The price of snus has gone up a lot in the past few years. Taxes, input costs, and profit margins have all seemed to move up. Lately I’ve found a way to crush these trends.

Here’s how I do it:

1) Go to the General Snus site — if you haven’t yet — and register for the General”s Club. You’ll begin to get shitloads of coupons — and possibly this — in the mail. Hold on to these.

2) On that site, see where they are selling in your area right now. If any place looks new, go there. I’ve noticed many new stores getting General recently, and stores get their first several rolls of snus for free. So some sell it for next to nothing at an “introductory price” — the cheapest I’ve found so far is $2.43.

3) Combine those 2 things like a boss. With my $7.50 off coupon, I bought 5 packs of General snus for $4.65, or $0.93 a pack.

What’s even more common is the $2.50 off one can coupon, but I’m not sure how that would work with a $2.43 price point, and I’m more than happy paying $0.93 and saving the $2.50 coupon for the eventual price hike. But you could conceivably get snus for free, and might even be able to convince a particularly stupid salesperson to hand you back seven cents.

So the new snus butik in Stockholm is called, Svenskt Snus, which translates from the Swedish to Swedish Snus. It’s not an extremely original name, but every name I think of as an alternative sounds like a dirty old hip hop tune.

I’ve covered in a previous blog what (likely) goes on there. It’s shop for snus, snus gear, coffee, and snus education. But I want to show you what’s for sale now that there are more pictures to pilfer.

(via svenskt snus facebook page)

Looks like we have some jackets, shirts and perhaps a martini shaker here. The puffy jacket is pretty cool, but I’d want to make sure the back didn’t have “RAPE” plastered on the back in giant letters before I made a final assessment.

(via svenskt snus facebook page)

On the right we have some ski gear, on the left, a belt and bag.

(via snusnytt.se)

Only have a closeup of the Grov display. Looks like some beanies and some coffee.

(via snusnytt.se)

The Catch display has headphones, a vase or decanter, and something in a mysterious white bottle.

(via snusnytt.se)

Nick and Johnnie skateboard.

Snus direct from the factory and pastries.

(via svenskt snus facebook page)

And a variety of snus.

With an attractive green pack and the hole left in my heart where General Green Harvest once resided, I was very excited to try Skruf Selection. I really like Skruf White, and I thought this would be similar — as Green Harvest was to General White.

It’s not. It lacks the rose oil, citrus, and pepper of Skruf — pretty much everything I love about Skruf.

That not to say that this snus is bad. On the contrary, it’s very good. But it is subtle, and I get the feeling that the “Natural Tobacco” plastered on the can is about all that’s in here. So we have water, organic tobacco, perhaps a tiny hint of flavoring — at most — and that’s about it.

So the point of this all is that this isn’t the Skruf I love, but it’s an interesting and well-made snus that should delight hippies and communists looking for a more natural snus or snus purists looking for a snus that taste more like tobacco.

P.S. I just got a new camera to take sexy snus shots with, and it’s awesome. You can get the same one here.

I suck at loose snus. Because of that, I kind of hate it, too. But I think it’s good to practice using it every once in a while,  which is why I’m always happy when Kardus shows up at the door. Now at nearly $1 per gram, it may seem like a stupid snus to practice with, but I think the price tag creates additional incentive to get it right.

As I mentioned previously, Kardus Cincho is made with Spanish tobacco and a Spanish booze called Jerez (Sherry). I decided I needed to get a bottle Oloroso Jerez to try with this snus. So I went to the mega liquor store, found a guy works there and said, “Hello sir, I’d like your finest Oloroso Jerez.”

Turns out they had one kind, Matusalem Oloroso Dulce Viejo 30 years, so I bought it.

The Jerez in Kardus Cincho is not sweet, and I’m no fan of sweet booze, but this is the only Oloroso Jerez in town, it seems.

It reminds me of port. But frankly, I suck at wine tasting. You could serve me vinegar, and I’d probably think it was drinkable. So I liked this stuff, despite its sweetness, and perhaps it’s sweetness will add to the character of the Kardus.

The wine doctor has a good writeup on this booze:

The nose is simply delightful; it seduces with aromas of toffee, walnut, raisins and more, before revealing the note of axle grease (yes, I mean axle grease) that belies the presence of Pedro Ximénez, the universal Spanish sweetener. This is a fine and beguiling panoply of aromas. There follows an appealing palate, displaying all the richness that the nose suggests, but paradoxically very structured with, despite the creamy tenderness, a very dry feel through the midpalate and finish.

While the box on Kardus is very cool, it’s also kind smells strongly of wood stain or some such shit, and it’s best to get it away from your snus once you’ve opened it.

Now for Kardus Cincho porn.

Oooh take it off.

That’s a cat arm in there.

Each canister of Kardus Cincho is dated and signed. I think my is signed by JZ, maybe?

The cat is very interested in Kardus Cincho.

The booklet that comes with Kardus contains a recipe for the perfect gazpacho soup. woot.

And the snus.

As you can see, this does not look like regular loose snus, in that this still resembles tobacco leaves. It’s fluffy, but still seems to hold together fairly well. Maybe I’m getting better at this loose shizzle.

The Kardus lightly smells of Jerez, but I mostly get a tobacco smell from the snus. While I can smell Jerez, I can’t really taste it. There’s some slight fruitiness to the flavor, but tobacco is mostly what I taste.

Finally, this stuff is pretty strong. It’s more than twice as strong as a regular-strength Swedish Match Snus. General Mint Classic White, which I just happen to have lying around, is 0.8% nicotine. At 0.9 grams per portion, that gives us 7.2 mg of nicotine per portion. If you were to pinch 0.9 grams of Kardus Cincho, you’d get 15.3 mg of nicotine, as it is 1.7%.

As I reported over a week ago, the New General Snus is Mint. I’ve now had a chance to taste it thanks to our friends at snuscentral.

The snus is not very similar to the U.S. General Mint because this new snus is not sweet. It’s peppermint with notes of black pepper and vanilla. At times i even taste chocolate, but that may be the tobacco and vanilla playing tricks on my palate. Swedish Match describes the snus as: “A medium-bodied and spicy tobacco taste with notes of peppermint, along with hints of bergamot, tea and vanilla.”

This snus is a nice addition to the mint snus category. While peppermint is in the limelight, this snus is interesting to me due to its other well balanced flavors, and is well-worth trying for mint snus lovers and any snus fanatic.

General Classic White Mint will be available next week.

I rarely look at my Instagram feed, but on election day I didn’t want to look at all you politickers on the Facebook and the Twitter. So I popped open Instagram instead. Here’s what I saw, posted several hours ago by Swedish Match:

I’m no Swedish linguist, but that looks like it says, “Welcome to the family.” Feel free to viciously attack me in the comment section if I’m wrong.

This looks like the top of a snus pack. Maybe it’s a coaster.

But the big question remaining is: What kind of mint?

We’ll probably know soon, but I imagine that it is not a clone of the US General Mint, as this new snus is supposed to be mint plus bergamot.

I was still hoping for General Hummus… maybe that’s next.

The Snuff Taker’s Ephemeris keeps getting weirder. The new issue includes softcore plumper porn, a lot of shit about metal and Dracula, and then there’s this advert that is probably the strangest thing in the whole book.

(click for larger image)

Additionally, I talk about how I got my boss hooked on snus.

Go get this dope-ass shit now.

Somewhere in Stockholm called Kungsgatan 3, Swedish Match is opening what will undoubtedly become the Mecca for snus enthusiasts worldwide. In fact, Chad from snubie.com has been spotted camping in front of the store, where construction is ongoing, since learning about it last month. The store is planned to open in December 2012.

So far, photographs from inside the shop show that they should probably paint the place and add more snus.

But once completed, it will be a place to buy, taste and learn about snus, buy snus-related merchandise, and drink coffee/loiter/write snus blogs.

In September 2011, a time when I was drinking a lot of Calvados, I said that I wanted to see Calvados used in the 2012 Kardus. At the February Swedish Match blogger meeting, I was told that while they experimented with — and likely drank — lots of excellent Calvados in an attempt to make my dream a reality, tobacco from France was far to heinous to be used in snus. Since Kardus is a single-region snus made from one country’s tobacco and liquor, Calvados snus will remain a dream. C’est la vie.

Apparently once they drank the local Systembolaget out of French booze, they stumbled into the Spanish aisle and started in on the Jerez, or “Sherry” for you gringos. Jerez is basically Spanish fortified wine (meaning it has extra alcohol added). And as luck would have it, some Spanish tobacco isn’t dog shit. And some is quite good.

So our Kardus 2012 is made of Spanish booze and tobacco.

Here’s the Jerez, called Cuco Oloroso, which you can buy online if you don’t live in a bullshit state or country.

While neither I nor Google Translate know what “Cuco Oloroso” means, a not-very-reputable source from South Texas told me that it sounds like Spanish slang for “smelly vag.” Swedish Match doesn’t use the phrase “smelly vag” in any of its literature to describe the booze, and for better or worse, no Jerez I’ve tasted has resembled any vag I’ve tasted. The company instead describes the booze as an “elegant and nuanced nutty fragrance and flavor with elements of dried figs, sultanas, light syrup and licorice.”

The tobacco is from a dinky town in western Spain called Cincho, hence the name of the snus: Kardus Cincho. I’ve never heard of this place. Google insists that it exists, but I could not spot any sign of civilization on the map other than a road that ends there.

Remember: Kardus is handcut and stems aren’t used, so it doesn’t look like your typical loose snus. The company describes the end-product as “a snus with a distinct luster and an oily, black color. The flavor features clear elements of licorice, dried fruit and rose hip.”

A box will cost roughly 600 SEK, $91 at today’s exchange rate, and only 600 boxes are being made. Your favorite retailer may charge more or less.

Here’s the Kardus Cincho box:

Nick & Johnny Black Tarmac is a licorice-flavored original portion snus. At 15.4 mg/portion, it has a pretty big bite — like sticking two normal-strength snus in your face. This snus, like the other Nick & Johnnie original portions, is a bit of an oddity. Each portion weighs 1.1 grams and there are 20 in a pack. That’s 4 fewer portions than a standard pack of 24 and 0.2 grams heavier than the average Swedish Match snus.

While it’s labeled as licorice, the licorice flavor is nicely mingled with a distinct smokiness and plenty of salt. Even for a dude who tends to shun licorice, this is a pretty good snus. However, I try to stay away from the strong stuff because of my gaping vagina.

As I mentioned before, the Black Tarmac name makes me think of heroin. Interestingly, the first time someone tried to sell me heroin was during my 24-hour, no-sleep stint in Stockholm when I wandered the streets all night with a local schizophrenic that I watched rob a Seven-Eleven… This should probably be a story for another time. For now, I’ll just reassure you that I didn’t purchase any heroin or participate in any crime.

Here’s me in Stockholm.

Anyway, Nick & Johnny Black Tarmac will be available at the beginning of October. If you like strong snus, give it a try — even if you’re not a huge licorice fan, this snus is interesting.