RAW Organic Hemp Connoisseur, King Size Slim with Tips

Connoisseur is a format, and it comes in three different papers

This trips people up because the name sounds like a product and behaves like a packaging decision.

RAW makes the Connoisseur pack in three versions and they are identical in every respect except one. Same king size slim papers, same thirty-two of them, same thirty-two tips, same eco craft wallet, same elastic band. What changes is which of RAW's paper grades is inside.

There is a Classic version, using the standard unbleached paper the brand built its name on. There is a Black version, using RAW Black, which is the thinnest and slowest burning paper the company makes. And there is this one, using RAW Organic Hemp.

So choosing a Connoisseur is really choosing a paper, and the wallet comes along regardless. We stock the Organic Hemp version, which sits between the other two: unbleached like the Classic, made from hemp rather than the Classic's blend, and not as aggressively thin as the Black.

If you already have a preference between RAW's papers, that preference decides this. If you do not, the Organic Hemp is the middle of the three and the reasonable default.

Why thirty-two of each, and why that is not obvious

Anyone who buys papers and tips separately will recognise this problem without ever having named it.

Papers come in booklets of thirty-two. That is the standard for king size slim across most of the industry and it is what RAW uses. Tips do not. RAW's own perforated tip books state forty tips to a book, and other tip lines in its range box in fifties.

So the natural buying pattern gives you thirty-two papers and forty tips. Use the papers up and you have eight tips left. Buy another booklet and now you are eight short. It never resolves, and most people end up with a drawer containing three-quarters of a tip book and no papers.

The Connoisseur fixes that by putting thirty-two of each in one wallet. It is a small thing and it is the entire reason the format exists. Nobody selling it says so.

The tips themselves are RAW's unrefined ones: plain card, unbleached, no perforation and no pre-rolled shape. You roll them yourself, which is what most people who buy tips in bulk are doing anyway.

The specifications, including two nobody publishes

King size slim means a paper 110mm long and 44mm tall. Those are the actual figures and it is worth having them, because slim and wide are used loosely and the height is what separates them. A king size wide is the same length with more paper above the line, which our RAW x Lyrical listing goes into, including RAW's own rather blunt opinion of that format.

The paper carries RAW's CrissCross watermark, a fine criss-cross pattern pressed into the sheet. It is there to slow and even out the burn by giving the flame a slightly irregular surface to travel across, and it is the feature RAW patented and is best known for among people who care about papers.

The wallet is eco craft card with an elastic band around it. That sounds like packaging trivia and it is genuinely functional: it is the reason the tips do not escape into your bag and the reason a half-used pack survives being carried around, which a plain booklet does not.

One more line from the distributor worth passing on rather than paraphrasing. RAW states these are hand assembled, often by workers with special needs, and calls it RAW Karma. We are repeating what the maker says rather than verifying it, and we mention it because it is the kind of claim a buyer might want to know is being made.

It will not all look the same, and that is the point

RAW Organic Hemp is a translucent brown rather than a white sheet, and the exact shade varies from batch to batch depending on the hemp that went into it.

That is not a defect and it is not a printing inconsistency. Bleaching is what makes paper uniformly white, and skipping it means the raw material shows through. Two packs bought months apart can be noticeably different in tone.

People who buy unbleached papers on purpose tend to regard this as a feature, and people who assumed brown was a design choice sometimes do not. Our King Palm listing makes the same point about unbleached papers in general.

The practical version: expect a light, slightly see-through brown, expect it to vary, and do not judge a pack by comparing it with the last one.

Where this sits among the papers we carry

We stock a small, deliberately chosen set of papers rather than a wall of them, and they divide cleanly.

This is the one that comes with tips. That is unusual: most papers are sold on their own and most tip books are sold separately, so a pack that solves both in one wallet is a different proposition from a booklet.

It is also king size slim and completely unflavoured, which puts it at the opposite end of our RAW shelf from the Lyrical Lemonade collaboration, a king size wide flavoured paper. Both are RAW, and they are aimed at almost opposite people.

If you want thinner, the RAW Organic Hemp Black papers are the thinnest sheet we carry. If you want a flavour, King Palm and Juicy Jay's are the flavoured options and both handle flavour differently from each other.

Who should buy something else

Anyone who does not use tips. A third of what you are paying attention to here is tips, and if you never roll one in, a plain booklet of the same paper is the more sensible purchase.

Anyone who wants pre-rolled tips. These are flat card that you roll yourself. RAW makes pre-rolled and perforated versions separately, and neither is what is in this wallet.

Anyone who wants a bright white, perfectly uniform paper. Unbleached hemp is brown, translucent and variable, and no amount of hoping changes that.

Anyone who rolls king size wide by habit. Slim is a shorter sheet vertically and it will feel tight if wide is what your hands expect.

And anyone looking for CBD. There is none in this and none in any rolling paper. What you put in it is a separate purchase entirely.