Is Compression Necessary To Marry Flavors?

[geopiper]

Flake versus ready rubbed ribbon tobaccos. Wondering if I should compress a home blend or leave it in a ready-rubbed state?

It'll be my second attempt at custom blending bulk tobaccos. My first attempt, a virginia and C&D burley, was left in ribbons and the flavors seemed to marry somewhat after a few months. The first smoke immediately after blending was noticeably not married yet.

For my second attempt, a stoved and a red virginia, I'm wondering if I should experiment with a pasta press to compress it or leave it in ribbons?

Just curious. I suspect the compression merely speeds up the marrying process.

 

[Jwebb90]

Play around with the noodle press. They are lots of fun.

 

[CoffeeAndBourbon]

My gut feeling is it helps speed it up by squeezing out some of the juices and letting them mingle and redistribute.

 

[lukasstrifeson]

+1 Noodle Press

There's probably some merit to compression and how it "mixes the juices" so to speak.

Generally speaking in my years of messing around with home blending, I've found the noodle press to improve the flavor. Whether or not that's placebo effect because I feel like I need to justify all this effort I'm putting into it I cannot tell you, but to my palette the finished blends feel more "evened out" - a uniformed tasted - as opposed to just mixing some raw, pure leaves together where you can get sudden "spikes" in flavor.

 

[NomadOrb]

I mixed a huge jar of Sutliff 515 rc1 and 507s and it took about 6 months without pressing for the two to really begin to harmonize. I'm letting it rest another 6 months and I predict it will be right where I want it to be.

I got a noodle press and I let it sit for 4 weeks pressed and it tasted much like it did at 6 months or maybe even further along.

So long story short, yes.

 

[hoosierpipeguy]

It accelerates the process.

 

[bullet08]

I was thinking of different pasta press.

 

[DangerStranger]

Pressing definitely helps to "marry flavor" of different tobaccos. When I press home blends I always reserve a small amount of the unpressed mixture to see which I prefer. Usually it's the pressed version. But then I am fond of plug tobacco.

Keep us posted!

 

[mortonbriar]

These are pressing issues.
I come back to the fact that it guarantees less storage space, and certainly can't hurt the aging process!

 

[Country Bladesmith]

I like to press home blends. If you want a dense cake, you’ll want to have your tobacco pretty wet when you press it. If you see a little brown goo oozing out, it’s wet enough. If not, it’ll be a loose cake. Both are fine, it just depends on what you’re after.

 

[captainsousie]

Why do the flavors have to be constrained by traditional values of marriage? They could just live as separate individuals who choose to be together.

Jokes aside, one view I have read is that pressure accelerates the process as hoosierpipeguy stated.

Another view I have read is that it results in a flavor profile that has different balance and nuance. Not better or worse, just different. These are only the views I have gathered from blenders, both amateur and pro, I have not had the chance to try it myself.

 

[anotherbob]

I don't know but I know with people pressure might get them married but isn't great for keeping them together. The same may apply to flavors.

 

[tfdickson]

@hoosierpipeguy is right, it accelerates the process. I use two forms of pressing- for ribbon cut mixtures that I just want to see how they meld faster I use a Food Saver and vacuum bag the blend. It creates enough pressure to squash it together and “swap spit” but nothing like a plug. More like a free form crumble cake. For something like a plug (more like an extremely dense crumble cake) the noodle press is the way to go, adds years of age in 10 days. The key to the noodle press is to add heat- I microwave 2oz for 20 seconds, mix it, then another 15 seconds. It’s steaming at that point. Shove it immediately into the press, crank down hard. Then wait 30 minutes and you’ll find you can crank it a little further. Let it sit in the press for a week, pop it, then let it rest for 3 days or so. Magic results.

 

[karam]

Maybe I am being pedantic and semantic but I always found the expression "marry the flavours" difficult to deal with. What exactly do people mean by that?

From my own experiments with pressing I found that pressing alters the burn characteristics of the blend, often positively, making it burn cooler and slower, resulting in better flavour. The "marrying" I take to be the fact we're smoking a compact form of different leaf, so we get a lot of their flavours coming at the same time, but my personal experience is that well blended ribbon or broken flake, or rubbed out flake does not taste substantially different. Maybe I'm still somewhat green, happy to be corrected in time.

Also substantial differences between flake, plug and cake.

 

[kcghost]

I'm not sold on compressing tobacco. I think that it works for some tobaccos and not so well for others.

 

[NomadOrb]

I'm not sold on compressing tobacco. I think that it works for some tobaccos and not so well for others.

I definitely agree with you on that, some blends like to be loose and free.

 

[saltedplug]

@hoosierpipeguy is right, it accelerates the process. I use two forms of pressing- for ribbon cut mixtures that I just want to see how they meld faster I use a Food Saver and vacuum bag the blend. It creates enough pressure to squash it together and “swap spit” but nothing like a plug. More like a free form crumble cake. For something like a plug (more like an extremely dense crumble cake) the noodle press is the way to go, adds years of age in 10 days. The key to the noodle press is to add heat- I microwave 2oz for 20 seconds, mix it, then another 15 seconds. It’s steaming at that point. Shove it immediately into the press, crank down hard. Then wait 30 minutes and you’ll find you can crank it a little further. Let it sit in the press for a week, pop it, then let it rest for 3 days or so. Magic results.

I don't think it could be made more clear: compression and heat.

I don't think there's a commercial heat press in the US, but as above, there can be many home presses. It took years for C&D to get a pressure only press.

 

[NomadOrb]

Hot pressing is very interesting to me, I absolutely love Mac Baren's hot pressed flakes.

 

[geopiper]

Good info. thanks.

 

[karam]

I don't think there's a commercial heat press in the US, but as above, there can be many home presses. It took years for C&D to get a pressure only press.

Interesting, how come though? Don't Sutliff make flakes for a few smaller retailers?