Fermenting by pressure/pilon style

[G&NEWS]

Hello,

Most of the ways people discuss fermentation is using electrically powered kilns here, but I was curious if someone has had success just by keeping pressure and humidity levels right.

Commercially they do this by sheer weight of tobaccos stacked upon one another, but can that process be accomplished artificially just by using a vice in a container, if a user has tried this could they please share or a thread is already maintained for this could you please point me to that direction?

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

Deluxestogie's Unheated Foam Fermentation Box Fiasco

The Theory PART 1 of 2 My notion of what happens when tobacco hands are piled into a large, traditional pilon is that only the middle of the pile ferments. This is why the pilon must be taken apart and rebuilt a number of times, switching the inner tobacco hands to the outside, and the outer...

fairtradetobacco.com

This was an honest and thorough try that did not work.

 

[G&NEWS]

Deluxestogie's Unheated Foam Fermentation Box Fiasco

The Theory PART 1 of 2 My notion of what happens when tobacco hands are piled into a large, traditional pilon is that only the middle of the pile ferments. This is why the pilon must be taken apart and rebuilt a number of times, switching the inner tobacco hands to the outside, and the outer...

fairtradetobacco.com

This was an honest and thorough try that did not work.

thank you i will look on that. I am growing tobacco in Pennsylvania at the moment but in the future I plan to grow much in Lebanon, the problem is that in Lebanon I will have to run diesel generator for weeks straight if I want to use the methods which require electricity, so I'm looking on another one to see if it will work and testing it before i try there. The nice thing on the climate there, if you need a more dry air you can move it to the mountains, for humid you can move it on the sea. Other problem is that there is almost no reason to growing tobacco when cigarette pack is 50 cents still...

 

[deluxestogie]

The pilon method was developed in Cuba (and Brazil) prior to the advent of electricity and internal combustion engines. Labor was exceedingly cheap. [Slavery was not abolished in Cuba until 1886; in Brazil in 1888.] Today, if you accumulate a few thousand pounds of leaf all at once (enough for effectively accumulating exothermic oxidative heat, and simultaneously insulating itself), then the choice of kilning vs. pilon becomes a cost-of-labor vs. cost-of-fuel equation.

Bob

 

[Teknik]

I have tried the kilning method with some good results but I have not been really satisfied. So I tried something else that gave a much better result. This is the way I went after reading some about fermentation.
I started with 250 gram of homegrown destemmed Virginia gold air cured from 2022, bone dry whitch I have cut in smaller pieces about 4 X 4 cm, then I made a sugar solution of 25 gram brown sugar and 10 gram white vinegar (5 percent) and 80 gram water, boiled the the sugar water and led it cool down, put the tobacco in a big plastic bowl with lid and sprayed the sugar water over the tobacco, put the lid on. Let the tobacco soak for a day or two and toss it around some times.
Now the weight of the tobacco should be 362 gram, or you will have to add some water, that's important. If the moisture is under 35 percent there will be no fermentation. Put the tobacco in the press, I use a wooden box then I press as hard as I can, I use a big wice, led it sit for some hours then dismantle the press and take the plug aut and put the plug in a small freezer bag, make some tiny holes in the bag so the air can escape when the bag is back in the press, press again as hard as possible, I think it is important to have as little air in the tobacco as possible. The press box I have made have two bolt with wing nuts on the sides, I tiden them as hard as I can before I take the press out of the wice.
Then I put the wooden press in the plastic bowl, with a little water in the bottom to prevent it drying out, and put the lid on, place it in my greenhouse for a month, the day temperature in the greenhouse is around 25 degrees Celsius in the summer time, here in Denmark.
When the tobacco has been sitting for a month take it out and slice it, it's taste is something between blue capstan and golden sliced and I haven't discovered any mould.

 

[deluxestogie]

@Teknik, you are describing a completely different, microbial fermentation process. This is not how natural tobacco ferments into natural tobacco. If that's what you enjoy, then stick with it.

Bob

 

[Teknik]

You have a point, but I think big tobacco companies are using this way of making pipe tobacco, I don't know if you have read this article, it describes my post.

https://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/IND43968481/PDF

 

[deluxestogie]

One of the benefits of growing one's own tobacco is the opportunity it provides to avoid industrial methods, additives and chemicals. I'm well aware of the practices of manufacturing pipe tobacco in Denmark. When classic pipe tobacco brands moved their manufacture from England and Scotland to Denmark, they were significantly altered by the addition of humectants and preservatives.

There is a huge market for highly processed, food-flavored tobaccos. Cigars are not about that. My ongoing thread on Pure Tobacco Pipe Blends endeavors to demonstrate that just naturally fermented, well blended tobacco is excellent in a pipe.

Bob

 

[Teknik]

Yes, you are right. But my post was an answer to stoossboss who asked about a way to ferment without a killn.

 

[deluxestogie]

The truly simple answer is to be patient. Kilning accelerates natural aging. After several years of just being allowed to naturally age, the oxidative enzymes of dead tobacco leaf will accomplish the same thing.

The exposure to unnatural conditions (beneath liquid; high pressure, etc.) gives you something different, depending on aerobic vs anaerobic environment, flavorants, and whether organism are intentionally added. Many of the innovations in industrial pipe tobacco manufacture were for the purposes of marketing, (brand-)distinctive aroma (despite the variability of quality and specific varieties of leaf) and shelf life (eternal squishiness).

Bob

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

@Teknik 's plug doesn't sound too distant from my carottes, except I don't add anything to the tobacco. They turned out really well. Water content was high enough to have some gummmy ooze through the wrapping.

@deluxestogie are you saying that a high pressure, high moisture carotte has a perique-like bacterial/yeast fermentation?

 

[deluxestogie]

are you saying that a high pressure, high moisture carotte has a perique-like bacterial/yeast fermentation?

The anaerobic, pressure environment of Perique eventually allows the ubiquitous, Pichia anomala yeast to dominate, presumably providing that prune-like aroma (gradually replacing the E. coli barnyard aroma). Pressure methods that are not submerged are likely aerobic environments, to some variable, though limited extent. I'm guessing that a carotte as well as an uncased press plug benefit from a wider array of random, ambient microbes. Clearly, uncased tobacco under pressure develops its characteristic, raisin aroma by microbial action (like botrytis wines). While Perique gradually becomes a monoculture, the other pressing methods encourage an environment more like sour-dough bread (common, random yeasts)—by which I mean that your carotte would offer an aroma slightly different from my carotte. But they would both seem similar.

Along the same theme, I would draw the analogies of A) a raisin—with naturally aged or kilned tobacco vs B) a wine—with a tobacco product created using microbial actions.

Bob

 

[cigarjohny]

I found that when I left my tobacco that I bought from WLT and left in my basement in bins it aged and flovours are smoother. I find you guys are experts at these things. @deluxestogie you seem to be the expert grower/fermenter and anything tobacco.