Snus Rating Criteria

[llewelynt]

I've been thinking of putting together a rating system for snus. What would be your choices for criteria? Nicotine strength is an obvious choice. Let me know!

[Zero]

- nicotine kick (mild<-->strong)
- Flavour (aromatic<-->bold)
- Consistency (fine<-->coarse)
- Saltiness

Bakeability (if that's a word :lol: ), perhaps... I'm sure you might find a few more.

[llewelynt]

Good ones. "Bakeability" may indeed need to be used as it is a term we would all understand, and this is for us, eh? I'm a little cautious about "aromatic" as I used to be a pipe smoker (ok, adolescents, calm down) and used this site to find reviews. In the pipe world, "aromatic" is often a word for "nasty".

[Zero]

A word for nasty? Weird... I associate the word "odour" with "bad" and "aromatic" with "pleasant". In fact, I don't think I've ever seen "aromatic" used in a negative sense. I think "aroma" is generally defined as "distinctive and generally pleasant" in most dictionaries.

[llewelynt]

It is because many aromatic pipe tobaccos are indeed nasty...

[rustic]

I think a format for reviewing snus would be much more useful than a format for rating it. We already have the happy-face-based thread, and honestly, I haven't personally found it to be particularly useful.

My suggestion for a simple template:
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Overall Rating: 1 to 4 stars - if you get much more complicated than this, it ends up being close to worthless unless you have statisticians on staff (i.e. you're recreating IMDB for snus)

Strength of Added Flavorings: Mild (mostly tobacco flavors..i.e. Ettan), Medium (tobacco flavors with noticeable strong other flavors.. everything from Granit to General), Strong (the added flavor overpowers the tobacco. CatchDry, many Offroads, etc)

Form: Loose, Maxi Portion, Regular Portion, Mini Portion

Amount of Nicotine: in mg, per portion, or mg per gram in the case of loose.

Text Review: Description and Comments on this snus, including noticeable flavors, how long the flavor lasts, etc. Bakeability of loose or description of the portions would be helpful if there are qualities that stand out from the masses.. The goal here is to provide the reader with an understanding of what the snus is like, not to state your personal preferences. Describing General White as "tasting like crap" doesn't really help anyone.
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The best approach to this sort of thing that I've seen on the Internet is definitely www.tobaccoreviews.com for pipe tobaccos. By allowing people to post their specific reviews, then giving users the ability to see what all an individual has reviewed, it provides a great way to get a "feel" for a tobacco before you buy it.

But if someone isn't going to code a website around snus review, the best approach is probably a rough template (as described above) and simply posting messages with reviews.

The text of the review (general comments section, whatever) ends up being the most useful in my experience. If you get too bogged down into a "How strong is it on a 1 to 10 scale?" sort of problem, your scale gets relative. Is it strong for a normal portion? Nick and Johnny portions are strong, but they have 11mg/portion. No big surprise there. Strong to me is different than strong to you. However, if I tell you that I find General White mini portions to feel stronger than most other 4mg mini portions that I've tried, that might be helpful.

If we had a dedicated "Snus Review" forum here, we could do it.. I've generally seen the best luck in other (non-snus-related) forums with a user posting a review (with a subject line like "Review: Granite White Portion"), then others discussing the review. One big chained thread of reviews is usually a little harder to dig through. And if you don't have a dedicated forum for reviews, you end up with folks griping about all the similar threads.

Just my two cents, probably worth less than that..

- Jeff

[phish]

It is because many aromatic pipe tobaccos are indeed nasty...

Very true!

Maybe we could have color as well and perhaps moisture? Although the freshness of the snus may effect the moisture. Another important point which is sometimes missed the design of the tin! Lids and tins are not born equal

[llewelynt]

Rustic, I would use 5 stars/pips/whatever as some snus is only worthy of a middle rating!

[lxskllr]

Rustic, I would use 5 stars/pips/whatever as some snus is only worthy of a middle rating!

A buddy of mine from work has a couple of friends that always argue about the star rating system. One champions the 4 star system(obviously incorrect ;^)...), and the other is for the 5 star system(the superior rating system :^P). Like you said, with 5 stars you can have something fall right in the middle (exactly average) with 4 stars it can get rated better, or worse than it should. Taboca is a good example. I had my first portion today. I wouldn't say it sucked(2 stars, 1 better than Level), but I also wouldn't say it was very good either(3 stars, 1 worse than Onyx, or Gotlandsnus). 3 stars puts it right where it belongs. Not a must have, but worth a try to have something a little different.

[Kindrd]

It is because many aromatic pipe tobaccos are indeed nasty...

I think it refers to the smell of the smoke not taste. It is more pleasent for those around you.

[The Cook]

It would be great if we had an IMDB form of rating snus. I wouldn't have a clue on how to program this, but maybe some code-poet could come up with a solution.

[llewelynt]

RE: IMDB

I'm not sure what you mean. I have seen the Internet Movie Data Base, but are you talking about the large number of stars? Please clarify.