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Your blending secrets

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CORoller55

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Anybody pray share their specific/favorite blending methods?

For me, though it may be time consuming, when I get new leaf I will roll a puro with it, maybe 5 cigars in total. Then I will add another leaf to the filler, ex; viso, starting with 1/2 leaf, roll 3 of those. then i build it up to 1 leaf. or more, depending on vitola. when i find a sweet spot with these two, then i move on to ligero. again, starting with just 1/2 leaf and building up, at the same time reducing the seco.

do you usually build upon the seco? do you just throw what sounds delicious together and give it a go? or do you have a calculated method? do you put several wrappers on one cigar to taste the back-to-back effects?

blending is such a complicated art, but Im sure a lot of you on here must have learned quite a bit from your own experimentation and trial and error...

Keep Rolling!
 

juan carlos

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i have been using smell and taste a lot...since i don't really smoke 'em.

may sound kinda weird rolling cigars and not really indulging..being a semi reformed nicotine addict I have to be careful. I luuuurv the smell of fresh tobacco and the aroma of a fine cigar but the lung function has been reduced by too many cigs.

i still fire them up, have a few puffs w/o inhaling, more just sampling the flavour of the smoke....maybe an inch or two.

Only been at this RYO thing for a while. I am really enjoying the manual manipulation of the roll, i get a noticeable nicotine hit just from handling the goods. My blend have been very careful and selective based on texture, taste and smell of the whole leaf. I savour every moment knowing that i'm not really going to dig in deep to the smoke. I look for the natural goodness of flavours, the same that i smell and taste in the unlit stick.

when i find the smoke is coming across like the un lit stick, i think that's a success. if it gets all tarry and stoged up, i toss it and try again another day!
 

waikikigun

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Yeah, I agree with both the above guys.

Start with the lightest leafs you can possibly get your hands on, almost-puro them with all the wrappers you can get, typically with a Dominican binder, and then add very small amounts of various visos, then ligeros once you find a decent wrapper. It takes a long time. I always do 6 or 8 variations of each thing at each stage. Process of addition and elimination. But it's great when you find a killer near-puro, like Habano seco with Dominican binder and some sweet-ish wrapper.

Then there are all the variables that can mess up your read of the blend. The conditioning of the leafs and rolled stick, what part of the leaf you used, how much "1 leaf" really was with those leaves, whether you used a dark crusty leaf from that bag or a light clean one... it's endless.

That's why simplicity, e.g. puro testing everything first, is so valuable.

Just like you guys said above.
 

Smokin Harley

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Anybody pray share their specific/favorite blending methods?

For me, though it may be time consuming, when I get new leaf I will roll a puro with it, maybe 5 cigars in total. Then I will add another leaf to the filler, ex; viso, starting with 1/2 leaf, roll 3 of those. then i build it up to 1 leaf. or more, depending on vitola. when i find a sweet spot with these two, then i move on to ligero. again, starting with just 1/2 leaf and building up, at the same time reducing the seco.

do you usually build upon the seco? do you just throw what sounds delicious together and give it a go? or do you have a calculated method? do you put several wrappers on one cigar to taste the back-to-back effects?

blending is such a complicated art, but Im sure a lot of you on here must have learned quite a bit from your own experimentation and trial and error...

Keep Rolling!
I usually only roll one of a new blend ,maybe two but the only change between the two is wrapper choice.
No sense rolling 5 if you get them rolled up and set aside ,then a week or month later you find out you don't like the blend. Rolling a puro isnt always a good thing either, you end up with one taste ,one profile...blah.
go look at the members blends folder ,build and tweak on those.
My next one to try though is a Mata Fina , San Andreas and Nicaraguan Habano filler ...I'm just thinking something different and outside the box of what I normally blend which usually incorporates Criollo98 ,Corojo and Piloto Cubano. A great tasting blend but ,you know , you can't eat Prime Rib and Lobster at every meal...sometimes you just crave a good grilled burger.
I have seen sticks with 2 or 3 wrappers on them barber pole succession style so you can taste different wrappers on the same stick but I have yet to try it.
Just make sure when you try your new blends you have the volado ,seco , viso(ligero) correct so it will have the right taste and burn correctly .
 

deluxestogie

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A quick run-through of the math of blending leads to the sad conclusion that if you have more than a few different varieties/stalk positions of tobacco, trying all the various possible combinations becomes impractical.

An analogy would be a kitchen's spice rack. Once I have a general notion of what each spice and herb may contribute to the taste and aroma of a dish, my hand instinctively goes toward a likely candidate.

With cigar blending, I agree that it is useful to evaluate a new component. I use several different approaches for this. For relatively gentle leaf, a puro is helpful. For leaf that appears more threatening (e.g. Flojo ligero), I evaluate it by adding a small proportion to a known, milder blend.

I don't really care too much about finding the perfect blend of anything (food or cigars), because natural ingredients are always changing (different crops or slightly different growing conditions or just going out of stock), and require constant adjustments. I roll and smoke a handful of cigars every day. Very few of them are identical.

I prepare some wrapper. I look at the available leaf (usually a dozen or more varieties multiplied by different stalk positions), and pick some light, mild, thin, add some medium body stuff, and spice it with a bit of mean looking dark leaf. Every now and then, a specific cigar will ring bells and set off the jackpot alert. Since I just rolled it, I know what it was (on a good day). Most of the cigars are nothing more than garden variety excellent.

Bob
 

waikikigun

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I made a very weird discovery, which I share with you here. I found a blend of strong pungent tobaccos that, blended, produces something with near zero taste or aroma. It's as if, in this specific relationship these leaves create a mysterious, almost mystical, neutrality.

I am constantly struggling with over-strong flavors and nico. My blending life is an endless effort of trying to find good medium flavor without strength, so I am endlessly tweaking blends. And then I stumble on The Big Nada:

Dominican binder
1 leaf Corojo seco
1 leaf Habano seco
1/2 leaf Corojo viso
1/2 leaf Dominican ligero

I was so stunned that it had neither taste nor aroma that I momentarily thought I'd lost my senses, so I handed it to my girlfriend, who doesn't smoke, and asked her to smell the smoke coming off of it. She could smell nothing. Nothing at all. It was as if it wasn't there at all.

Eventually I could detect a very faint aroma, a pleasant one, and resolved to try this same recipe with a few strong wrappers....
 

Gdaddy

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I made a very weird discovery, which I share with you here. I found a blend of strong pungent tobaccos that, blended, produces something with near zero taste or aroma. It's as if, in this specific relationship these leaves create a mysterious, almost mystical, neutrality.

I am constantly struggling with over-strong flavors and nico. My blending life is an endless effort of trying to find good medium flavor without strength, so I am endlessly tweaking blends. And then I stumble on The Big Nada:

Dominican binder
1 leaf Corojo seco
1 leaf Habano seco
1/2 leaf Corojo viso
1/2 leaf Dominican ligero

I was so stunned that it had neither taste nor aroma that I momentarily thought I'd lost my senses, so I handed it to my girlfriend, who doesn't smoke, and asked her to smell the smoke coming off of it. She could smell nothing. Nothing at all. It was as if it wasn't there at all.

Eventually I could detect a very faint aroma, a pleasant one, and resolved to try this same recipe with a few strong wrappers....


There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the blending Zone.
 

waikikigun

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The Blending Zone would be a good name for a forum. Gotta be a picture around of Rod Serling with a cigar, doesn't there? Or maybe a cig will have to do.

fUVKNFE.jpg
 
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