Cutting It Up

Once you've grown and harvested your tobacco, what do you do with it? Talk about it here.
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pierredekat

Cutting It Up

Post by pierredekat »

Once your tobacco is grown and cured for awhile, you are ready to cut up your leaf and get it into a more smokable state.

There are several tools a home grower can use to chop up his tobacco -- a food processor, a paper shredder, a wood plane cutting along the edge of a pressed block, etc.

But I found that using a pair of scissors was about as easy as anything. You will need them anyway if you choose to remove the main rib, so why not just go ahead and use a pair of scissors to take your tobacco the rest of the way.

Most of my tobacco is either still growing or curing at my non-air-conditioned storage shed, but I recently had a request for some free samples, so I needed to go ahead and cut up a small batch of freshly cured tobacco to pass along.

One of the most important things to keep in mind about freshly cured tobacco is that it is a sponge. Most of the moisture has evaporated from the leaf cells, and they are now a lattice of millions upon millions of tiny air pockets surrounded by fibers.

This concept will come into play later, when we get ready to "case" our tobacco, but it also comes into play now at the cutting stage. Because you will not want to handle your tobacco much if it's so dry that it crumbles, as mine was at this particular moment.

It's funny, but freshly cured tobacco absolutely breathes moisture. I notice that mine is pliable and almost damp in the mornings, a tad on the crumbly side in the hot afternoons, and then pliable and damp again the next morning. Wild stuff, I know.

Reintroducing moisture to dry tobacco is as easy as hanging it on a towel bar in the bathroom while you take a good, hot shower. It usually takes about a half an hour to go from crumbly to pliable, in a moisture-rich environment like a steamy bathroom.

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Once our tobacco is moist enough to handle, we are ready to remove the center rib.

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You can remove as much or as little of the ribs as you like, but I found that removing about 75 percent of the center rib was acceptable.

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Once you have removed the center ribs, you are ready to start cutting.

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I start off with a small handful of leaves, like three or four.

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I fold the leaves in half...

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twist them a little...

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into a tight plug about the size of a cigar...

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and start in cutting.

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It takes a little practice, but after a few snips in the 1/8 inch thick range, you can progress to the point where you are taking snips in the 1/16 to 3/32 inch thick range. Using your thumb and finger as a guide is the ticket.

And when you are done cutting, you will wind up with a nice little batch of cut tobacco, like this one here, which took me about 20 minutes to de-rib and cut.

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At this stage, you are going to be shocked at how much your tobacco resembles confetti. Like, you wouldn't want to sneeze on this stuff, or you will be vacuuming it up for days.

Not to worry, though, because we will add some sort of casing later -- molasses, honey, maple syrup, etc. -- which will take our tobacco from this confetti-like state to something more closely resembling the kind of tobacco we are familiar with.

But for right now, we are going to be aging it, at least for a few months. You can smoke your tobacco like this if you want, but you will pack your pipe full of confetti, take one puff, it will all mysteriously disappear in that one single puff, and you will find yourself coughing-out the unfamiliar spicy, green "herbal" smoke that just shocked your palate, I'm pretty sure.

You can age your tobacco in a brown paper bag, up off the floor, in a somewhat damp basement room, spare bedroom, etc., or in a humidor. If you need, but don't already have, a humidor, you can build one as simple or as fancy as you like.

How to make your own inexpensive humidor

A Look at the Humidor Plan

How to Build Your Own Humidor

HOW TO BUILD A HUMIDOR

Build Your Own

SPALTED MAPLE HUMIDOR

Cheers.
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Smitty
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Post by Smitty »

Very informative. Keep posting. I am really interested in how this is going to work out. I am waiting to see how the casing and blending works out for you.
pierredekat

Post by pierredekat »

Smitty wrote:Very informative. Keep posting. I am really interested in how this is going to work out. I am waiting to see how the casing and blending works out for you.
Thanks, Smitty. :D

Yeah, I am too. Up until now, all I have is a whole bunch of cured tobacco. But it is definitely going to need to age awhile in a humidor.

I did some experiments with casing with molasses, which went a long way toward getting the tobacco into a consistency/texture more like regular pipe tobacco.

Basically what happens is the molasses soaks into those air pockets in the tobacco, glues them together, and does away with that weird confetti quality I mentioned earlier.

So getting the texture right was as easy as working-in some sugary stuff. (Later, I went out and bought some real, honest-to-goodness maple syrup, the kind that comes out of a tree, and I have high hopes for that, as well.)

But I can't really get a good feel for how it's going to smoke, because it really needs to age awhile and mellow -- cough, cough, wheeze.

:lol:

Cheers.
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Smitty
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Post by Smitty »

After all that effort you had better take time for it to mellow! Any idea how long it will have to age in the humidor? Or is it more trial and error?
Also wondering if pretty much all the tobacco needs some kind if casing, or do you think as it matures in the humidor it will become more pliable?
pierredekat

Post by pierredekat »

Smitty wrote:After all that effort you had better take time for it to mellow! Any idea how long it will have to age in the humidor? Or is it more trial and error?
Also wondering if pretty much all the tobacco needs some kind if casing, or do you think as it matures in the humidor it will become more pliable?
As far as maturing, I think I'll just have to sample a little from time to time to see how it's doing. I'm hoping some will be palatable in a few months, but a lot of tobaccos tend to be aged for a year or more before it's turned into something smokable.

As far as casing is concerned, I think you might be able to cut down on the need for casing if you press your tobacco into a block. That will tend to push out the air and bind some leaves together with other leaves to control the burning process, improve texture, etc.

And there are other things, like these "tobacco enhancers" which, as near as I can tell, serve the function of casing/flavoring. If my home experimentation doesn't go well, I might go that route.
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Smitty
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Post by Smitty »

I may have to experiment with pressure curing when the time comes. I want a more natuaral tobacco flavor to start I think. I wonder if any of the casings are flavorless and work as a binder just to keep it together. I assume thats what happens if I put a lot of it under pressure for awhile? Right.
pierredekat

Post by pierredekat »

Smitty wrote:I may have to experiment with pressure curing when the time comes. I want a more natuaral tobacco flavor to start I think. I wonder if any of the casings are flavorless and work as a binder just to keep it together. I assume thats what happens if I put a lot of it under pressure for awhile? Right.
Yeah, that sounds right, but I'm definitely no expert. I have just gleaned bits and pieces of information from the internet.

Here's a link at Seedman.com about a block press, apparently used mostly for cutting purposes, but possibly helpful.

Here's a thread on the tobacco growing forum at Coffinails.com about pressure curing that may be helpful.

And here's a link that goes into perique and how it's fermented under pressure.

Like I said, it's just little bits and pieces of information. But I think ultimately you will have to reinvent the wheel based on these little snippets of information.

I bought the only book available on home growing tobacco, but about 90 percent of the book is geared toward growing, while the remaining 10 percent touches briefly on basic air curing, and that's about all you get to work with.

The book is rather puzzling at times, as two of its authors, Jim Johnson and Alan Daly, disagree rather sharply on several things, including basic curing. It's like, one guy says, "Do it this way," and the other guy comes along in the very next chapter and says, "No, don't do it that way."

But hopefully, here on the forums, we can share information and figure some of this stuff out on our own. :?
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Smitty
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Post by Smitty »

I did as you did, with a few leaves of the Samsun. I had to try some out!
It had a sweet room aroma, just as the drying aroma was. The smoke was thick. It had too much moisture content though. It was impossible to keep lit and was a bit harsh. I think it has to be blended with something, being it is an Oriental. I have some Burley waiting in the wings.
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Smitty
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Post by Smitty »

The Burley I have is dry and the Samsun is much drier too. I decided to mix half and half and woooo-hoooo! Is that some good stuff. Lots of smoke and a nice sweet room aroma. It stayed lit throughout and a nice lil nicotine kick...that and a couple Landshark Lagers and I am in "Happy Town" :P
Dane C
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Post by Dane C »

Hi Robert,

When you first cured the leaves after they were removed form the stalk, what sort of setup did you use? Did you build the curing chamber with the constant heat source? I was looking at the 2 inch foam wall cube with the modified oil heater but I'm not so sure about modifying an elictrical device that will be constantly powered and producing heat.
pierredekat

Post by pierredekat »

Last year I went with the "tobacco barn" concept, except that I hung my tobacco on galvanized wires in my storage shed.

Of course, you could do the same thing in a garage, under a carport, or anyplace else you can find where the temperature averages somewhere between 80 and 130 (F) degrees.

Oh yeah, here's a pretty good link on tobacco curing. I can't remember if I posted that before, or not, but that's a good one.

This year, I will probably do some of my tobacco that way, but I also think I'll explore pressing and/or fermenting to see what I can come up with going that route.
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AlfaDog
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Re: Cutting It Up

Post by AlfaDog »

The latest and greatest electric tobacco shredder on the market now is the Powermatic Shredder. Here is a link to where I bought mine:http://www.wholeleaftobacco.com/Powerma ... wrmtcS.htm
Perfect shred for pipe or cigarette.
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BigCasino
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Re: Cutting It Up

Post by BigCasino »

I seen a fellow on youtube using a pasta maker to shred his tobacco, seemed to work rather well
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