greenmonster714
Well-Known Member
Nice sticks Gar. I don't even have one commercial cigar in the house..lol. I agree with ya. Rolling your own seems to always taste better. I roll about four at a time and when I'm done that last one is my reward.
Pics of your sticks!!
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Garlisk
Active Member
Thank you! I've been having a blast rolling.
I spent about $350 a couple months ago on commercial sticks. Not a whole lot of money, considering the potential in the cigar hobby, but a good chunk and over 100 cigars. Now I'm wishing I'd spent all of that on whole leaf stuff. Of course, if I hadn't spent that, I might not have dug into cigar research enough to find home rolling or to discover this place...so I'll just chalk it up to "cost of living" and keep on trucking. As I enjoy pipe also, its been obvious to me that I can roll fast enough to keep up with and outpace my smoking of the cigars...so I'm not sure what I'm going to do with all the sticks I purchased. I've been considering trying to trade them for equipment or whole leaf, but not sure what I want yet.
greenmonster714
Well-Known Member
4 more rolled yesterday. Nothing pretty but they'll smoke. Still feel like I'm doing something wrong but I'm having fun doing it. These are wrapped with wlt equator maduro. Nice stuff. Wish I had a few pounds of that wrapper.
Psychologists call it the Impostor syndrome. Time to admit that you really are rolling genuine cigars.
Bob
Thedbs999
Well-Known Member
Wow GM. You've really got the hand of it now. Those are beauts. Let us know how they are smoken.
Dan
Dan
greenmonster714
Well-Known Member
Thank you guys. I'm having trouble with consistency in length. I guess that's just a feel ya get with the bunching. Only time n practice will cure that. Someday I'll get a mold and try that but for now I'm having fun just rolling and playing with different tobaccos. Ya certainly accumulate a lot of scrap doing this. Won't be long and I'll have to throw together one of those Bob's Bigboy Smorgasbord cigars.
Consistency in length is only important if you plan to pack them into a box of specific dimensions. It's a supply-chain requirement for commercial cigars. Since it has zero to do with quality or function of a cigar, or indeed the smoker, it's no more important for home cigar rolling than designing box art or complex cigar band artwork (which originated for the purpose of reducing counterfeiting of popular brands--just like all that microscopic spider web stuff on a dollar bill).
So I roll a cigar to the length that works for the filler leaf in hand, and the character of the selected wrapper strip.
Bob
EDIT: Those "professional" tuck cutters are actually measuring devices. A sliding length stop is set to the specific box-size demand, and all the cigars for that batch are amputated at the required length.
So I roll a cigar to the length that works for the filler leaf in hand, and the character of the selected wrapper strip.
Bob
EDIT: Those "professional" tuck cutters are actually measuring devices. A sliding length stop is set to the specific box-size demand, and all the cigars for that batch are amputated at the required length.
Garlisk
Active Member
My latest. I tend not to be a fan of that spicy (sharp tingly) thing in cigars, so I am trying a few without the Ligero.
Also did one with my scraps...might be a terrible cigar as its mostly wrapper and binder...I'll be finding out later today.
Also did one with my scraps...might be a terrible cigar as its mostly wrapper and binder...I'll be finding out later today.
mwaller
Well-Known Member
You may be pleasantly surprised! My scraps bag was overflowing, so I decided to try a few short filler cigars... they were my best yet!
Vanerpaddel
Well-Known Member
Some of my latest:
Garlisk
Active Member
Those look incredible!
ArizonaDave
Well-Known Member
From beginner to expert, everyone seems to enjoy making their own 
waikikigun
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WLT stuff on the inside, Larry's Silver River on the outside. Not sure I've ever wrapped with a Burley before, but seems to taste fine.
How is the WLT Habano 2000 Wrapper Feeling After a 1 Month Vacation?
Webmost's H2K wrapper (5 hands of it) went into my kiln a month ago, and came out today. I swiped 2 leaves for "testing," and bagged and boxed the rest, for shipment back to Delaware.
The hands of leaf still smelled wonderful. The wrapper shown on the cigar tastes less earthy than prior to kilning. I also have the impression that it is not quite as stretchy as it was before. But this is just half of a random leaf, and a smaller one, at that.
The cigar shown is filled with Long Red and a smattering of WLT Nicaragua Habano ligero. Of note is the fact that the binder is a double binder of fairly damp Criollo (mine). Also, it's been raining all day, and the relative humidity is about 90%--so just like Delaware, only quieter. Freshly rolled, damp binder, no rest or drying, horrid humidity --> excellent burn. But a single cigar cannot be the basis of a generalization.
I will be interested in webmost's impression of whether the H2K leaf has changed from the added month of kilning. [At the very least, all the wonderful aroma coming from my kiln all month volatilized from the leaf.]
Bob
Webmost became terminally frustrated with his Habano 2000 leaf, even though it had been kilned an extra month. He sent it back to me, to give it a good home.
I've had a bag of it open to the air in my (winter) living room for many, many weeks, attempting to get the case lower. Other varieties of leaf, even when starting off fairly damp, could tolerate only a few days of this exposure before becoming crispy dry. The H2K leaf, however, has remained in medium case--still soft enough to apply as a wrapper without additional conditioning.
It doesn't burn particularly well. I sometimes include a half-leaf within the filler of a cigar, and it adds great flavor, but slows the burn somewhat.
Observation
Some of the H2K leaf seems to be way more hygroscopic than some of the other H2K. It's percentage moisture remains at a relatively high equilibrium when exposed to dry, indoor air. I'm presently smoking a cigar wrapped in it, and it burns okay, but not great.
So I believe that this leaf may or may not suck up extra moisture, depending on a) which bale it came from, or perhaps b) which random part of an otherwise combustible bale it happened to be selected from. Now, all of it burns at least adequately when it is truly dry, but even mildly elevated relative humidity (say, inside a humidor) can influence its burn in a negative way.
Vertict
- My personal burn trials of webmost's H2K, both the before and after, were from only 3 leaves. It was lucky leaf, and not representative of the whole lot (i.e. poor sample size). Much of the rest of his H2K doesn't burn particularly well, even after the additional month of kilning applied to what is commercial leaf.
- Regions with predominantly high relative humidity will require the H2K to be specifically dried. When used as a wrapper (its primary use), that means that the finished cigar must by subjected to a drying environment that is way drier than the 65-75% RH of a typical humidor.
WLT stuff on the inside, Larry's Silver River on the outside. Not sure I've ever wrapped with a Burley before, but seems to taste fine.
Great looking Cigar .
I am not sure I would classify Silver River as Burley . It has more of a cigar taste and is milder than any Burley I know of .
The leaves are long and narrow compared to Burley but when harvested it cures the same as burley does .
greenmonster714
Well-Known Member
It certainly looks like a nice wrapper. I'll have to see if I have any I can wrap with too.
MarcL
Well-Known Member
46 & 52 X 5 something. criollo viso, piloto viso, cibao seco, mata fina, fillers. mata fina and cibao seco binders. criollo wrappers.
MarcL
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waikikigun
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Thank you. Not knowing anything about Burley, I just went with what I could find on the internet about Silver River, e.g.:
http://nwtseeds.com/silver_river.htm
"[FONT=&]The exact classification of this tobacco is unknown, but it is probably a descendant of a white stemmed Burley."
[/FONT]It's quite lovely to look at (actually it looks a lot like your Florida Sumatra once it's on a cigar) and work with and I need to try it in a continued variety of blends before I can get a handle on what it's really bringing to the mix. So far my impression is that the flavor is somewhat neutral but the nicotine fairly serious.
greenmonster714
Well-Known Member
46 & 52 X 5 something. criollo viso, piloto viso, cibao seco, mata fina, fillers. mata fina and cibao seco binders. criollo wrappers.
That's a fancy ring gauge you have there Marc. And them cigars look great as always.
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