Gurgles can be good. The burbling of a mountain brook is a pleasant, peaceful sound. Listening to the water splashing over rocks while lounging in the spreading shade of a willow on a sunny summer day can be positively therapeutic. Gurgles can be fun. Witness the sheer joy of children as they frolic in the playful spray of a splash park. Gurgles can even be art as people more clever than I channel water into high-arcing fountain displays in public squares around the world.

But gurgles can be considerably less pleasure-inducing when they come from your pipe during a much-anticipated moment of rest at the end of a busy day. So why do pipes gurgle and how can we fix it? It all boils down to two simple factors: condensation and construction.

Let’s deal with condensation first. Condensation is water, and there is water in all tobacco. In fact…