Fired cured home-grown

[tobaccoblender]

Hi everybody,

I like making stuff at home, and this year I've decided to have another crack at making my own pipe tobacco.

I live in an area of Italy where they grow loads of tobacco, so I just asked a couple of local farmers and they let me take as much leaf as I wanted- so I took about 30kg of Kentucky (they call it black tobacco) and about 10kg of Virginia (they call it bright).

So now it's been hanging in one of my well-ventilated outbuildings for about 6 weeks, and it's looking very happy.

Both have turned a nice brown colour (the Virginia a more yellowish brown)and have the texture of chammy leather.

So now I belive the next step is to build a kind of insulated cupboard, and sweat it for 4 weeks, at about 30degC and 70% humidity.

The thing I'd like your input on, is does anybody have experience of fire curing?

I'm tempted to smoke some of the leaf over oak smoke, as a possible addition to my hopeful creation of a tasty blend- but I don't know if fire-cured tobaccos are smoked and then sweated (fermented)or simply smoked and used in the blend as is.

I'm semi-retired, have many unused outbuildings and am surrounded by fields of tobacco, so it makes alot of sense to me to try to produce my own pipe tobacco.

If I can make it work, I'll grow my own leaf instead of using the locally grown, as I'm pretty suspicious of the smelly chemicals they spray on it......

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

 

[excav8tor]

Excellent.... I'll buy some of your tobacco!

 

[duncan]

http://www.howtogrowtobacco.com/
Here is a good info site of all process

 

[bubbadreier]

Well if you need someone to test you homemade blend, this would be the right place ;-)

 

[juni]

Sounds interesting!

 

[collindow]

40 kilograms of baccy! Whoa! I hope your blends turn out! Wish I had some useful advice, too. Oh well.

 

[tobaccoblender]

Thanks for all your answers- especially the link to the Grow your own website. It appears to be chock full of info.

BTW, 40 kg of fresh leaf ends up as less than 4kg once dried, cured etc.I smoke about 5kg a year, so if this works, I'm gonna have to rack up the quantities next year!

 

[juni]

If I calculated it right then you smoke around 100 tins/year.

 

[tobaccoblender]

I figure about 80 or so tins a year, as I get through a bit less than 2 tins a week.

How about you?

 

[juni]

I haven't actually counted the number of tins. I also have many opened ones I jar away. But usually I smoke 1 to 2 bowls/day...so not that much.