Ettan Lös - Swedish Snus Review

Ettan's Beautiful Pencil-Yellow Can

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Ettan (Eng. Literally “The First”, but means something more like “First Grade”) is a snus made by Swedish Match, one in their set of traditional premium snuses (the others being, arguably, Goteborgs Rape, Grov, Roda Lacket, Kronan, and Goteborgs Prima Fint); out of these, Ettan stands out as their frontrunner, primus inter pares to all the other snus in their lineup.

It was Ettan that Jacob Ljunglöf, the co-creator of the pasteurization process that would break snus away from the fermentation process that made it more similar to American dip in ages prior, wrote the recipe for - Swedish Match, the current producer of Ettan, was not Ljunglöf’s company, and would in fact arrive many decades after him and his son Knut’s death after the abolishing of the Swedish Tobacco Monopoly and reprivatization of the snus industry. Knut, having inherited his father’s tobacco factory and having devoted his life to quality snus, was known to be very bitter when all of his brands were absorbed by the government to fund national defense and the pension program that was new at the time.

In Jacob and Knut’s time, Ettan was one of many different snus produced by the Ljunglöv factory (ex. “Tvaån”, meaning “The Second”, which had a higher amount of tobacco midrib and other less-premium material in its makeup, among others). None of the other brands manufactured by Ljunglöf exist today - Ettan is now alone, the oldest registered trademark for snus in Sweden still produced today.

So with all this legacy behind it, what is using it actually like?

The snus comes in a fiberboard can wrapped in a pencil-yellow band with some minimal branding. The lid is special for Ettan - it reads “Ljunglöfs Ettan, Original Anno 1822” and bears the Ljunglöf seal. For some reason, the only other snuses I know of to get this sort of special attention by Swedish Match are General and Gröv, which has its own uniquely molded lid, but the Gröv lid is not nearly as elegant or beautiful.

Ettan's Ingredients List

Warning Label and Best Before Date (I freeze my stuff, don't worry)

Ettan's Special Molded Lid

I like Ettan quite a bit, so unfortunately the pictures of the open snus can display a lot of can and very little snus, but this is to your benefit, reader, I promise. Most Swedish Match snuses are basically identical in terms of grind and finish, so I’ve taken pictures next to a fresh can so you can see the impact the fiberboard can has on keeping the snus moist. I’ve had this open and out of the freezer for about two or three weeks, and as you can see, the fiberboard doesn’t do the most excellent job of keeping the snus in good condition. However, dry, fresh snus is different than dry, old snus, and is still perfectly usable and in fact has most of its nicotine, at least in my experience.

A good look at the waxed fiberboard can bottom

General Snus Close Up (Ettan looks almost identical when fresh!)

Fresh General and Dry Ettan Side-by-Side

The scent of the snus from the can is slightly smoky, perhaps vaguely like scotch, with some undertones of sweet grass and stewed prunes. The cocoa notes that Ettan is famous for aren’t really present in the tin aroma, except in occasional little whispers that could easily be confused for something else. I know for a fact that Ettan Portion has a much stronger and clearer note of cocoa, so perhaps the moisture or the grind manipulates which volatiles are given off? Portion snus is ever so slightly more moist than loose snus, so it’s likely.

Although I prefer to pinch the snus, it’s very easy to bake into a prilla, and holds firm and will withstand a drop test (bake a prilla, drop it on a table from three feet up, and see if it cracks or doesn’t crack). Being somewhat drier after having used most all of it, it becomes much easier to bake and pinch, but I also find that most snus is easier to pinch when a little dried out.

The mouthfeel is almost instantaneous, a very mild astringent grip that is somewhat similar to dry red wine, but in the lip. For the first five minutes, the things I taste are salt, burnt sugar, and soil. The five minute mark is when the nicotine hits. I’m drinking matcha as I write this review, and as I have the snus I’ve just had my second bowl, and I can feel the caffeine warp a little in by body in response to the snus. It’s a very focusing feeling, and many will no doubt confirm my description.

After 15 minutes, the mouthfeel builds slightly, still the same grippy dryness but with no burning, only a little more intensity. You do feel that you have snus in and don’t want for it, but it signals to you from the lip that isn’t not very strong. The flavor at this point has no major changes, and is still salt-dominant with some minerality. The salt note is the salt of the sea - salty, of course, but with something else to it, a not-unpleasant acridity of ocean spray (the fresh, windy odor of the marina, not the brand of cranberry juice).

The cocoa finally comes out at the thirty minute mark. This manifests itself, for me at least, as a hot chocolate made of dark baking chocolate with no sugar, but also no bitterness or acidity. There’s something vaguely cigarish about this presentation, something much like the chocolate tones that can be pulled out of a maduro cigar. The pinch still holds together firm at this point, with no mudsliding, and nicotine is still felt.

Slight mudsliding begins at the 45 minute mark, but along with this comes a lot of flavor. A strong miso note appears, probably an interplay between the preexisting seawater flavor and the tobacco as the latter starts to express itself. The cocoa begins to die down as the snus gets more savory, and is replaced with a graphite bitterness somewhat like the soil taste noticed at the beginning.

As I approach one hour, the bitterness grows stronger as other flavors weaken. A sweetness appears in the form of a slippery syrup. The salt is still present, but is far weaker than the minerality and the bitterness. At this point, the snus has lost most of its nicotine, and is mudsliding. I now remove the snus.

Ettan is a wonderful snus. It displays all the qualities you could ask for from a tobacco-forward snus: complex notes, a grind that holds firm in the lip, flavor development, and a not-too-small nicotine presence. I do caution against people buying this snus looking for a chocolate snus, because the cocoa is really a very small note in a sea of others and can only be caught in a thin window between a full act of other, stronger flavors. It’s a premium snus, but is well worth paying the premium for.