Deluxestogie Grow Log 2019

[deluxestogie]

Today was laundry day. I put the first load in the washer at about 8 am, and pull the last load out of the dryer at about 6 pm.

What could one do with the snippets of time in between loading, transferring and unloading? Make Cavendish!

I set up 4 quart jars. I heavily misted frog-legged leaf, rolled up each leaf, then packed the little leaf sausages into the jars with kitchen tongs. I avoided any standing water within the jars. I did two different types of Virginia flue-cured (Lemon and Bright), burley red tips (kilned), and a specially reserved bag of 2016 unkilned Long Red.

After discovering that the lid gasket on my huge pressure cooker would not seal, I thought to put the 4 jars into my 6 quart pressure cooker. But alas, the quart jars are too tall for it. So back into the big cooker. It would simply be a closed jar method within a boiling water bath. And for only 5 hours. Since I assign no mystic meaning to Cavendish being anywhere near black (and actually prefer a lighter cooking for my Cavendish), I just went with the 5 hours at ambient pressure.

The contents of the jars are now sterile, so there is no rush to dry them. Removing the leaf, unrolling it, and spreading it out on a board to dry is the most tedious part of the whole project. I selected the one I was most curious about--the Long Red.

Long Red Cavendish, laid out to dry. Burley Red Tips are in the jar on the right.

The aroma of the Long Red Cavendish (while still damp) is delightful. It's dark and woody/leathery, but doesn't smell like cigar leaf at this point. As I gather more energy over the next week, I'll uncork the other three jars.

Bob

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

I'd like to see how dark it gets after drying.

 

[deluxestogie]

I'll try to capture the color. If I can take the photo in full sunlight, then the color will hopefully be correct. The flash always makes indoor tobacco too light in color.

Bob

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

I'll try to capture the color. If I can take the photo in full sunlight, then the color will hopefully be correct. The flash always makes indoor tobacco too light in color.

Bob

You could attempt to digitally correct the color.

 

[deluxestogie]

I actually did that with the photo above. It's really tricky, and I prefer to leave the color balance alone. I had to fiddle with the color balance until the counter top seemed right. Glossy (and damp) surfaces are the most troublesome in a flash photo.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

Long Red Cavendish

This is pretty close to the actual color--a dull, medium brown. The 3-1/2 year old Long Red leaf still featured a reddish hue prior to processing, and still didn't smell totally finished.

I'll allow this to become crispy dry, then bring it into storage case. Allowing it to rest for a bit always alters the aroma further, so I'll do that before I smoke some.

Bob

 

[Jvergen]

Bob can you take a picture of the jar before you open them, is there any water in the jars or just wet leaf packed tight?

Jeff

 

[deluxestogie]

As I stated, there is no standing water in the jars.

Bob

 

[deluxestogie]

The wind outside is 30 to 40 mph. The temperature is below freezing, and dropping rapidly toward 13°F. There was something in my mailbox, way out at the end of my driveway. (I have a little flag that goes up if the mailbox door is opened.)

It's an interesting statistic that 80% of the rural counties in the US are categorized as "aged". Urban populations are generally younger than rural populations. Another curiosity is that the US Postal Service delivers mail either directly into a slot in the front door, or into the lobby boxes of an apartment building in most urban areas, whereas in rural areas, the mailbox must, by postal regulations, be positioned at the road, regardless of how long the driveway may be. It's been that way for over a century.

The result of these two facts is that, in the US, the older you are, the farther you have to go each day to pick up your mail from your own mail box.

Once I returned from the frigid journey to my mailbox this afternoon, I immediately deposited both pieces of mail into my kitchen trash. I need a better little flag--one that ignores junk mail.

Bob

 

[R-taylor]

Today was laundry day. I put the first load in the washer at about 8 am, and pull the last load out of the dryer at about 6 pm.

What could one do with the snippets of time in between loading, transferring and unloading? Make Cavendish!

I set up 4 quart jars. I heavily misted frog-legged leaf, rolled up each leaf, then packed the little leaf sausages into the jars with kitchen tongs. I avoided any standing water within the jars. I did two different types of Virginia flue-cured (Lemon and Bright), burley red tips (kilned), and a specially reserved bag of 2016 unkilned Long Red.

After discovering that the lid gasket on my huge pressure cooker would not seal, I thought to put the 4 jars into my 6 quart pressure cooker. But alas, the quart jars are too tall for it. So back into the big cooker. It would simply be a closed jar method within a boiling water bath. And for only 5 hours. Since I assign no mystic meaning to Cavendish being anywhere near black (and actually prefer a lighter cooking for my Cavendish), I just went with the 5 hours at ambient pressure.

The contents of the jars are now sterile, so there is no rush to dry them. Removing the leaf, unrolling it, and spreading it out on a board to dry is the most tedious part of the whole project. I selected the one I was most curious about--the Long Red.

Long Red Cavendish, laid out to dry. Burley Red Tips are in the jar on the right.

The aroma of the Long Red Cavendish (while still damp) is delightful. It's dark and woody/leathery, but doesn't smell like cigar leaf at this point. As I gather more energy over the next week, I'll uncork the other three jars.

Bob

Holy that looks amazing.
Right up my alley. Are you just got some double fire cured brightleaf today and it's super smooth.

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

You can always put a sticker on your box saying no junk mail.

What if you moved your mailbox closer to your house at an imperceptible rate, like a 1/4" per weekday. This would add up to over 5`per year.

 

[deluxestogie]

My 4 jars of Cavendish are turning into about a 1 week project. Four days so far. It takes a bit of time to unravel the leaf from one jar, and spread it out for drying. After sitting out for about 24 hours (in my currently low humidity), it goes into a gallon Ziploc bag--left open for another day. Once it's in a bag, I have room for to remove leaf from the next jar and spread it. As of now, I have one jar left to open. It's fascinating how different the aroma of each jar comes out.

Bob

 

[GreenDragon]

I vaguely remember mailboxes These kiosk things are all the rage now. I feel like I'm back in high school opening my locker every time I get my mail.

 

[deluxestogie]

That's an impressive distance to go for your junk mail.

Bob

 

[GreenDragon]

That's an impressive distance to go for your junk mail.

Bob

Yes it is, but the dogs like it because they get to go walkies.

 

[deluxestogie]

Rogue Unicorn Meteor "Storm"

Yesterday evening, I periodically checked the sky, to see if the cloud cover might break. The scheduled encounter was to be at 11:50 pm ± ~15 minutes. At 11:30 pm, the clouds mostly cleared from the one view I would have of the eastern horizon.

This sporadic, Unicorn meteor encounter (last one was 1996) is supposed to be a very brief, but intense burst of small meteors. My temperature was in the mid 40s (°F), and the arrival time was reasonable enough for me to have a look.

"Unicorn" sounds familiar. The meteor storm would scatter from the constellation Unicorn. But after more than a half-century of interest in spotting constellations, I can't recall having ever been aware of such a constellation. I had to look it up. It turns out that the putative Unicorn constellation is a scarcely discernible imagining of faint stars that appears in the East, shortly after Orion (a real constellation) rises.

Fifteen minutes before arrival time, I bundled up, sat in a lawn chair, and draped a fleece blanket over my legs. My newest neighbor (the First Temple of Responders--a new and inexplicably gigantic firehouse), a hundred yards away from the back corner of my house, now has several laser beam insecurity beacons perched high above their building, blasting into my face. If I leaned just right, with my neck slightly crooked, an intervening tree at the fence line blocked the most egregious one.

Haze slowly increased. Fingers of cloud gradually crept into my view. Poof! A dim, millisecond streak appeared in my peripheral vision, radiating northward from the unseen "Unicorn". The time was T-minus 2 minutes. Pretty impressive astronomical mathematics for the astronomers to have called that.

I sat immobile, leaning, head crooked.

Fifteen minutes later, I went back indoors. Yes. The predicted encounter certainly occurred. I had a poof to prove it. One poof. No more. A millisecond of my life altered. I have to question the hoopla in the media about each and every "meteor shower" throughout the year. My little poof was a "storm".

Bob

 

[Charly]

I agree with you... the last time I tried to enjoy a "meteor shower" was a few years back, and it was not all that impressive... Only a few really visible small flashes in two hours.... AND the sky was CLEAR ! But sometimes you get lucky and see a long shooting star (once in a blue moon).

Those are the few moments that push us to go in the cold and dark night hoping to see more.

 

[GreenDragon]

Unfortunately, while all those news stories say to go to a clear area away from "city lights" to get a good view of meteor showers, they don't explain what that really means. If you want to see a good show from a meteor shower (or storm!) you have to go to a dark sky area. I tell people that if they can't see the Milky Way, you're not gonna see any meteors except the very brightest ones which are only 2-3% of a shower. I've seen some really pretty ones the past few years, but I had to drive to get to a decent viewing location. Well worth it though.

Find a blue or grey area on the map for good viewing. I go here (yes, I'm very lucky to have a great view an 1.5 hrs drive away).

 

[deluxestogie]

When I click the map link, and zoom in on my home, here's the light pollution map:

I can see some of the Milky Way on a clear night. But every year, more and more needless lights go up around me. I'm not about to get in my car in the middle of the night, and drive somewhere to look at a meteor shower.

The North Rim of the Grand Canyon is one of the black areas on the map. There were so many stars visible there last summer that you could hardly make out the Big Dipper!

Bob

 

[CobGuy]

We live between two designated Dark Sky Cities and can see the Milky Way almost any evening ... quite nice!

~Darin