Blending your own tobaccos

[slavman68]

Im currently blending a replacement for Frog Mortons Cellar. I'm using 50% Sutliff Matured Red Virginia 515 and 50% Cornell and Diehl Latakia. I am also leaving a shot glass with lagavulin inside the jar to get the whiskey flavor. Do you think this will work? Have you blended your own blends successfully? Any blending tips?

 

[Chaukisch]

It certainly sounds good. That shot glass of whiskey inside of the jar is a really neat idea, I never would've come up with that. I would've used the drink as a carrier, the main ingredient of the "sauce".
I plan to do an Irish coffee blend in the future, with freshly ground coffee beans and Irish whiskey.
From what I've read and experienced myself, alcohol is best applied directly.
Hell, take any cheap cigar and dab it with any cheap (preferably dark) rum and you'll have a very enjoyable smoke.

I think your shot glass of whiskey inside of the jar will work, you just gott let it sit there for a few weeks longer.
Wait until all the whiskey is gone, or half of it. Go experiment, you can hardly go wrong.

Make sure to get a taste all along the way, it won't hurt. This is a damn deep rabbit hole.
Come on in!

 

[mso489]

Since I don't use an oven or pressure, or do aging in any intentional way, I call what I do mixes (and mixing) rather than blending, but you are being precise in your proportions and adding flavor, so it may be blending. I'm always surprised at how well home mixes often do.

Professional blenders can tinker with proportions endlessly and take months or years to get the creation they want. My mixes are always one-offs. The easiest success is a Virginia or burley base with the other tobacco as a condiment, and unflavored black Cavendish as another condiment.

I think once you get a fourth tobacco in the mix, more precision and control is required, and it can get kind of muddy, by which I mean the flavors may not harmonize and have the best zing.

But it's always fun to make the effort, and it has produced some of my best smokes.

 

[PA Piper Mike]

Sounds like a solid idea, but I am wondering if the scotch will infuse with the tobacco just by being in the jar like that. Definitely let us know how it turns out. Another idea might be to put some in a misting spray bottle and spritz your tobacco with the alcohol. I'd guess the alcohol would evaporate fairly quickly and leave the flavors on the leaf.

 

[pipingfool]

I've done a little blending that came out pretty decent, and what you've got going on certainly sounds like it would be tasty, but I'm not sure you're going to get close to FMC with those ratios.

If I remember correctly, FMC is an English-Aro and has quite a bit of sweetness to it. When I've added any type of topping to my blends, I've usually done it with a mister/spray bottle and let the blend dry before jarring it up.

I thought that there were other component tobaccos in this blend such as some Orientals and Black Cavendish, but I'm almost certain that the Latakia did not make up 50% of the blend. I would say at the most it was around 20%. It's there, but the blend isn't a Lat-Bomb by any means.

The only reason I think that there was some Cavendish in the blend because it produced a lot of creamy, sweet smoke and there seemed to be other dark/black pieces of tobacco that didn't look like the Latakia.

The topping would probably something like:
Whiskey - It smelled more like Bourbon to me, but I'm sure any good whiskey would be fine.
Sugar - you would have to play around with the amount, but FMC seemed pretty sweet to me as Englishes go.
Vanilla of some sort - I remember this being a pretty distinctive note in most of the FM blends.

Others probably have more info than I do, but that's just what I remember about the blend.

Let us know how it turns out!

 

[slavman68]

This blend has been sitting for a month now and its a success. I would use a different whiskey next time though

 

[butsiethesungo]

Hey Slavman, maybe you can start your own blend!!

I agree with Chaukisch that the idea of placing a shot glass of whisky inside to capture the aroma was a neat idea. I wouldn’t have thought of that either. It would be interesting to see how using different types of alcohol would effect the nature of the blend!

 

[billm67]

I am trying to get something in the ball park Frog Morton as well. Right now I am smoking a mix of 2 ounces Lane HGL (which has the unsweetened Cavendish) and 2 ounces of Sutliff Heavy English. It was very weak on the Latakia side so I added 1/2 ounce of blending Latakia. I'll be working on some other blends substituting Stokkebye Oriental English for the Heavy English. There was alot going on in Frog Morton and I'm not sure we will ever recapture all of it...but I'm in the right ballpark.