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How to reduce nicotine hit.

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davek14

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Humph! How does one minimize the burnt taste? Would just drying for a long time till crispy remove the proteins as well as the ammonia. Could I be maximizing caramelization with many hours of moist heat right at 212F, when I'm actually trying to avoid it?
 

deluxestogie

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Read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction

The burnt taste is from pyrolysis. Think of a slice of bread in a toaster. When toasted very light, the aroma suddenly changes, and the driest parts take on a golden color. That's Maillard reaction. When you toast it a bit darker, the higher temperature develops a sweetness and a deeper color, and caramelization is dominating. Burnt toast (or nearly blackened edges), comes from pyrolysis. Pyrolysis produces a burnt taste and black carbon from the proteins and sugars.

When the tobacco remains wet (as with the Cavendish process), none of these reactions occur, since the temperature stays well below even Maillard reaction temperatures (~300°F).

Bob
 

davek14

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I had read that and didn't put two and two together and relate it to tobacco. Thanks very much for your detailed answer, as usual.

Gives me direction but, as I feared, it's fiddly and easy to mess up. Now, if I could find a better heat source than my oven I could take notes and fine tune it. I'm playing with pressing followed by the judicious addition of Bright Leaf right now but I'll be toasting again.

I need to start a text file with some of your answers sir.
 

davek14

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Anders, if you are still following this, here's another method which I just tried with success with some raw Yellow Twist Bud:


Bring some Burley leaves into case, remove the midribs, then stuff them into a mason jar, close it tightly, put it for 1 hour into the oven at just 80 degrees Celsius.
Then remove the jar from the oven, open it, take the leaves out and air them for a moment. (Mine had now a certain sugar-stickiness to the touch - probably some starches converted. Note that there was NO sugar added).
Now roll the leaves into a tight cigar / sausage and press them properly overnight (for example wrapped in baking paper between two pieces of wood squeezed by a c-clamp). The next morning you can cut the cigar sausage into small flakes / coins with a sharp knife. Let them dry out.

The resulting smokes is a touch sweeter and more tamed, with a delicious pipey Burley room note. There's no rawness or alkaline burn / bite anymore. It's among the methods I described before the one which least alters the general aroma, if you like a pure Burley.

(Note: The press stage seems to be important, and furthers the sensation of slight increase in sweetness.)

This works really well. It reduces bite just partly but with no heat or addition of sugar. I've been doing this but adding about 20% Bright Leaf to the roll and it's a nice blend, ready the next day. I'm even having some success just rolling up little rolls a few inches long and maybe 1/4' or so in diameter, folding them, putting them in a baggie, then standing on them with all my weight on my heal for a minute or two.
 

ChinaVoodoo

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I don't know if this is even on topic in regards to reducing nicotine hit. Ames (1990) does say that reduction of protein content lowers the pH of the food, so, maybe. Anyways, I've referenced multiple studies that support the idea that we indeed do produce maillard reactions with many of our tobacco processes.

https://www.brewersjournal.ca/2017/05/18/science-malliard-reaction/

From Ames (1990)
Foods stored at room tempetature may develop off-flavours due to the Maillard reaction. On heating at intermediate temperatures (e.g. 100°C). caramel or cooked flavours are produced, while at higher temperatures (e.g. 150°C). the aroma is ‘toasted’ or -roasted’” (Fig. 2). It is clear that the aroma profile varies with the temperature and time of heating. At any given temperature-time combination, a unique aroma, which is not likely to be reproduced any other combination of heating conditions, is produced”‘.

Screenshot_20180313-030653.jpg

Rufian-Henares (2016)
the same lysine loss is observed in a mixture of a-lactalbumin and lactose after 4 h of heating at 96 C than after 4 days at 55 C.

From a study on black garlic production by Rios-Rios et al (2018)
After both pre-treatments, CDP and OHP, samples were aged for 12 days at 70 °C and 94% RH to obtain the f inal product. Black garlic samples from CDP and OHP were withdrawn in duplicate at 0 (after pre-treatment), 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 days of processing. As control group, garlic bulbs were aged in duplicate without pre-treatments for 30 days at 70 °C, 94% RH.

Are we perhaps, yet, convinced that we are producing maillard reactions in tobacco when we kiln, steam, and pressure cook?
 

deluxestogie

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Wow. That reaction rate graph took an hour or so to make sense of. Ouch!

ReactionRates.jpg


So, what is the "ln k"? It is the natural logarithm of the rate of change of the concentration of the indicated chemical, measured in parts per million per hour (ppm/hr). Whew!

The 3 chemicals (ignore specific names) are roughly identified as:
  • "toasty"
  • "caramel"
  • "off-flavor" or "odd"

What does a log scale mean? First of all, it makes changes that are exponential appear as a straight line on a graph. Going from 1 to 2 on a log scale is the same as going from 10 to 100 on a normal (linear) scale. That means that going from 1 to 3 (like the "toasty" line) is really showing a rate increase from 10 to 1000.

If we accept the data...
Notice that the "caramel" and "toasty" aromas don't really get going until we're above 230°F (my red line). They do accumulate, though more slowly, between 212°F (boiling) and 221°F (pressure cooker). So yes, there may be some Maillard reaction products or even caramelization at Cavendish-making temperatures. But it's really slow, by at least an order of magnitude, compared to toasting or oven temps.

I don't know what the "off flavors" are coming from, and whether or not it has any relevance to tobacco.

Bob
 

davek14

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I'm not even sure what flavors I'm trying to achieve, still learning. But what I'm seeing is that, if you want more caramelization keep temps below about 212F where the rate of change is equal. Above that rate of change for toasty is faster. The rate of change for caramelization is greatest compared to rate of change for toasty at about 50C or 122F. I wonder if that being kilning temp is a coincidence. Thanks for that analysis.
 

ChinaVoodoo

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It's dependent on so many factors. We can't really say anything conclusively if it actually hasn't been studied in tobacco. There's no way it's remotely as fast as in milk. We know this from experience. But what I do know is that I gotta make some black garlic for my ramen now. I suspected black garlic was a process that one could do at home, but I thought it would be a much higher temperature. I'm glad I found a study that explains exactly how to do it. There was a pre treatment of 70C at low humidity for a couple days, followed by 12 days at 70C and 95F. I could do that in my kiln in a sealed container, obviously.
 

Plöjarn

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A lot af great information here! Thanks for all the interesting answers.
After a bit of experimentation I ended up blending the burley with about 20% of black Virginia Cavendish (Stoved for a couple of days in 95 degrees C). That reduced the nic-hit enough and added just a little fruity sweetness to the tobacco. But I will thry the quick heating + pressing method described here later when I have harvested my Yellow Twist Bud.
 

davek14

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The light stoving followed by pressing works well to reduce Burley bite without a lot of flavor change.

I press just a little Virginia into the "cigars" as well. The combination of the procedure and a little Bright Leaf eliminates the bite. You've seen that Virginia reduces bite already.
 
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