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Color Cure Cigar Tabacco

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Chris A

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Gentlemen-

In a perfect world, under what conditions would I color cure cigar leaf? I guess I always thought it was similar to humidor conditions, near 70% humidity with a temperature that fluctuates with the season, between 45 & 85 degrees. My first crop this year dried green & I'm trying not to let that happen with my small 2nd crop.

Any comments would be appreciated.

Chris
 

DGBAMA

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For individual leaf or stalk curing? Stalk harvested can tolerate much lower humidity without drying green.

In a climate controlled environment, my best results coloring/yellowing have been 90-95 deg and 85-90%rh. Once most of the green is gone, the leaves can be dried very quickly, with no ill effects.
 

Ben Brand

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Because its so dry in SA, what i do is wet the floor of the shed/garage I hang my tobacco in. I find the higher the humidity the darker the leaves cure, that said, watch for to high humidity.
 

vinconco

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For individual leaf or stalk curing? Stalk harvested can tolerate much lower humidity without drying green.

In a climate controlled environment, my best results coloring/yellowing have been 90-95 deg and 85-90%rh. Once most of the green is gone, the leaves can be dried very quickly, with no ill effects.

I'm curing burley, catterton, va116 and Izmir this year. I planted late and harvested late as a result and the temps after harvest have been in the 60's and 70's with humidity in the 40's to 60's. I'm using an old sheep shed with a dirt floor as a curing shed and haven't had any leaf dry green yet. Conditions were better after my first priming but have since deteriorated with ultra low humidity. So I'm piling the leaf in stacks of about 30 leaves for a week to 10 days before hanging it and so far yellowing is progressing at a perfect rate. I'll be hanging about 4000 leaves this fall and have about 1000 in piles right now ready to be hung this week. Each wire holds about 140 of large leaf and 300 Izmir leaves and so far I have 22 wires up


This pic was taken 9/6/14 1st priming




This was 9/10/14 1st priming



This leaf had been piled for only 5 days before hanging and it started the yellowing process enough that it continued even with the humidity around 50% and the mean temps around 60 degrees 9/23/14

 

SmokesAhoy

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I finally have enough leaf to pile it. I was outside stringing it from a box of primed leaf that has a few hundred leaves in it. I noticed it felt warm inside the mass, 98 degrees warm to be exact.

This is my first prime and I'm not a huge fan of first prime (I was going to throw it out actually) so perfect time to test this. Previously I didn't grow enough to get the piling affect to work. I knew that bottom leaf had a use.

I moved it down to the basement, 10 degrees cooler than where it was, I figured if it already hit almost 100 in a day I wanted to make it harder to go higher than 100, as I won't be able to break it down over the weekend.
 

SmokesAhoy

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This worked just awesome. I was away for the last week. I got home and checked the box and the experiment was a huge success.

Leaf that was what I have had the best luck color curing by hanging had the most damage. One had even composted.
Leaf that was thick and had no brown on it already cured awesome. The most beautiful color cure I've ever seen. Some entirely yellow, some with a tiny bit of light green. It turned out really great.

If you have a good sized personal grow where priming nets a few hundred leaves this is the way to go. My smaller grows in the past never got me enough to give piling an honest shot.

But if you have a pile of leaf and color curing has been an issue this is for you.
 
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