Controlled Chaos
Well-Known Member
Even though that's where my pipe journey started it's far from where it landed. Despite having over 30 English/Balkan blends jarred up and a handful of Virginias and VaPers I still welcome a good aromatic once in a while and especially if there are non-smoking bystanders in the area. There are a lot of good recipes here and unless I'm not using correct search words there seems to be nothing about aromatics so here's a little something that will make the room smell great and also carry some flavor through.
First I started off with some burley that had been stemmed and misted with a solution of distilled water, molasses, and Hershey's Syrup before being lightly toasted in the oven and then the leaves were layered into a cookie/cupcake carrier or whatever they're called. A 50/50 mixture of Elijah Craig bourbon and TFA (The Flavor Apprentice) Hazelnut (not the "safe" one, the regular) was added to the container until there was a slight excess from what the leaf had soaked up. Basically there was extra liquid on the bottom but not enough to cover it, the surface tension held what extra liquid there was close to the leaf. This was left uncovered. The leaves were flipped or rearranged twice a day for three or four days, long enough for them to dry out but still feel like they had a bit of PG.
A self healing cutting mat and a roller cutter were all it took to quickly slice everything into a rough cube cut. Everything was scooped into a jar and placed to the side of the tobacco cabinet with a few other home blends using Sutliff components and ignored since I doubted myself on the toasting process and soaking in hazelnut was a last ditch effort to save some leaf. Every so often I would open it up to take a whiff and give it a pinch to see if any residue was left on my fingers thinking maybe it just needed to stabilize in the jar but after a few weeks it was ignored indefinitely thinking too much flavoring had been added because the PG was still slightly detectable on the fingers after a little squeeze and a test smoke didn't yield anything impressive.
Fast forward to a couple months ago when finding the jar and deciding to give it a go straight in a cob. It was too good to be the product of an accident or haphazardly thrown together recipe. It burned well, tasted good despite being one dimensional, didn't need a lot of attention, and best of all it made my living room smell amazing and that smell just faded, didn't turn into a stale smoke odor. Even though it was pretty good it needed to be blended to really let it shine. This is roughly what I came up with before finishing what there was in the jar:
40% Hazelnut burley
35% Turkish/Oriental
25% Bright VA, stoved in a jar enough to get it a little past the shade of red VA. Just barely starting to smell like caramel
Measurements were by weight, the other two were in fairly low case but not crumbly when handled. Mix everything up and put it in a jar for a couple weeks to let the other ingredients soak up some of the flavoring and that's it. In the right proportions the hazelnut burley should just barely be taking the lead with the Turkish leaf being the equivalent of nutmeg to a holiday drink while the VA sweetens things up. Hopefully soon I'll try this recipe again and have more details to share but for now this should be good enough to get you in the ballpark of this happy accident that hopefully wasn't just lightening in a bottle. Happy smokes, everybody, thanks for reading
First I started off with some burley that had been stemmed and misted with a solution of distilled water, molasses, and Hershey's Syrup before being lightly toasted in the oven and then the leaves were layered into a cookie/cupcake carrier or whatever they're called. A 50/50 mixture of Elijah Craig bourbon and TFA (The Flavor Apprentice) Hazelnut (not the "safe" one, the regular) was added to the container until there was a slight excess from what the leaf had soaked up. Basically there was extra liquid on the bottom but not enough to cover it, the surface tension held what extra liquid there was close to the leaf. This was left uncovered. The leaves were flipped or rearranged twice a day for three or four days, long enough for them to dry out but still feel like they had a bit of PG.
A self healing cutting mat and a roller cutter were all it took to quickly slice everything into a rough cube cut. Everything was scooped into a jar and placed to the side of the tobacco cabinet with a few other home blends using Sutliff components and ignored since I doubted myself on the toasting process and soaking in hazelnut was a last ditch effort to save some leaf. Every so often I would open it up to take a whiff and give it a pinch to see if any residue was left on my fingers thinking maybe it just needed to stabilize in the jar but after a few weeks it was ignored indefinitely thinking too much flavoring had been added because the PG was still slightly detectable on the fingers after a little squeeze and a test smoke didn't yield anything impressive.
Fast forward to a couple months ago when finding the jar and deciding to give it a go straight in a cob. It was too good to be the product of an accident or haphazardly thrown together recipe. It burned well, tasted good despite being one dimensional, didn't need a lot of attention, and best of all it made my living room smell amazing and that smell just faded, didn't turn into a stale smoke odor. Even though it was pretty good it needed to be blended to really let it shine. This is roughly what I came up with before finishing what there was in the jar:
40% Hazelnut burley
35% Turkish/Oriental
25% Bright VA, stoved in a jar enough to get it a little past the shade of red VA. Just barely starting to smell like caramel
Measurements were by weight, the other two were in fairly low case but not crumbly when handled. Mix everything up and put it in a jar for a couple weeks to let the other ingredients soak up some of the flavoring and that's it. In the right proportions the hazelnut burley should just barely be taking the lead with the Turkish leaf being the equivalent of nutmeg to a holiday drink while the VA sweetens things up. Hopefully soon I'll try this recipe again and have more details to share but for now this should be good enough to get you in the ballpark of this happy accident that hopefully wasn't just lightening in a bottle. Happy smokes, everybody, thanks for reading
