have two tins that are dated from last year. Hoping they hold tight. Got a jar with about 6 ounces of bulk in it and got it in January. Just received an 8 ounce tin last week - the story gets curioser and curioser. Wonder if a rank amateur such as myself will notice- if I do, I imagine the change is pretty severe.
Colin Kelly - Yeah, I'm curious if I'd notice too. Like I said, my batch is pretty old. People seemed to be rather pissed about the change though, so it must have been substantial, at least to some people.
With Mississippi River (in the tin) I am getting a sour tin note that carries over to the smoking taste. Sour and not much else. I have been trying different pipes to see if that changes. I have some H&H Larry's blend that I find myself reaching for much more, ...that and others. MR has Perique, fruity, peppery, heavily fermented, ...but sour? Maybe I got a bad batch of MR.
Do you know, if SPC tobaccos are available in Europe? P.S.: I am glad, you returned to the old background. Apartment background looks better, than the brown one.
***** I was also curious about that since I am possibly moving to Stockholm in the coming months. From what I found, no, these blends are not available. PipesandCigars does not provide international shipping, but smokingpipes.com and I believe 4noggins will ship internationally. So if they eventually restock Seattle Pipe Club, it may be possible for you to order from them. Most likely, shipping will be expensive and you may have to pay taxes and duties on it if over a certain amount. Also, keep in mind, there are some countries in Europe that they can not ship to.
***** +Andrew Haugen is absolutely correct. 4noggins will actually lie on the packaging in order to save you on duty. As far as the background, the brown will always be there for smoking vids - just the way it is. Thanks for watching!
Bradley, completely and totally out of left field here, but do you think smokingpipes(dot)com is a good place to get estate pipes in general? Are the prices fair? Are the analyses they type up for each pipe pretty accurate? I saw a few I liked and wanted your opinion.
i ordered some bulk and enjoyed it so I went back like 2 days after receiving my order to buy some bulk and it was gone.. oops I picked up an 8oz tin though
Just saying oops I might have gotten 8ozs of an inferior version but the bulk is tasty I can't imagine the tin would be bad. I was at the Chicago show and they had samples of it and didn't mention any problems with availability. Maybe they just wanted to scale down production to tin only so quality could be controlled better.
So I just went and compared the two and the tin looks completely different. Hard to describe but you could see a noticeable difference. The smell is about the same but visually the cut, color, and moisture content was very noticeable
Update as if July 17.... Well its 100% true I got a tin of Mississippi river and a tin of plum pudding and both blends are noticeably different Mr tastes more like orlik dark strong all though it smells almost the same and plum pudding tastes like Balkan sobranie personally they both ain't nothing to special
The blender who still does quality control says the blend has not changed. This video is bad info. I find it odd you didn't ask the blender since your within spitting distance of him.
+LowPriceEdition - The Seattle Pipe Club blends are actually made by Pipes and Cigars, with whom I DID communicate. They didn't come straight out and say "yeah, the blend is worse now," but they did mention "production issues" and wanting to make sure the quality is up to snuff as the reasons for the production halt. That was back in May, so the situation could have evolved since then.
+Stuff&Things no the blender is Joe Lankford. Sutliff is the manufacturer in the same way C&D is the manufacturer for Pease blends. Joe Lankford the blender still does QC for the blends. Straight from his mouth it hasn't changed. Joe Lankford lives in Seattle (go figure). The "production issue" was Sutliff ramping up production to meet demand not a change in the recipe.
+LowPriceEdition - It is manufactured by Pipes and Cigars. I know that Joe Lankford came up with the recipe, but he doesn't actually produce it. Pipes and Cigars does. I never said that the recipe had changed. I said that people had been complaining that the quality hadn't been up to snuff. I then reported that Pipes and Cigars was temporarily halting production in an attempt to straighten out any of the issues they were having with quality control. I also said that the quality had probably suffered because they had to cut corners to meet demand. Seems like you didn't actually watch my video, or if you did, you didn't pay close enough attention.
+Stuff&Things Sutliff makes the Pipes & Cigars blends including SPC blends. Joe Lankford is still involved and does quality control. He's saying it hasn't changed.
I never said that the blender changed the recipe. I said that people were complaining about the quality of recent batches. Pipes and Cigars announced that the blend would be unavailable for a short time while they worked on issues with quality control. I'm quite sure that the recipe has remained the same, but the implementation had suffered do to the manufacturer trying to meet high demand. That was the current and correct information when this video was recorded, which was in May. It may very well be that the quality is back up to par now. I wouldn't know because I haven't had a tin recently. It also stands to reason that the blender would certainly claim that the quality is the same as it's always been.
