Apparently, calcium malate. Big tobacco did the research: Industry Documents Library - https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=xmjj0224
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Help Appreciated: Is it Mold or Bloom?
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This raises more questions than it answers. Interesting share.
This paper has found Calcium Malate, but it also found traces of salts of other organic acid. The previous papers also found salts of other organic acids. Given it worked on a sample, it might be safer to say salts of organic acids.
Three questions
1. Why some tobacco blooms more frequently than others ?
2. What is the source of Calcium or the other metals ?
3. Why do we say bloomed tobacco tastes better?
Good questions. Big tobacco and their research arms are dead, so we'll almost certainly never know. And we would not have known what they had found if a court hadn't forced the disclosure of these documents.
Actually, pages 7 and 8 of the document addresses, in part, your question 1.
Is this looking at raw leaf, or processed leaf?
I ask that because most tobacco is processed with an anti-fungal. One of the common anti-fungals used is calcium propionate, which can precipitate out on the surface of processed leaf.
The report looked at an unidentified "dark flake tobacco" as well as the constituent leaves "used for Dark Flake Tobaccos." No propanoic acid/calcium propionate was reported.
Sure.
They were probably using mercury to control tobacco fungus back then!
Yes. After you suggested I did read through. Unfortunately this is the best we can get.
I think the anti fungal theory is plausible but we would never know.
A cup of spinach contains 250 mg of calcium (versus 300 mg in a cup of milk) so it's not inconceivable that the source for the calcium is the tobacco leaf itself. Calcium Content of Foods - https://www.ucsfhealth.org/education/calcium-content-of-foods
I have opened many cans of aged tobacco and seen the crystal formations on the tobacco. It always tasted fine, some of it even better than the newer versions of the same tobacco.
I did open one tin have an old burley mixture that had threads of mold all through it. I wasn't even tempted to try a bowl as it smelled like rotten pumpkins! That is the only can of tobacco I've seen that I can say for certain was moldy, but I have seen and smoked many cans with the crystal formations on the slices of flake tobacco. I don't recall seeing the crystal formations on blends that are not flakes.
I did open one tin have an old burley mixture that had threads of mold all through it. I wasn't even tempted to try a bowl as it smelled like rotten pumpkins! That is the only can of tobacco I've seen that I can say for certain was moldy, but I have seen and smoked many cans with the crystal formations on the slices of flake tobacco. I don't recall seeing the crystal formations on blends that are not flakes.
If it looks like plume it is and if it looks like mold it is. Plume forms layer directly on the tobacco and adheres to the product, Mold, on the other hand, forms over tobacco and can be removed if need be but there's little to be gained by this. Once you have mold you it permeates the whole leaf even if you can't see it. And the smell is awful if it is mold.
You don't need a scientific definition or complete breakdown of its chemical properties. All you have to know is plume is good and mold is very bad. I have seen plume and mold in every type of tobacco imaginable.
You don't need a scientific definition or complete breakdown of its chemical properties. All you have to know is plume is good and mold is very bad. I have seen plume and mold in every type of tobacco imaginable.
I smoke C&D blends almost exclusively and I have had zero issues with their tobacco.
