Now this one rocked! I'd had this for almost a week as well and was waiting for the perfect opportunity. Well, someone was looking for something like this so ... oh yeah, if I mess something up, I'm not a professional reviewer. You can have my pay docked if you find errors. I'm sure there are some.
Hardware. Cheapie long 510 atty on my vv3 cranked to max, 11W. I wouldn't even try to vape this in a tank of any kind. That would be like putting a filter on a pipe. People do it, but eeewwww!!! Probably best on a mech with a really good dual coil RDA and subohm, but I don't even have a bad RDA yet. I might come back and report once I get one.
Ahlusion - Devil Dog!
For those of you who've smoked a pipe, I'll put the tl;dr version up front. This is the first few draws on a perfectly lit bowl of a good Balkin or English pipe tobacco. Light, smoky, leathery, maybe a little very, very dark molasses on the back of the tongue and a little pepper on the exhale, fantastic!
Now, for those of you who haven't smoked a pipe, here's a really, really quick and dirty intro. There are two main kinds of pipe tobacco, aromatics and English blends. Aromatics have flavoring (called casing) added to them. These can be cherry, vanilla, even licorice. The other kind, English, has very little or no casing and is rarely more than sugar or possibly PG. Now, aromatic tobacco flavors are very common in vaping. English (or Balkan, depnding) is extremely rare, particularly as it's hallmark, a kind of smoked tobacco called Latakia, is extremely difficult to get into a vape form.
Well, Ahlusion did it. They managed to get Latakia tobacco into an ejuice. Now I love Latakia tobacco. To me it tastes great. To some, it smells and tastes like burning dirty sweat socks. It has a very earthy, smokey, dark almost leathery taste to it. Many also find it very rich.
Perique - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia is another tobacco, grown and cured in a very peculiar way and used in classic English blends, giving them a peppery bite that many (including myself) find quite tasty.
Cavendish and burley are other tobaccos used in English blends, but they are less critical to the typical characteristics of an English blend. They are used far more heavily in aromatics, especially in cherry or wine cavendish. Myself, I don't care for high cavendish blends as they taste somewhat sour to me. This is part of why I like the English blends.
So, back to ejuice. (Let me take another few vapes.) This is not a simple, straightforward blend, just as a good English pipe tobacco is (or should be) very complex. It's a little sweet, like very early in a bowl of English blend with maybe a little more of the Virginia or Kentucky tobaccos, but the Latakia and Perique come through beautifully. (as if anything could stop them) There's a lot of leather and smoke to this, probably from the Latakia with a nice clean, peppery bite from the Perique on the finish.
Just delightful. It doesn't have the heavy, almost overwhelming mouth feel and density of pipe smoke, but for a vape, this is probably about as close as it's possible to get in the medium. And for people who haven't smoked a pipe with English blends, it's probably a kick in the teeth. I'd love to subohm this! Actually, this one juice may just be enough to convince me to get a mech with a really good RDA.
It's that good. Now, like I said, if you're not a pipe smoker, it's going to be a shock. This isn't anything like a cigarette. Now it is possible to get cigarettes with real* Perique (certain American Spirit cigarettes) and even Latakia (Balkan Sobranie and a few others) but generally, no, you're not going to find these tobaccos wrapped in paper. If you like rich, earthy, smoky tastes without sweetener or tweaking, then you might want to give this one a try. If the strongest tasting tobacco you've ever tried is any standard American filtered cigarette, you will probably want to pass on this. It is strong for a vape and vaped the way it should be, in a dripper, it would be overwhelming to most people unfamiliar with the taste.
Those of use who do like such things will simply have to vape your share.
*Most so called perique is only in the style. It's nearly extinct in its native form with only a few barrels full a year being produced and much of it going into said cigarettes.