Briary The

The Briary is the best place in Birmingham to find pipes and cigars. Their pipe tobacco is the best! My favorite is Brookwood. The customer service is awesome! My wife bought me a pipe rack and it is gorgeous!

Writing a review of the Briary seems like an odd thing to do; for me it’s kind of like writing a review of my local grocery store. It’s where I go every time I need something they have (in this case pipe stuff), and it never disappoints. This is a pipe shop, a real pipe shop, and that’s a rare thing to find these days.
Skip and John, the guys who run the shop most days, are both great and will treat you like a friend. Skip will also sell you a pipe while you aren’t even looking; he’s that good. Skip’s wife Kay is wonderfully kind, and Ed, who works on Saturdays, is always fun to chat with. Mark, whom I don’t know very well personally, is also clearly a very nice (and helpful) guy. In short, great bunch of folks here.
If you want pipes and pipe tobacco, this is where you want to be. Pipes from wall to wall, from floor to ceiling, and a huge wall of tobacco tins that will make a newbie’s head spin — but in a good way! Lighters, tampers, meerschaum, briar, corn cob, clay: they’re all here, and they’re all beautifully on display. And really, if you can’t find a tin (or a bag) of tobacco to suit your tastes here, then you probably don’t like tobacco.
And despite the fact that I think of the Briary as a pipe shop, it also has an excellent, well stocked humidor, full of all the classic brands that you will quickly recognize. They will help you find something if you don’t know what you need, but be prepared to buy more than you expected to: the selection is gigantic and the prices are very fair. So a good score in this category as well.
Please, go to the Briary. You probably don’t need me to tell you that, but if I sway one person to visit with this review, then I’ve succeeded. If you like tobacco (and especially pipes!), then you like the Briary. No two ways about it.