Leaves are pretty dark after fermentation

[nystuga]

Hi everyone! Am I doing something totally wrong or is this normal colour?
I've seen your pics with nice yellowish coloured leaves and variations of light brownish
and such. I had mine dryed from yellow to light brown. Then after kilning they all get to very dark brown. Nice for cigars but I'd like to have more yellowish mix to my pipe tobacco.
My "kiln" is two styrox boxes with a lamp as a heat source, tobaccos stored in ziplock bags and some on mason jars.
Am I having too much of moisture or what? The moisture content is the biggest woodoo to me still... hopefully I manage to add few pics

 

[mwaller]

Your leaves look nice. Excess moisture will cause them to get darker, so you might try reducing the amount of water you use.
A lot of light colored tobacco you see in pipe blends has been flue-cured. Flue-curing is a process that uses heat to process freshly harvested leaves. This process results in light-colored leaves that retain more sugar. Flue curing is typically done to Virginia type tobaccos, though it can be successfully done with other varieties. Search around on this site - there are several threads on the topic.

 

[burge]

I know this is a older post ad by no means am I a expert. My experiments with leaf is when I have had had the lemon really wet and put in under a higher heat the leaf gets a lot darker. I may be wrong but once your leaf reaches the desired colour you take it out of your kiln. Aging I feel is one of my specialties or at least would like to think so. Fermenting come form pressing the leaves together under some sort of light pressure. Letting the tobacco dry out and remoisten repeating the steps. Varied temperatures and one thing for me is a light press my hand fist press in my tobacco tub. That changes the tobacco quickly.

 

[deluxestogie]

Yes, this is an older post.

In your interpretation of kilning, perhaps you are projecting your experience with flue-cured tobacco, which behaves quite differently from air-cured leaf that will be kilned.

Bob

 

[burge]

Yes I am with virginia tobaccos

 

[Johnny II]

What variety it is, nystuga?

 

[nystuga]

Shirey

 

[Alpine]

Shirey

That’s a dark Virginia, no surprise it came out so dark... was it easy to grow and cure? I’m trying it again this year.

Pier

 

[nystuga]

It’s easy to grow, had my second crop this summer. It’s certainly a keeper, had little difficulties this summer with curing. It’s the shorty summers here in the north, it got a lttle moist and cold and had little mold issues...
But i’m gonna grow it this coming season as well! Try it!

 

[burge]

What does it taste like in comparison to the red?

 

[nystuga]

Never tasted Red so can’t tell. Which red you actually meant?

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

Never tasted Red so can’t tell. Which red you actually meant?

Burge would be referring to WLT Flue cured red Virginia