New snuser and 3 reviews

[rollinred]

Hey fellow snusers, this is my first post here and I will give you an idea of who I am, how I ended up here, and 3 of my snus opinions.

First off my name is Tyler, I hail from Lake Leelanau Michigan and hope to never live anywhere else. I have a freshwater lake and a free boat slip 300 feet from my door, a bar 50 feet from my house, and a wonderful wife and a 5 month old son named Joel, and I have an endless supply of fantasic beer because I brew my own.

My tobacco history starts with the days when I was working out in the summer I was 16, preparing for hockey season in another month when my friend introduced me to a can of kodiak wintergreen, and unlike most other first time snuff users getting sick off of it the first time never happend, instead I just go a major buzz that I wanted to last forever. Since then I have been on and off smoking, but never really got to far into smokeing, smokless tobacco is my thing. But I just could not get past the harsh reality of cancer. It truly scares the shit out of me. Leaving my wife... and son... forever, to fend for themselves was a terrible thought. So I tried to quit chew, it never worked, smoking is easy to quit, you get the hard cravings for 3 days but then its pretty much gone, at least compared to the american chewing tobaccos. They are the hardest thing on this earth to put down and never pick back up. Not to insult any former smokers, but until you have experienced dip withdrawls, you havnt experienced anything, but congrats on your giving up smoking, it still is an accomplishment.

So with that I decided to research the cancer aspect and found that timberwolf is highly recommended for its lower TSNA levels, and by the way it tastes damn good. But I started researching TSNA in smokeless and came across some readings which state that swedish snus is the ultimate lowest level of TSNA's. So I took a gander at buysnus and northerner when I found them through google and saw a can of lucky strikes and said "holy crap, I have had that stuff before, and it was good." Turns out I had been snusing for several months when I was hanging out with a friend several years ago but didnt even know what it was.

Anyway on to the stuff you all really care about... some reviews, after all that research I decided I would order only 3 different snus types because 1) you have to try things more to just a couple times to see if you really like them or not 2) you cant judge somthing when you dont fully understand it 3) I did not want to overload my taste sense with many different types of snus.

So what did I pick 4 cans of Skruf stark los, 4 cans of Ettan los, and 4 cans of Nick & J portions.

Skruf- Loved it at the start, thought it to be the best tobacco product I have ever used, but after a couple of cans I started to notice somthing... This stuff has a very slight blewberry like flower-ish taste. I hate the taste of blueberrys and hate the smell of flowers. But yet it is still good. I really wish I had not discovered this weird sweet flavor because I dont like anything that tastes sweet at all, candy, desserts, cake, non of it, it is all gross because of how sweet it is. But yet the skruf hides the sweetness well. When its in the lip I only taste a slight bit of the blueberry like flavor, but the relaxation factor is very good. All in all skruf will be on my list of occasional snus, not for normal purchase, but a couple cans a month. Any more and I would be throwing up for the sweet taste.

All-in-all, Skruf Stark Los is getting a 6 out of 10 from my taste buds/nicotine receptors.

Next review is the N & J portions... And this one is very diffictult for me to even review because it is a love hate type thing. Lets do the hate first, terrible smell, if you take a huge sniff of this stuff you might get sick, it smells good with a small sniff, but a big drag and it smells like amonnia, yeah it actually burns the nostils. The flavor is not as good as skruf and it starts to make you salivate very quickly. I have a hard time keeping a portion in past 15 minutes.
The good in N & J, flavor, it is strong, which is good, and the fact that it is portion. This has been my snus for in the bars and stuff. Easy to get in and easy to take out, no mess.

Overall I will give N & J a 4 out of 10, could have gone as low as 2 out of 10 but its very strong flavor and high nicotine content gave it an extra 2 points.

Next came the Ettan- What to say here... WOW... Rad... I dont know, this stuff is well above the last two, to me it smells like the premade chocolate cookie dough you can buy at the grocery store, even though I dont like sweets I love the smell of cookies baking and the dough before hand. The texture is PERFECT for forming a pris. The taste of this stuff is beyond real, why can't american snuff even come close to this, a salt flavor every time you touch it with the tounge, very smooth with no off flavors that inhibit the experience, just an absolute wonderful flavor. Buy Ettan and you wont be upset.

Ettans final rating get an 8 out of 10 from me, I wanted to make it 10 out of 10 but I just have not experienced enough snus to give it a perfect rating yet, but be on the lookout, it may move up to that level



Now I have a suprise snus rating for everyone. It goes by the name of Tourney snus. It is not the triumph snus that many of you may have heard of, the tourney is being marketed in northern states like michigan and ohio I believe.

I grabbed two cans of this stuff even before I got my swedish snus so now after trying all of them I can fairly judge this product. It comes in 3 different flavors, wintergreen, spearamint, and origional all tobacco flavor. They appear to be of white portion, 20 or so in a can. It is unrefrigerated at the place I bought it. First try was the spearamint... wow, very very good. the flavor is by far my favorite among dip and snus alike, I wish they had this years ago when I started chewing, It would have been my second choice. The origional flavor was just as good, I can not attest for the wintergreen, as I cant stand wintergreen flavor in the first place.

Tourney snus portions get a 5 out of 10 from me. Even though true swedish snus users might give me crap for it, if you have not had tourney snus, it really is a good white portion. Nothing like ettan, this really is the first good american marketed snus. Give the pure tobacco flavored stuff a try if you ever see it and I bet you wont be dissapointed much at all. To me it really is better than N & J.


Well I hope you all are not past you bed time from reading my ungodly long post, but you will see more huge posts around here now that I have logged on, I am one of the few people that types faster than I can talk so this post only took me about 10 minutes, it is somthing that gets me in trouble in forums because most people barely read faster than I can type so for now I am going to keep it to a minimum.

[RobsanX]

I totally agree that you can't know your taste in snus after trying a brand once or twice... I've discovered that my tastes have changed for different brands as I'm getting to the bottom of the cans... Good thing is I haven't tried a snus that I really don't like...

[toekuttr]

rollinred asserts:

So I tried to quit chew, it never worked, smoking is easy to quit, you get the hard cravings for 3 days but then its pretty much gone, at least compared to the american chewing tobaccos. They are the hardest thing on this earth to put down and never pick back up. Not to insult any former smokers, but until you have experienced dip withdrawls, you havnt experienced anything, but congrats on your giving up smoking, it still is an accomplishment.

Wow, I wish I woulda known that when I quit smoking! :lol: I actually quit both chew and cigs, several times each, and thought smoking was the harder habit to break myself. Dip actually seemed easy in comparison. Addiction is a complex issue, nothing is so black and white and seldom are blanket generalizations accurate. For me though, I'm also glad to have found a viable and satisfying alternative to both Cope and cigarettes in Snus. ymmv

[rollinred]

rollinred asserts:

So I tried to quit chew, it never worked, smoking is easy to quit, you get the hard cravings for 3 days but then its pretty much gone, at least compared to the american chewing tobaccos. They are the hardest thing on this earth to put down and never pick back up. Not to insult any former smokers, but until you have experienced dip withdrawls, you havnt experienced anything, but congrats on your giving up smoking, it still is an accomplishment.

Wow, I wish I woulda known that when I quit smoking! :lol: I actually quit both chew and cigs, several times each, and thought smoking was the harder habit to break myself. Dip actually seemed easy in comparison. Addiction is a complex issue, nothing is so black and white and seldom are blanket generalizations accurate. For me though, I'm also glad to have found a viable and satisfying alternative to both Cope and cigarettes in Snus. ymmv

See for me, smoking was never enjoyable, it was getting the nic fix as quick as possible, which smoking does, but dip satisfies the deep craving, because it has so much more nicotine. And smoking does not taste nearly as good as american dip or swedish snus, period. If someone says smoke tastes better than a planned out flavor, then they are lying.

Cigarettes taste no different that sweaty toe jam. It is a completely unnatural flavor that we somewhat force ourselves to like. Where as dip is laced with flavors that we have grown up on. The mint, spearamint, wintergreen, cinnamon, from the gum we chew, cherry, apple, berry, and peach flavor is what we were tought to eat as children.

The american tobacco companies are brilliant, I will give the the smartest companies on the planted award. They set out a product that has turned from pleasure to necessity. People use to do tobacco for purely pleasure, but again they only lived to 60 years old anyway. Now you have to seduce someone into somthing. So you give them a taste they are familiar with. And personaly I would rather give up the taste of smoke than chrry, or apple... etc.

So for dip you have the flavor and the nicotine content drawing on you. But I will go the other way. For smoking. For some reason, it got the social aspect. And everytime you are in a social enviroment you feel the urge to smoke. I know the feeling. But if you really thing about it smoking is the much less socially adaptable habit. In these times it is almost acceptable to pull out chwing tobacco in any place at any time. Within 5 years I guaruntee that skoal will not be a name related to hill billies. It will become a viable nicotine alternative with low TSNA levels just like snus, And you will see a sort of swedish movement. Americans will never accept true snus that we are all here for, but they will desire the low cancer causing tobacco. Snus is not the answer. Oral tobacco is. That includes snus. But not to many Americans desire to research what actually causes cancer in in tobacco. Yes we must admitt americans are the terribly hypocritical, me included, I want my nicotine with no cancer. Period. But should I expect all tobacco companies to conform to my ideology? No, So I found the best alternative. As soon as Grizzly mint gets down below 2 TNSA level per million, say by by snus. I like the American tobacco experience more than the swedish. But I will always use snus from this point on. It is the Nat Sherman of oral tobacco. To good to use all the time, but I cant get it enough. Doesnt make sense right...? Thats because I am an addict to the american snuff. TImberwolf, because it is a swedish product, and grizzly because it tastes so good even if it is sweet, But the spitting is my addiction. I know it sounds terrible or gross. I even put snus in my bottom lip just to try to get some spit going. It just doesnt feel right to me to have tobacco in my lip, but no bottle to spit in, or no need to spit in the bottle that is in front of me. A great experience and a bad one all together, yet cigerettes, I cant find a possitive since I cant put in a portion anywhere.

Please someone give me a true positive that cant be the same for snus. Snus is the best of both worlds, thats why I am here. The far superior flavor and enjoyment of american snuff, and the socialy acceptable and capable habits of smoking.

Snus meets all desires but does not completely fill a single one. Still we must pick our poison. The only thing I can guaruntee is that snus will not kill ever single one of us, with dip and cigatettes I can do so for nearly every case.

See I told you all to not let me get going, once I do the post is almost endless. I could have gone for hours more but I am stopping myself at 15 minutes even though I did not make a decent point yet

[toekuttr]

rollinred:

Cigarettes taste no different that sweaty toe jam. It is a completely unnatural flavor that we somewhat force ourselves to like. Where as dip is laced with flavors that we have grown up on. The mint, spearamint, wintergreen, cinnamon, from the gum we chew, cherry, apple, berry, and peach flavor is what we were tought to eat as children.

Sweaty toe jam...that bad huh? I don't know what you smoked but smoking good quality tobacco is fantastic! Nobody had to force me to enjoy a good cigar or a quality cigarette, it's just a natural flavor that I took to immediately and grew to love as have millions of others.

rollinred predicts:

Americans will never accept true snus that we are all here for, but they will desire the low cancer causing tobacco. Snus is not the answer.

I myself can't speak for all Americans, and I will gladly try the new American Snus' or whatever you're referring to, but I think Snus being around for over 2 centuries is a testament to it's broad appeal. Many people want flavors other than candylike as their tastes mature (although the candied varieties are nice on occasion too). I always have preferred a tobacco flavor even with American smokeless, and I think many Americans share that taste with the popularity of Copenhagen and Redman dips. ymmv (and obviously does )

[RobsanX]

I was never really hooked on the typical smokeless tobacco, but quitting smoking wasn't very easy... It's not just about the nicotine either as I had conditioned my body to crave a cigarette when I was hungry regardless of how much nicotine I had in my blood...

I agree that smokeless has and will continue to grow in the U.S., but I can never see spit cups/bottles as socially acceptable. The U.S. companies are going to have to create a smokeless spitless tobacco to get mainstream success... I really don't trust RJR and PM to make a quality product like Swedish Match and the others. I think that the U.S. companies are mostly concerned with getting people hooked, rather than producing a satisfying product...

[Slydel]

I had to weigh in on the small debate on quitting smoking versus the quitting chewing. I work at a company that does not allow tobacco of any kind. When I smoked and left work after 8-12 hours of not using tobacco, the withdrawal symptoms would be horrendous. I had to have the smoke fill up my lungs because it felt like I could not breathe. When I switched to chewing, I would crave the nicotine, but it was not necessary to put in a dip right away. My two cents, but I think going to snus/chewing tobacco at least helped with the cravings. Is that not how many people quit smoking? Has it not been shown and supported with data that dipping/snussing is a step in the right direction?

Cheers!

[Tankeryanker]

quitting the cigs was not to bad with my Snus, but as far as habitual flavors go, I think maple syrup flavor snus would be yummy.

[TheJR]

Ettan = chocolate cookie?


:lol: :P

Good one