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curing Brazilian style

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SmokesAhoy

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While reading one of the many wonderful threads here on FTT a link was posted to a method of curing tobacco in Brazil. Leaves were harvested and allowed to wilt in the sun. Then while still showing an alarming amount of green color they were deribbed and twisted into a massive rope. The rope over time appears to take on a deep brown color as the leaves cure. It looked on one hand like crap, and the other like some of the finest tobacco I've ever seen.

It caught my interest right away. I ran around the web looking for smoke reports of Brazilian rope thinking that while it might look good, perhaps the chlorophyll is still there but covered up. Not having an option to try it myself I tried to gauge the overall reception from the internet. It seemed promising.

Where I live I have a large issue finishing my grow, I am hoping this is one possible answer to that. i have started priming and testing this and so far it is promising. The wilted green and yellow leaf is bunched into a cylinder about an inch thick after deribbing. Half leaves are wrapped cigar style around the cylinder which I try to keep equal in thickness from one end to the other. About twice as many leaves are used to bind it as a cigar, as I'm trying to compress it as much as I can so instead of one leaf going the whole length it'll only go a couple inches and then another is added until the whole thing is covered. I don't twist it so am using nylon rope tightly wound so no leaf is visible while maintaining lots of tension on it so the leaf is incredibly compressed. As I work my way down, tightly coiling as I go, sap is released and is dripping by the time I get to the end. I tie the rope off and let it hang for about a week. With green leaf it seems it needs to be unravelled around then and rewound as the cylinder doesn't feel solid anymore, so rewinding the rope allows it to be tightly compressed again. In Brazil I think I read somewhere they redo their ropes periodically for the same reason.

Well initial progress with my lugs and then first primings have been (visually) a huge success. The leaf has gone in both instances from a mishmash of colors to a solid chocolaty brown in very little time. Based on the success so far I will be documenting the next one for people who perhaps have similar issues as I do as well as for myself so I can collect my observations in one spot to remind myself in the future.

So stay tuned, I will be getting some pictures later during the week of the process from first picking, then wilting, then compressing. Then way down the line some smoke tests in the pipe. And maybe I will even be able to talk our members with more refined palettes and writing skill into sampling it and giving their opinions. It could be great, it could be trash or anything in between. I mean to find out.
 

SmokesAhoy

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That's awesome! I was doing mine based on the navy pictures I saw like he made, cool. It's a little less ambitious but has no chance of ending with a broken hip. That guy was getting me nervous lol
 

squeezyjohn

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SmokesAhoy ... sounds like you and I are thinking along the same lines this year! Last year I took almost colour cured leaf and made the carrot "periques" from attempting to follow that video (still can't work out how the sitting on the rope bit works though ... gave myself plenty of blisters!) ... do you have a link to the navy pictures as well?

So having seen the video of the guy making rope from green tobacco - I also thought that would be a way to cure mine before the mouldy months set in here. I'm doing exactly the same ... I've picked the lugs and lower leaves of the Silver River to wilt and have a go at making a rope. Great to hear that yours worked OK. I was going to have a go using a regular spinning wheel (but not sure if that is the right equipment!)
 

squeezyjohn

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Forgot to say that the carrots I made last year cured perfectly in to a very tasty and distinctly different tobacco from what I would have had if I'd just left it hanging free. It had a nice slightly fermented taste - almost molasses-ey.
 

squeezyjohn

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Hi PO ... is that a picture of some you made?

Yes - I am cutting them up and grinding in to snus flour. Mine are darker brown and more tightly compressed than the one in your picture. The snus it makes (if blended 50/50 with bright leaf) is absolutely delicious ... I think it was the one I sent you that didn't have the brandy flavour.

Here's what mine looks like:
IMG_2108.jpgIMG_2107.jpg

It's hard work to cut the stuff to slice for smoking ... but it tastes delicious straight in a pipe too ... mild smoke but strong nic with plenty of aroma.
 

POGreen

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Hi John

Na , that was just somethin I found on the Internet quite some time ago , just looked it up when I saw this thread.
Your stuff looks just Dandy to me , did you just roll some leaves together and compressed the bundle with a piece of rope ?
Were your leaves green or ripeyellow when you compressed them ?
 

squeezyjohn

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I did it with leaves that were mainly brown with a little green still showing - the method was (almost) exactly like the video of the funny old men above using my apple trees. The leaves were in very high case and wrapped in cotton cloth before the rope was wound around it. If you use your whole body-weight it gets very high compression indeed!
 

squeezyjohn

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No! ;)

That video was a long time ago ... using their own apple-trees (or whatever other tree it was) ... but they were not too far from where I live.
 

squeezyjohn

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Today I split my ripe Silver River lower leaves in half to do a little experiment based on the videos of that Brazilian tobacco do corda being made. The aim is to make half in to a rope like in the video - and a carotte from green tobacco which should give a more perique-like result if it works.

I found it impossible to make the long ropes due to a lack of the specialist wheel the chap in the video had - there seems no way to adapt a wool spinning wheel to work unfortunately. However - I could make a very long twist by feeding the leaves in to the twist in the same way if I knotted the end to a fixed point. It's very easy to work with wilted green leaves. The twist then doubled up on itself under torsion - and if you let it happen bang in the middle - you get a short rope similar to the one in the video.

The pressure on the green leaf under torsion causes it to bruise and the juice to bleed through the leaf - and that causes it to darken from green to dark brown very quickly - starting almost immediately. My guess is that this needs to be kept somewhere that it will dry out pretty fast to stop mould forming on the outside ... maybe in the sunlight. Certainly not in a dark shed with humidity as I'm using to yellow my curing leaf!

Making a carotte as in the funny old men video is harder with green leaves as they are more delicate than colour cured leaves and more springy. But I've managed to make something.

I'll let you all know how I get on with it!
 

SmokesAhoy

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So I went to my old twist today and gave it a squeeze, it felt very soft. I re bound it tightly and tons of water squeezed out. The smell was interesting but I believe if it went much more than the couple days before retying it would have been compost. I need to let leaf dry more before doing this I think unless I want to be retying daily. I don't.

I'm starting to wonder if it might be easier overall if I want to do this green to just do something like perique and and fill a container.

Leaf that was color cured and in medium case twisted without any issues whatsoever, Brazilian rope gets rewound as needed. I do like the rope thing, perhaps the answer is some other way of mass packing it while quickly and easily being able to adjust the tension for the pressure. Maybe that was the purpose of the cloth around the tobacco before the rope tightened the mass up? Can anyone think of anything that would allow tobacco to be green packed and kept continually under pressure as the wet insides are slowly allowed to dry thru evaporation? I think that when bundled tightly enough the mass is acting as one thick leaf, drying slow enough for the enzyme process to work while the outside is relatively dry to inhibit mold. I could be way off here but something is keeping the mold off.
 

SmokesAhoy

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Something I remember reading here I think from deluxe or BigB was a press with a weight and an arm using gravity as the force of pressure. If I copied this using green wilted leaf as the leaf let up moisture I wouldn't have to adjust pressure as gravity would do that automatically.

Is it reasonable to think that this would be a similar end result to the green rope? On one hand the rope is drying out and being re wound to make up for the loss in mass, on the other hand a gravity forced plug with an open top would allow for evaporation while how ever many pounds I specify is constantly pressing down and keeping steady pressure without interference from me. If that is a reasonable assumption than the end product should be similar. I'm guessing, totally don't know but worth an experiment.

Just a wood lever with arm that has a piece of wood at the base the same size, shape as my holding container. I could probably put a 10 pound weight somewhere along the arm to make it 50 lbs on the ram. Like perique but "dry"
 

deluxestogie

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A wall-attached lever arm press is fairly easy to make. Have a look at the plan here: http://www.cheesemaking.com/store/p/50-Off-the-Wall-Press-Plans.html (magnify the image). Before cutting any notches for the several piston positions, you can do a trial with various weights (quart, half-gallon, gallon of water hanging off the end of the beam) with the piston pressing onto a bathroom scale. Use the trial to decide where to make the piston notches in the beam.

I think the greatest difference between what you're proposing and a twist rope is the exposed surface area. I can't think of a way to effectively compress a container of leaf without the surfaces being obstructed. It ends up being just a Perique press: http://fairtradetobacco.com/threads/2873-Really-Easy-Perique-Press

Bob
 

forumdotabaco

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what if you apply a corn style action before harvest? why not stop to water the tobacco 1 week before harvest?
 
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