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my latest press kake with homegrown

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Smokin Harley

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So , I can't find the thread I posted in but I know I jumped in an ongoing thread and took a side road with this. But I feel I needed to make it one in itself because it may help someone .
A couple days ago I discovered a quart jar I had thrown small amounts of leaf Id grown and made cavendish ,perique and naturally aged Va flake and ,etc etc. So I took that and added some alcohol , specifically rum and Honey Jack ,shook it around a few times during the day, let it sit in the same jar in room temperature overnight and it smelled extremely sweet but yet not like tobacco,almost candy-like and syrupy .It was in Id say medium/high case. So I put it in a quart freezer ziplock baggie , got it all down to one big lump ,smooshed the air out of the baggie before placing this wad of shred in a bag between 2 pieces of wood and gave it what for in my bench vice until it was 1/4 inch thick.. I let that sit an hour before I took that pressed mass and folded it over and re-pressed it over night in the cold basement. I just opened it and it now has the most raisiny/fig aroma ,smells very good. I think I'm onto something.
Wondering if I should do something else to it like crumble it out ,add more Honey Jack and re-press,or don't push my luck and stop here and just let it dry and try.
Thoughts ?
 

Smokin Harley

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well, I went ahead and crumbled it out yesterday morning. In the short time of topping and pressing , it definitely achieved a darker color and mellowed . I sprayed more Honey Jack on it and re-pressed it overnight . It keeps improving . Smelling more and more like the pipe tobacco that I remember my grandfather smoking 40+ years ago- the whiskey,rum, the honey,vanilla, and dried fruit . Its one of those comfort/memory aromas. I'll take a pinch out to dry , might try it this afternoon. If it turns out to be satisfactory, I'll be doing this to more leaf with some charred oak aged moonshine. Those old sailors had the right idea , soak it in booze, put some pressure on it and wait. Nothing difficult. Sometimes the old simple way beats any old modern "time saver,mechanized or laboratory formulated" method. Old world stuff.
 

greenmonster714

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When I get a small press thrown together I'll have to try this. I have plenty of tobacco to experiment with. Thanks for sharing this info. It sounds delicious.
 

Charly

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Congratulations for your kake :)
I tried to make kakes last year and I had varied results (not bad, but not great either), I did not achieve something good when I added rum (yes, I love rums), maybe I did put to much of it ?

How much alcool and honey did you add ?
I think it needs really small quantity of each to be good.
 

Smokin Harley

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When I get a small press thrown together I'll have to try this. I have plenty of tobacco to experiment with. Thanks for sharing this info. It sounds delicious.

lol, well heres the thing. Its one of those "I don't remember what all is in it , so it can't be replicated" blends. I may as well sit here with a rubiks cube before I could replicate .
I do know I have -
Va Gold flake
Perique ...well, Periqued
My jar of mystery leaf blend which could be any number of leaves from any of the varieties Ive grown that fit a pipe tobacco profile.
A peach birddog bourbon flavored cavendish that went wrong because of moisture it was almost the moisture content of a fresh can of copenhagen .I think I had Madole in it ,maybe some Va , Criollo 98 maybe...i dont know nor remember, its a mish mash of leaf plus at least 3 different spirits (peach birddog, Honey Jack, Rum ) plus a minuscule amount of raw honey and Watkins real vanilla extract . I'm sure there is even a small amount of PG in it too but the blend is so far from that small batch I put the PG in its bound to be in the single digit % of the leaf amount.

I can say though that the pouch aroma is almost a Lane 1-Q ,seriously. The moisture is a little high but the pinch I took out yesterday morning I crumbled out and set in foil to dry out a couple hours before I packed my pipe (Falcon). I couldnt stand it any longer . So, it was still a little hard starting but when I got it going, wow . I surprised myself .
It has opened my mind up about the simplicity of just leaf and spirits allowed to rest under some pressure. Nothing fancy .I like old world methods of doing things and this solidifies my thoughts on that.

And now ,for my next trick...to get something like a salted caramel /english toffee
 

Smokin Harley

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Congratulations for your kake :)
I tried to make kakes last year and I had varied results (not bad, but not great either), I did not achieve something good when I added rum (yes, I love rums), maybe I did put to much of it ?

How much alcool and honey did you add ?
I think it needs really small quantity of each to be good.

I had bought some of the tobacco spray additives from WLT , they are a concentrate you add like a tsp of water and spray over mostly cigarette blends. One was a chocolate sort of flavoring and the other was a flavor like licorice or something sweet. I used one up and poured about half full of the Honey Jack and a idk , 1/2 tsp of honey ? Shook it up and let it sit a while before a second shaking , then I just spritzed it on the shred , roll it around in a jar and sprayed some more . At no time was it ever soaked ,just moist ,medium high to high case. Roll it around all day then sit all night in a sealed jar, next day I sprayed a little more . Then I put it in the quart ziplock freezer baggie ,get all the air you can out of the baggie and press it in between 2 boards in a bench vice . A grip clamp or similar will do the same thing. Just something to provide equal pressure for an extended period of time, like overnight. I don't think that once it is pressed any more time does anything more, but I could be wrong.
I have a small bottle of Sake I bought from Fresh Market . I may try to add some of the english toffee flavoring to that to act as a carrier and apply to some other leaf and see what I get.
 

deluxestogie

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...overnight. I don't think that once it is pressed any more time does anything more, but I could be wrong.
Set up two identical batches. Press one for 24 hours. Dry it down, and store it without sampling it. Press the other for 1 month. Dry it down, then allow it to rest and stabilize for about a week. Now compare.

If a cased batch is not fully dried down and allowed to stabilize before smoking it, then you are just sampling the casing--which may indeed be yummy. By allowing it to fully dry down, and allowing it to stabilize for at least a few days (in order to reach some equilibrium), then the volatiles that will not remain in the finished tobacco obscure the result.

Duration of pressing alters the tobacco chemically. Drying down alters the tobacco chemically. Stabilization alters the tobacco chemically. All of them make a difference.

Bob
 
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