Hi there, first post on this forum. I live in Europe and have been driven to diy cigarettes, as I like to call the entire process, by 3 things: it's "healthier" (you skip a lot of chemicals that you would otherwise have to deal with in commercial tobacco and you can do your own quality control), it's MUCH less expensive, and third, a reason which kind of stuck with me from listening to old people talking about cigarettes back in the day and how nowadays they are infinitely inferior to those they smoked back then. The story of how when someone would light up a Dunhill or a Marlboro or a Camel and it would smell so perfumed, the entire apartment block would gather around just to smell the aroma periqued my interest. So right now I'm trying to achieve that cigarette, or something better. My own thing, but something that is as memorable as the old cigarettes are for these people.
So. I have bought equal parts of german virginia, burley, oriental samsoun and dark fired kentucky from eurotabak here in Europe. I made a little tasting blend out of one leaf of each, it tastes pretty good, oriental-y with a smoky undertone. Good enough, but I don't know what it is, there's something missing. So I research online, and find out you need to ferment tobacco? But it takes weeks, I don't have that kind of time. Some sources say you can ferment in oven or even microwave but it's too fiddly. Then I look up flavourings and how to change your tobacco's taste and learn about casing and toppings and other flavourings, as well as toasting your tobacco (duh, even watched a bit of Mad Men and the famous "It's toasted!" scene). So I kind of wing it and reserve some virginia and burley for experiments. Only about 10 leaves each. I make a solution: 1 part cognac, 1 part tap water (later learned I should have used distilled) and about 1 table spoon heated honey, so it becomes more liquid and easier to mix, and some very carefully eyeballed splashes of white vinegar. I steal one of my girlfriend's water pulverisers (it's for a good cause), load it with my sauce, and I unload about half of the 100ml little bottle onto around 2-300g of shredded virginia and burley. I then load it onto a baking sheet and into the oven at god knows what temperature. All I know is that 30 minutes later, it started to smoke and smell pretty foul. Take dry baccy out of the oven, gandered pensively at its slightly darkened colour, sprayed it with the sauce again and back in the oven for another 40 minutes or until house almost catches on fire. The entire apartment smoked up, my girlfriend thought we were going to burn but I assured her that this is expected behaviour and everything is normal because I read it somewhere on an obscure tobacco forum from 20 years ago. After opening all the windows to air out the apartment, I took the casing mixture I previously made and sprayed the now seriously dark-brown (but in a good way) tobacco with it until came at smoking humidity. Let it rest for about an hour but I just HAD to try it out. The result was a surprisingly mellow smoke, absolutely no throat hit, extremely smooth, tasty, but without tasting any of the cognac. Note that this is without the oriental or dark fired kentucky added. Now, I apologise for writing a short novel, but what I initially wanted to ask is the following:
-what exactly does toasting do?
-do I toast oriental or dark fired kentucky as well?
-do I case oriental or dark fired kentucky as well?
-do I need to case all tobacco types with different casing and then blend?
-was it a mistake to roast the virginia?
-how do I get that sweet raisin smell of a fresh pouch of RYO tobacco?
Thanks guys, and sorry if I was a bore! I get chatty for no reason.
So. I have bought equal parts of german virginia, burley, oriental samsoun and dark fired kentucky from eurotabak here in Europe. I made a little tasting blend out of one leaf of each, it tastes pretty good, oriental-y with a smoky undertone. Good enough, but I don't know what it is, there's something missing. So I research online, and find out you need to ferment tobacco? But it takes weeks, I don't have that kind of time. Some sources say you can ferment in oven or even microwave but it's too fiddly. Then I look up flavourings and how to change your tobacco's taste and learn about casing and toppings and other flavourings, as well as toasting your tobacco (duh, even watched a bit of Mad Men and the famous "It's toasted!" scene). So I kind of wing it and reserve some virginia and burley for experiments. Only about 10 leaves each. I make a solution: 1 part cognac, 1 part tap water (later learned I should have used distilled) and about 1 table spoon heated honey, so it becomes more liquid and easier to mix, and some very carefully eyeballed splashes of white vinegar. I steal one of my girlfriend's water pulverisers (it's for a good cause), load it with my sauce, and I unload about half of the 100ml little bottle onto around 2-300g of shredded virginia and burley. I then load it onto a baking sheet and into the oven at god knows what temperature. All I know is that 30 minutes later, it started to smoke and smell pretty foul. Take dry baccy out of the oven, gandered pensively at its slightly darkened colour, sprayed it with the sauce again and back in the oven for another 40 minutes or until house almost catches on fire. The entire apartment smoked up, my girlfriend thought we were going to burn but I assured her that this is expected behaviour and everything is normal because I read it somewhere on an obscure tobacco forum from 20 years ago. After opening all the windows to air out the apartment, I took the casing mixture I previously made and sprayed the now seriously dark-brown (but in a good way) tobacco with it until came at smoking humidity. Let it rest for about an hour but I just HAD to try it out. The result was a surprisingly mellow smoke, absolutely no throat hit, extremely smooth, tasty, but without tasting any of the cognac. Note that this is without the oriental or dark fired kentucky added. Now, I apologise for writing a short novel, but what I initially wanted to ask is the following:
-what exactly does toasting do?
-do I toast oriental or dark fired kentucky as well?
-do I case oriental or dark fired kentucky as well?
-do I need to case all tobacco types with different casing and then blend?
-was it a mistake to roast the virginia?
-how do I get that sweet raisin smell of a fresh pouch of RYO tobacco?
Thanks guys, and sorry if I was a bore! I get chatty for no reason.
