What to do with your old dry tobacco?

You have almost certainly come across a tin of old pipe tobacco at the back of a cupboard. Very dry: can anything still be done with it? Here are a few tips for bringing your old pipe tobacco back to life.

Smoking old tobacco: good idea or bad?

Well-kept tobacco can be smoked over several months, or even several years. It is not unusual, though, to "forget" a tin or a pouch and come across it by chance. Old, dry tobacco is generally held to be unusable for a number of reasons, but above all for its acrid and unpleasant taste.

The other, more important reason is the way it burns. Tobacco that is old and too dry flares up very quickly. You will barely have lit your pipe before it has burnt through. In other words, smoking old dried-out tobacco is really a waste of time. But is that a reason to throw it away? Discover a tobacco pouch for pipes for storing pipe tobacco right away.

Bringing dried-out tobacco back to life

Old tobacco can regain a semblance of youth and be used again. How? Quite simply by rehydrating it. There are several ways of going about this, and here are the easiest.

If you have a teapot with a small infuser basket, fill it halfway with boiling water, then put a little tobacco in the infuser. Set it in place, making sure the tobacco never comes into contact with the water. After a few minutes it should have rehydrated slightly. The same trick works with a tea ball, which you fill and place above a cup of boiling water for a few minutes.

You can also try cutting a small piece of new sponge and taking care to dampen it. Put it in your tin or in the tobacco pouch and wait a few hours. The tobacco will then absorb the moisture from the sponge.

Finally, if you have kitchen paper, you can dampen it slightly, then place your old tobacco in a glass and cover it with the damp paper. With a little patience, your tobacco will rehydrate.