Much has been noted over the past days about the unique compatibility of the newly re-released Brown Sugar Flake and Paneled Pipes, specifically.
As some of you might know, I have a Master's degree in aerodynamics and heat transfer and I've been thinking more about why a paneled pipe appears necessary for smoking brown sugar flake. Sounds crazy, but there might actually be something to it.
One of the effects that you get with a paneled pipe is that the wall thickness is highly variable compared to a non-paneled pipe. The chamber is a constant diameter and the walls around the chamber are flat, meaning that there is much less briar between the outside and inside of the pipe in the middle of the panels and more briar on the corners in between panels. This means that there are differences in the heat transfer rates around the bowl and therefore a pattern of slight circumferential variances in temperature in the bowl of a lit pipe that corresponds to the pattern of the panels.
Normally, temperature variance in a pipe isn't a very good thing, however, for a dense, sweet, traditional flake those minor patterns of temperature variance might actually be benefitial. Why? Well, what do you get when you have temperature variances in a fluid flow? Convection currents! Variance in local temperature in a flow can cause swirling and other off-axis movement. Because the gas flow now wants to move around within those pockets of temperature variance you get increased residence time in the area of the bowl just after the combustion zone. I.e. the hot combustion gas will stay in the pre-combustion area of the chamber for longer than normal.
Note, in jet engine design we usually try to avoid this effect because temperature variance also comes with pressure variances. Pressure variance and induced convention currents can cause losses in performance at best and loss of engine stability at worst. However, pipes don't have turbines in them and aren't producing thrust so that matters a good deal less (Perhaps they should?).
Anyway,
Previous studies on pipe smoking have demonstrated that the majority of the pleasurable flavors you get from pipe smoking actually sublimate into the smoke via pyrolysis in the pre-combustion zone directly below the burning tobacco layer in the chamber. That's where most of the aromatic compounds and perceived sweetness comes from in pipe smoke. Now, especially in a dense flake like Brown Sugar, the more time the smoke has to swirl around the tobacco the more time it has to loosen up the flake and pick up aromatic compounds and moisture from the flake. In fact, this is a unique problem for dense, sticky flakes and part of the reason that they don't burn as well. The amount of physical work and time required for the heat of the combustion to penetrate the dense chunks of flake often exceeds what the lit pipe can provide, requiring many relights. However, greater residence time of the hot gas in the pre-combustion zone could mitigate these problems.
In summary, increased contact time with the gas in the pre-combustion zone induced by temperature variance in the cross section due to the external panels will result in:
1. Flake that is more pre-heated prior to combustion, making it burn more consistently
2. Smoke that contains a high concentration of sweetness and aromatic compounds when it reaches your mouth.
Of course, this temperature variance effect will be more pronounced the higher the heat transfer coefficient of the briar. While briar is a natural material and thus isn't thermally isotropic, I would still expect that increased density would result in better heat transfer.
So, to maximize the BSPP (Brown Sugar/Paneled Pipe) effect you would want the pipe to be free of voids or pits and be made of the best quality, densest briar you could find.
All of this analysis does indeed circle towards the optimized instrument for smoking Brown Sugar Flake being a high quality artisan pipe with Panels. QED.
A question that remains is, how many panels produces the optimum BSPP effect?
That question cannot be answered until we have a lot more data, so I'm going to need you all to smoke more Brown Sugar Flake in a variety of paneled pipes so we can delve deeper into this topic.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
As some of you might know, I have a Master's degree in aerodynamics and heat transfer and I've been thinking more about why a paneled pipe appears necessary for smoking brown sugar flake. Sounds crazy, but there might actually be something to it.
One of the effects that you get with a paneled pipe is that the wall thickness is highly variable compared to a non-paneled pipe. The chamber is a constant diameter and the walls around the chamber are flat, meaning that there is much less briar between the outside and inside of the pipe in the middle of the panels and more briar on the corners in between panels. This means that there are differences in the heat transfer rates around the bowl and therefore a pattern of slight circumferential variances in temperature in the bowl of a lit pipe that corresponds to the pattern of the panels.
Normally, temperature variance in a pipe isn't a very good thing, however, for a dense, sweet, traditional flake those minor patterns of temperature variance might actually be benefitial. Why? Well, what do you get when you have temperature variances in a fluid flow? Convection currents! Variance in local temperature in a flow can cause swirling and other off-axis movement. Because the gas flow now wants to move around within those pockets of temperature variance you get increased residence time in the area of the bowl just after the combustion zone. I.e. the hot combustion gas will stay in the pre-combustion area of the chamber for longer than normal.
Note, in jet engine design we usually try to avoid this effect because temperature variance also comes with pressure variances. Pressure variance and induced convention currents can cause losses in performance at best and loss of engine stability at worst. However, pipes don't have turbines in them and aren't producing thrust so that matters a good deal less (Perhaps they should?).
Anyway,
Previous studies on pipe smoking have demonstrated that the majority of the pleasurable flavors you get from pipe smoking actually sublimate into the smoke via pyrolysis in the pre-combustion zone directly below the burning tobacco layer in the chamber. That's where most of the aromatic compounds and perceived sweetness comes from in pipe smoke. Now, especially in a dense flake like Brown Sugar, the more time the smoke has to swirl around the tobacco the more time it has to loosen up the flake and pick up aromatic compounds and moisture from the flake. In fact, this is a unique problem for dense, sticky flakes and part of the reason that they don't burn as well. The amount of physical work and time required for the heat of the combustion to penetrate the dense chunks of flake often exceeds what the lit pipe can provide, requiring many relights. However, greater residence time of the hot gas in the pre-combustion zone could mitigate these problems.
In summary, increased contact time with the gas in the pre-combustion zone induced by temperature variance in the cross section due to the external panels will result in:
1. Flake that is more pre-heated prior to combustion, making it burn more consistently
2. Smoke that contains a high concentration of sweetness and aromatic compounds when it reaches your mouth.
Of course, this temperature variance effect will be more pronounced the higher the heat transfer coefficient of the briar. While briar is a natural material and thus isn't thermally isotropic, I would still expect that increased density would result in better heat transfer.
So, to maximize the BSPP (Brown Sugar/Paneled Pipe) effect you would want the pipe to be free of voids or pits and be made of the best quality, densest briar you could find.
All of this analysis does indeed circle towards the optimized instrument for smoking Brown Sugar Flake being a high quality artisan pipe with Panels. QED.
A question that remains is, how many panels produces the optimum BSPP effect?
That question cannot be answered until we have a lot more data, so I'm going to need you all to smoke more Brown Sugar Flake in a variety of paneled pipes so we can delve deeper into this topic.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
