Bad Taste while Smoking a Tobacco Pipe

What causes a bitter, chemical taste when smoking a particular pipe?

When it comes to matters of taste, it can be very difficult to identify the source of the problem. What seems bitter or sour to one smoker, may be completely undetectable to another. And sometimes our mouths go through a "funk" (for example, after having a cold) that can affect how everything tastes. But there are several common causes that I can mention.

The number one suspect for odd flavors when smoking a pipe is the tobacco itself. I can't tell you how many times I've purchased a tobacco--even one that I had smoked before and it was fine--only to have it leave a terrible chemical taste in my mouth. Even though this may seem self-evident, be sure to try more than one tobacco in the pipe, just to make sure it's not an anomaly with the tobacco.

Strange tastes can also be caused by the pre-carbon material used to coat the inside of the bowl. Every company has a different "recipe" for those coatings, and sometimes they just get it wrong. If you suspect this is the cause, wrap a piece of sandpaper around a wooden dowel and carefully sand the inside of the tobacco chamber until the carbon coating is completely gone.

I once experienced an odd flavor with a tried and true Savinelli pipe that had already been broken in. Believe it or not, it turned out to be the balsa filters! I'm not sure what the problem was, but one particular package of filters contributed a very bitter, sour taste to every smoke. When I figured out it was the filters, I simply discarded them and used a different package. If you're using the balsa filters, you could test this by smoking the pipe without filters using the converter tube.

Odd, unpleasant flavors can also be caused by the stain used on pipes. Sometimes during crafting, the stain will inadvertently get inside the bowl or shank of the pipe. This can create bitter or chemical flavors during smoking. This is common with Peterson of Dublin pipes, since they dip the entire pipe into the stain rather than brushing it on. In such cases, the sandpaper/dowel method works well for removing stain from the bowl. But getting it out of the shank can be tricky, since you can't sand the inside of the shank without altering the mortise/tenon fitting. Even without sanding, it will eventually wear off, but it may take quite a while.

Lastly, I'll mention one other possible cause that is much more rare. The strange taste/flavor could be from the wood itself. Since briar is a natural product, it's always possible that the wood may have an inherent bitter taste due to saps, resins, or tannins that didn't get completely removed during the curing process. This can be more difficult to overcome, depending on the severity of the case. Many who experience this say that it takes a very long time to smoke out the foul taste.