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Aiming for Perfection--Flue-Curing

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riverstone

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I have just loaded my kiln with most of this years crop. Mainly Virginia Bright Leaf flue cured and Yellow Twist Bud air cured. As I loaded the totes I took notice of the different colours of the leaf on the same type of tobacco. I have seen many posts on curing where people are aiming for a yellow leaf or a red leaf in flue or air cures. BUT looking through all the books and papers on this site, from over the years, I am struck by one thing that we don't seem to mention here, and that is grading.
I know that commercial barns are set up for stem curing, whether by air or flue, and then the tobacco leaf is graded before being baled for market. We prime our plants, so all being equal, all our leaf should be at the same stage of maturity when we cure it. BUT if you do not have enough plants to fill your curing chamber our leaf will be at different stages of maturity to get the chamber full. This strikes me as being similar to curing a whole stem and different colours will come out of the cure. I have flue cured leaf that is pale yellow, through to dark brown from the same load. Does this mean I have Lemon, Bright and Red Leaf Virginia or is it just bad flue curing. All my Yellow Twist Bud has been air cured and is a beautiful orange colour.
 

deluxestogie

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Re: Aiming for Perfection.

My experience has been that lower leaves flue-cure to a brighter yellow, and that higher leaves flue-cure to a redder or darker color. Although the issue of how Virginia Red is produced has been supported by conflicting answers, my understanding of commercial flue-curing is that once the green leaf has reached a yellow stage, the remainder of the flue-cure process is always the same, regardless of the nature of the leaf.

Bob
 

riverstone

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Bob
I agree about the leaf reaching yellow and then it is all the same flue cure. My point being that not all the leaf reaches yellow at the same time. With small growers, myself, it is not possible to fill the chamber with leaf at the same state of maturity off the same position off the plant. By the time the last leaves are anywhere near yellow , or even pale green , the first leaves are already turning dark. So when the cure is over we have different coloured/flavoured leaf. Should we then split it up and treat it differently (grade it) or lump it all together and call it Flue Cured Virginia?
 

ChinaVoodoo

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Bob
I agree about the leaf reaching yellow and then it is all the same flue cure. My point being that not all the leaf reaches yellow at the same time. With small growers, myself, it is not possible to fill the chamber with leaf at the same state of maturity off the same position off the plant. By the time the last leaves are anywhere near yellow , or even pale green , the first leaves are already turning dark. So when the cure is over we have different coloured/flavoured leaf. Should we then split it up and treat it differently (grade it) or lump it all together and call it Flue Cured Virginia?

"Should" is a strong word my friend.
 

ChinaVoodoo

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Following my glib answer, I put some thought into it. Basically I think you can do whatever you want as a home grower. Of course if you're selling your tobacco, it needs to be graded. Since I'm not, I generally make three distinctions. I keep everything non cigar separated and labeled by type, year, and which pick (lugs, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, last, etc. or stalk cured), whichever applies. If there's some leaves that are different, they go in the same bag. I can always pull them out and treat them differently in the future. With stalk cured, having not sorted when stripping them of the stalks, I then sort the leaves by size. Cigar leaf, which I'm taking seriously this year will get separated with traditional stalk position nomenclature (volado, seco, viso, ligero).
 

deluxestogie

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To bring out the best in your flue-cured tobacco, each batch should be pretty much the same degree of maturity. I would suggest that the solution to flue-curing a small grow is to run a small batch, rather than aiming to fill a chamber of arbitrary size. Although flue-cure chambers generally perform better when evenly filled, the improved performance is defeated if you batch together leaf of different degrees of maturity. In doing so, you sacrifice the leaf that is potentially the brightest, since it suffers from an overly long yellowing phase.

Lower leaf that comes out of the flue-cure as dark leaf has not successfully captured its sugars and desired leaf character. Of my flue-cure runs, some I consider to have been "good" and some not so good. The latter group were generally batches of mixed maturity or mixed tobacco varieties (like VA Bright together with Çelikhan). I proudly post photos of tied hands of gorgeous lemon-colored leaf. I don't photograph too many of the batches that result in overly dark or splotchy or messy looking leaf.

That having been said, you can certainly choose to flue-cure how ever you like. If you are content with the result, then there is no reason to change how you are doing it.

Bob
 
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