Tongue Burn, Tongue Afire, Raw-tongue... What is WRONG?!

[Mister Moo]

Attention rookies. I used to think tongue burn and cheek-fire were normal when smoking a pipe - 1972, Germany.

Since the internet I learned that tongue burn is, more often than not, a symptom of a mechanical problem (smoking and/or bowl-filling technique or, rarely, pipe design) or too moist a tobacco.

1. Ribbon/shag cut tobacco moistness. Squish a clump between your fingers and if:

1. it flattens and stays flat, way too moist
2. it crunches and turns to dust, way too dry; or
3. it spring back quickly, probably just right.

2. Flake moistness on the 1-3 Moo Flake Scale. Bend a flake in half and if:

1. it bends like rubber and nothing breaks, it is too wet
2. it snaps like a fresh Saltine it is way too dry; or
3. about 50% of the flake fractures at the bend it's probably just right

It is easier to give a filled pipe a little extra moosh than it is to relieve a clogged bowl or airway. Avoid filling a pipe more tightly than to offer a very slight resistance to a sip of air before lighting. After lighting the bowl will probably go out; tamp it gently - to slight resistance - and relight. Be sure that, as you smoke, most ribbons and virtually all flakes will expand in a matter of seconds-to-minutes; flakes can expand quite a bit. No matter what you're smoking, if you tamp too hard it will plug the bowl more or less. If you overcompress most flakes they will almost certainly stop airflow. HERE"S THE DEAL: as soon as a bowl is overcompressed (i.e. tamped too firmly) your pipe-sucker mechanism goes into over drive as, for no good reason the pipe keeps going out. So, with a need for a relight or not, you begin power-puffing. Worst case scenario? Doing this will gradually cause the insides of your cheeks to unravel and/or make your tongue feel like it has been sandpapered with gasoline.

What do we learn from all this?

a. excessively dry tobacco burns hot/harsh even in a pipe with light draw; and excessively moist tobacco may create steam and, for sure, a wad of tobacco that is very easy to overcompress. Either way you end up with a sore tongue

b. fill/tamp a bowl with a light enough touch that it never resists your draw much more than straw in glass of water. With experience you may be able to tighten things up much more and still have an easy smoke but, if you already have a sore tongue, let that thought perish for about a year or two.

c. if the heel of your pipe gets swampy looking (or if smoke ends up with a wad of wet tobacco in the heel) you need to give that pipe a good rest. Wet pipes end up tasting sour and encourage problems with tobacco overcompression. With new pipe that ends up wet (fast) there is a lot to be said for smoking half-bowls for a while. Half bowls means half the moisture getting into the heel and, given a drier pipe, a more rapid formation of cake (with helps manage both moisture and heat).

Rarely we encounter a pipe that simply has too small an airway (either in the pipe itself or, more commonly, somewhere in the stem). Like Hank Hill's narrow urethra, you can complain about it... or fix it. In most cases a hand-held/twisted 5/32" bit can open a pipe shank, pipe airhole or pipestem.

Symptoms of a too-small airway or a distorted/irregular airway include a pipe that whistles when you blow through it (empty, of course) or, typically, a pipe that is chronically wet in the bowl or, more likely, inside the stem. Wetness always occuring in the stem can usually be resolved, by the way, with a small smoothing- or opening modification on the tenon.

Tongue-burn sucks but it can be defeated with small improvements in technique which, by the way, lead to more smoke with slwer puffing and much less effort - no effort at all, really. Anyone else with tips on how to avoid rookie tongue-bite, please follow...