HA!.. I just did that. I bought some 1 and 2 liter oak barrels from a place in Texas. I made a small batch of Perique in the 1 liter barrel. I also made another batch in my Stainless Steel (SS) container that I usually make Perique in. That was 4 months ago. The Perique made in the SS tastes excellent (as always). The oak barrel "stuff" smells like a combination of vomit and feces. I've never had a batch go bad before so this might be the first one. Right now the "stuff" is going to age in a poly bag for a few months before I attempt to do anything with it.
I really like my SS Perique set-up. Real easy to sanitize between batches. I only tried the oak barrel because traditionally that's how Perique has always been made. Plus, an oak barrel in a press setting on a table looks...cool.
This experience looks like the first perique I tried to make (it was last year) :
I used some cherry red leaves in a jar, under pressure.
In the first days, a nice smell grew : vinegar, fruity, nice.
About one month later (after several airing and remoistening of the leaves) the jar broke and I had to put the leaves in a new jar, this time I think I added too much water to my leaves and the juice (when under pressure) was not as dark as before.
A few days later, I saw that the juice became blurred, I smelled the jar, it had a smell just like yours : a combination of vomit and feces (I am not kidding).
After the three months, I opened the jars and dried this "perique", I never dare to smoke it, so it is still in a jar, dried.
For the sake of science, I opened the jar a few minutes ago to see if it evolved (nearly one year after drying) : not at all, the smell is still something not engaging !
The other periques I made were very different : they stayed fruity and vinegar.
I smoked a lot of commercial Virginia/Perique tobacco in past ten years, many of them had a fruity aroma (McClellands...) and others were more vinegar (three nuns), but I tried two Virginia/Perique in which I found some similarities with my first perique :
- Samuel Gawith Cabbie's Mixture
- C&D Boubon Bleu
With these two tobaccos, when opening their box, I noticed a slight pungent smell, reminding me of the "vomit" smell of my own "failed perique".
I had never bought some pure commercial perique, so I don't know if it has this "bad smell" too... does anyone ever tried some ?
I wonder if the "real St James perique" might not be sometimes just like ours : more or less failed, more or less vomit sometimes ?