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Curing shed needed?

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Smokin Buffalo

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I have some of my harvest hanging in my garage. The leaves are drying out. Our temps are in the 60's with night getting down into the 40's with low humidity. Do I need some kind of curing shed or is a basement with humidity in the 40-50 range good enough? My basement is usually in the 60's.
What are the best conditions for color curing? Thanks in advance.
 

squeezyjohn

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To get a good transition from green to yellow which is the first step in an air cure you need fairly high humidity ... although higher temps may speed this up a bit, the important thing is to keep them from drying out completely while green as that will set the color. My favoured way to do this is to hang them up in an area which is outdoors, preferably above grass or soil, but sheltered from any rain which might fall - I use the eaves of my shed. If you do need to hang them in your garage I would suggest keeping them really bunched up tight until fully yellowed ... as the moisture present in the leaves will raise the immediate humidity in the bunches. To yellow properly you essentially have to keep the leaves alive so the enzymes can digest all the chlorophyll.

Once all the green has gone - it doesn't matter how quickly you dry them in order to get a colour cure to brown (although slower will give better flavour as it is effectively ageing while drying out) ... a bone dry humidity will take you from yellow to brown in a matter of a week or so and once the midrib is dry and dead you can continue ageing anywhere that the leaf won't go over 70% humidity which would lead to moulding - especially in colder places where condensation can form on the leaves.

Your basement sounds like an ideal place for both the second half of the colour cure as well as any ageing. The very best ageing comes from a fluctuating humidity that doesn't go over 70.

A curing shed may not be the holy grail you're looking for unless it is designed so you have decent control over both humidity and temperatures. I have a shed on the allotment which is very hard to regulate as it's off grid and all I can do is open and close vents depending on what I think the weather is going to do! It's handy to have in order to have a dedicated place to cure, but not ideal!
 

deluxestogie

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Locations that are "traditional tobacco growing regions" are mostly locations where 18th and 19th century technology were adequate to maintain suitable curing conditions. As most forum members know, tobacco can be grown almost anywhere in the world that is reasonably habitable. The trick, as squeezyjohn has pointed out repeatedly in his grow logs, is color-curing the leaf.

With modern technology, the task of color-curing is a matter of compensating for any shortcoming in your climate. Here in southwest Virginia, a ventilated shed pretty much fits the bill for color-curing, and even for aging. So, I'm fortunate in that regard. My very nicest color-cures happen when the humidity is well above 60%, and the temperature hovers in the 80s (ºF). With those late summer conditions, I get into trouble if the humidity drops for a week or more. With leaf that is harvested late, the weather is cooler, and the color-cure takes longer, even though days are usually dry and nights damp, with foggy mornings. But all this depends on my natural ambient conditions.

For color-curing inside a home, the most common problem is low humidity during color-curing. Any area that allows you to isolate the leaf from the ambient dryness will usually work. With a single string of leaf, you can loosely enclose it in plastic wrap--but only until it yellows. For larger quantities, a plastic "tent" of some sort may retain enough leaf moisture to prevent the leaf from drying green.

Bob
 

squeezyjohn

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Other important criteria are the variety and the ripeness of the leaf. I tend to only grow varieties which I know will almost turn yellow on the plant and once harvested will complete the job almost by magic! Last year my leaf ripened beautifully and it was the easiest thing to colour cure the Bolivian Criollo Black ... this year I just haven't had the sunshine to get to the same level of ripeness and it shows in the speed they are curing. Having said that BCB is amazingly easy to air cure compared to a whole plethora of other varieties I've tried.

I'd echo the idea of a small tent or just some polythene suspended above each hanging wire indoors as another way of getting the humidity directly around the leaves up to facilitate a good yellowing.

Another thought would be to investigate pile curing if you're able to inspect your tobacco on a fairly regular basis. This is similar to the way cigar tobacco is piled to ferment but done when the leaf is green and the goal is to try and sweat that green out. I regularly do it with trickier varieties and it does work (although it can often lead to a slightly darker coloured final leaf). You build stacks of leaves up in to mounds with the tip of the leaves in the middle and stems radiating outwards ... and you leave them for several days before dismantling to dry out a little and re-stacking in reverse order ... after a week or 2 this will really have triggered the yellowing and the leaves can then be hung up to finish the job off. The one thing you can't do with pile curing is just leave it though ... that is a one way ticket to making a compost heap!
 

Smokin Buffalo

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Thank you all for the responses. I will have to find a place with higher humidity or manufacture some myself. Being in a wheelchair limits what I can do and where I can keep the tobacco. It was fun seeing if I could grow tobacco and now I know. I would make quite a few changes from the straw bails i used this year.
 

SmokesAhoy

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If you can do straw bails you can do Homer buckets! I get fantastic grows out of them (I use them for seed momma's that absolutely nothing bad can ever happen to) only problem with buckets is water. If you put them in a kiddie pool or run lines that solves it
 

Smokin Harley

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basically what squeezyjohn said about the green leaf pile curing is what I did with my sucker crop of perique. I left it standing as long as I could .Then I primed it ,strung it on wire as per my usual , then laid it in a circular pile in a plastic pool with bath towels beneath and over to keep the leaf from direct contact with the plastic so it wouldn't just sit in moisture as it sweats. Temperatures turned much cooler then than it had been while growing .I checked it daily . It took nearly a week and 3 re-arrangements of piling to go from all green to mostly yellow . At what i would say was the 85-90% yellow stage I hung it up to finish as we then had a few warmer days . The leaf edges were already a deep dark brown by then. I finally got a day off today so one of my must-do's today is go check on my leaf . It rained heavily early this morning so I'm sure the leaf is very moist. Supposed to be in the low 70's today so I may open up the doors for some fresh air exchange.
 

MichaelSanders

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If your forced to cure indoors then use a trash bag and hang em up if you can. Leave the bag open so the moisture wont collect or you can lay them on the ground and cover em with a tarp then rotate the stack everyday. Once they yellow then string up to dehydrate the stems.
 

Tutu

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Keep 'em in your bathroom, take a hot shower from time to time, and leave the door closed! Should give you some humidity!
 
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