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What is the main problem of dry tobacco?

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ackebooa

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Hey guys!
I want to sort out some thoughts ive had about why the tobacco needs to be moist, many thoughts are from when i first started out
with my interest for tobacco and they might be wrong. Would like your opinion.

First ive always thought that keeping tobacco moist locks in aromas and all the good things in the leaf, if it dries out it slowly looses that. But leafs that has just been
dried and kept dry, smells more like cigarrs to me than the tobacco ive had in my kiln and kept moist.

Ive also thought that its more important to keep kilned leafs moist, because they have been through the process and are completed leafs and should be kept moist.

And theres also the reason to keep finished cigars moist, because they dry out and crack and gets too dry for a pleasant smoke. But does this affect the aromas? Is the physical aspect of drying out and too dry smoke, the sole purposes of keeping cigars in humidors?

And maybe, moisting up tobacco and letting it dry out and moisting it again repeatedly slowly makes the leaf loose all the goodies?

Sorry for a kinda messy thread but its shows quite well that my brain has been mixing things up a bit and needs sorting out.

Thankful for your opinion :)
Merry tobacco!
 

Smokin Harley

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I believe Bob will be in here soon to give what will be the best reason/analogy/explanation that science could ever offer.
Until then ,My $0.02 -
Tobacco is organic. It needs to be kept "moist",or what we should really refer to as proper temperature and humidity levels. We know by action and trial and error that (bulk)tobacco kept too dry results in crumbly tobacco ,cracked wrappers and burn like last years dried up Christmas tree in a July drought. We also know that the opposite or too much moisture results in first of all, Mold or rot (compost). Second ,an inability to burn properly ,or what does burn has an acrid taste . When we bring temperature into the mix, too high of a temperature can result in eggs of the tobacco beetle to hatch and the result of that is something other than us enjoying our fine leaf.
Lets insert one more factor into tobacco - time.
With the proper levels of temperature, humidity and time- tobacco continues to slowly age/mature ? . Natural oils ,esters, and the flavors imparted by each tobacco leaf/variety continue to marry and a complexity of flavors within the blend results. Take a freshly rolled cigar and smoke it. It will have flavor but may have a little sharpness about it.
Take the very same cigar and let it age properly for a month , a year,or even 5 years...It will indeed have noticeably changed at each of those points .At the 5th year it may have actually considerably slowed its aging process and you have a fine smooth,aged tobacco to enjoy with an accompanying aged spirit. Its an easy comparison between a fresh and aged example of the same cigar. We've all done it.
If you took a freshly distilled spirit(lets use my favorite one, whiskey) Freshly distilled it is basically moonshine- clear , not much taste (maybe yeasty)and very potent, might even a burn to the throat. Store that white distillate in a charred unused white oak barrel stored in the top of a barrel house for 7 years (turning and moving the barrel within the barrel house to its neighbors to have the same opportunities to age. You DO rearrange your cigars within your humidor ,don't you? ) ,the surrounding wood (slight flashback to long term tobacco storage here ,for natural flavors imparted by the humidity regulating storage container...spanish cedar) ,temperature, time ...and we will have a fine tasting spirit that could only have resulted with proper care in aging. Same goes for tobacco.
 

deluxestogie

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Fully finished tobacco, if allowed to thoroughly dry at normal, ambient temperatures, simply loses its water content. Once that content falls below "low case"--which I would describe a slightly flexible, but does not shatter with handling, further "aging" is suspended. When it subsequently gains more water content, then it resumes its "aging." The gain or loss of water has little effect, if any, on the gain or loss of other volatile organic compounds (those precious aromas). By contrast, exposure of the tobacco to higher heat will increase the loss of volatile organics.

A cigar that is dried slowly, will not split. One that is dried too rapidly may split its wrapper, especially at the foot, because the wrapper dries and shrinks faster than the interior of the cigar. Cigars continue to "age" when kept in at least low case. When they dry, "aging" is suspended, only to resume if the moisture content increases again. As with whole leaf, abnormal heating drives off volatile organics, whereas loss of moisture in more reasonable ambient temperatures has little effect on their content.

The major reason that, for example, pipe tobacco at a tobacconist is eternally moist is marketing. Customers are more likely to conflate freshness with squishy. Although nearly all commercial tobaccos contain some casing for mold prevention, this is required only because commercial tobacco is consistently stored, displayed and offered in a state that is too moist for proper storage. And beyond that anti-fungal casing, even more casing is added to make the tobacco more squishy--better sales.

[On a side note, I purchased a 14 ounce bag of Chocolate Cavendish about 6 or 7 years ago. I rarely smoke it, and smoke it only in one exclusively "chocolate" pipe. For storage, I dumped the contents of the bag into a 1 gallon glass jar with an unsealed glass lid--the sort you often see in a tobacconist's pipe tobacco display. So there it sits, in a jar with a non-vapor-proof lid, year after year. Its casing contains so much humectant that IT NEVER DRIES--never. It could sit like this on a tobacconist's counter for a decade or more, and still offer the squishy feeling desired by consumers.]

SUMMARY:
If your whole leaf or shredded tobacco dries, it will not mold or "age," but can be rehydrated to low case for continued "aging." Tobacco that is drier than low case is at increased risk of mechanical damage. If a cigar dries without splitting, then just restore it in a humidor for a few weeks.

Don's tobacco, from WLT, is about as fully aged as you'll find anywhere. Although a cigar rolled from home-grown leaf could always use a bit more aging, a cigar rolled from WLT leaf just needs to stabilize its humidity after rolling.

Under typical storage conditions, cigars gradually lose their volatile aromatics, regardless of the ambient humidity. By "gradually," I mean a time scale of 10 to 20 years. Their nicotine content remains pretty much the same.

Bob
 

SmokesAhoy

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As to the scent it returns after being brought into case. Here is a good example, last week I made Cavendish. The process removed nearly all the scent, spreading it out on a screen in the furnace room removed all the water. Even with it crispy dry there is still some water in the inner parts of the leaf after such a quick dry so I put it into airtight storage where it took a few days to equalize and now is just right. Opening the lid and smelling it the scent is starting to return but slowly. After a week or two resting I expect it to smell good again.

If no humectants are added, and I don't, tobacco will mold if it has too much water so I always store it at the shatter stage to removed any possibility of mold. The aroma will always without exception, return after rehydrating, but like Bob said, aging is suspended. Which is fine if it's not fresh.

Don always sells leaf at the right moisture content to not mold or not shatter in an airtight bag but I find it too difficult to consistently get the case perfect so nothing molds so since I don't want to lose any to mold when it comes to storing tobacco of my own it's stored crispy.
 

deluxestogie

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...when it comes to storing tobacco of my own it's stored crispy.
If you require whole leaf (as with cigar binders and wrappers), the leaf has a better chance of remaining intact during storage if it is in low case--which will not mold. For other uses, a few cracks in the leaf won't matter.

Bob
 

Jack in NB

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I've smoked a pipe from the late fifties.

On occasion, my non-smoking friends have pointed out the error of my ways, but I do enjoy it. A recent blurb came down the e-mail channel that I wish I had seen earlier as a rebuttal. It was pointed out to the smoker that the cost of his habit could have purchased a very high-end car (In my case, the half-century would definitely have bought a Lambourgini!). The smoker replied, "You don't smoke - how come you're driving that little Ford?"

The off-the shelf products always gave me a problem with rapid dottle build-up in the pipe stem, and the occasional slug in my mouth when I got excited and gave a hard pull on the pipe . . . so I started drying it. And on one occasion, I weighed the pack before and after - 50 g as received, 40 g dried. That's 20% moisture, and possibly more with the effect of the humectants Bob discusses.

At that time, it was about 25 cents/gram, and with 20% water, that was $2.50 per pack for the water content . . . I was paying the supplier, the seller and the government over $10,000 per Imperial gallon for the water in the stuff. That highly offended the sensibilities of the 26% (+/- 10%) of Scottish DNA in my ancestry. At the same time, my accounting showed I was spending $1100 annually for fuel for 20,000 mi in my Jetta diesel, and burning nearly $3,000 in my pipe!

Time for a change, so I scrounged some seed and started growing! It's been over 10 years now. It took me a few years to get the processing down - straight off the plant first (arggh . . . the stuff would gag a maggot!) then kilning, then later, simply air aging for a year, boxing on a day when the hanging leaves are in case, re-casing as needed for bricking, shredding and re-drying to get my preferred chunky texture, experimenting with over 60 varieties so far to get a nice taste . . .

I still smoke it as dry as possible in the pipe. It's interesting that 2% more moisture -almost but not quite dry enough - causes the gurgling problem in my pipes. Some varieties have had a bit of fall-out, but not serious. And my taste buds haven't been offended by hot burning in the pipe.

It's been a fascinating experience, and I've met some delightful folks in the process!
 

deluxestogie

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I've smoked a pipe from the late fifties.
I was 11 years old in the late fifties! Do you mean your late fifties?

"Dottle" is a word I can never remember. And "gurgle" is an event that only happens for me with squishy, commercial tobacco. (That must be the reason for all those clever and clumsy, metal condenser thingies inside many American-brand pipes. Oh, and my Peterson has one as well. Merely leaving the goop out of tobacco eliminates dottle, gurgle and condensers. It's all just an unfortunate chain of events.)

At least when your pipe gurgles in its dottle, you know that you're hearing the sweet sound of $10,000 per Imperial gallon.

Bob
 

Jack in NB

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And you are one of those delightful folks, Bob!

But you are clearly a young fart. I was 21 in 1959, a young and ambitious instructor at the Hamilton Flying Club in Ontario, when I first followed pater's footsteps with a cheap new pipe and his favourite brand, Picobac . . .

And correction: the present gurgle is the mist from my re-casing spray bottle, out of my (almost free?) water tap from our own well, spraying my almost free crop of leaf which saves me close to $40 per plant!

Jack
 

Smokin Harley

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I was 11 years old in the late fifties! Do you mean your late fifties?

"Dottle" is a word I can never remember. And "gurgle" is an event that only happens for me with squishy, commercial tobacco. (That must be the reason for all those clever and clumsy, metal condenser thingies inside many American-brand pipes. Oh, and my Peterson has one as well. Merely leaving the goop out of tobacco eliminates dottle, gurgle and condensers. It's all just an unfortunate chain of events.)

At least when your pipe gurgles in its dottle, you know that you're hearing the sweet sound of $10,000 per Imperial gallon.

Bob

then theres the detritus to watch out for...
 

ackebooa

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Thanks for all your elaborate answers :)
I think i understand it now. This tobacco growing takes time, I guess I need a another few years to experience all the different levels of development in the tobacco. Good to hear that the baccy actually dont get spoiled when its dry, just that it doesnt age.

So basically, i can let the leafs dry for a lot more than 6 weeks if i dont have time, and after kilning for about 6 weeks, i can let them dry out if i dont have time to arrange in a humidor. And before rolling i moisten them up, roll em into cigars and then put them in a humidor with the right humidity.


My cigarrs from summer 2015 was smelling reeaally pleasing but unfortunatley i got a lot of mold in the boxes, so im not expecting to learn much more from those.Im working 2 weeks and living 2 weeks in 2 seperate locations, have my own little company so really hard to keep attending the baccy properly. Longing to move to a house with good space for everything..





On another note, I was in costa rica in the spring and let a cigarr manufacturer there try one of mines out. He was really suprised and liked them :)
 
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