Need Some Advice on DIY Blending

[jdlander]

I've been smoking a pipe for about a year. In that time, I have opened and NOT enjoyed around 15 or 20 tins. With these, I usually put it in a mason jar and cellar it.

I've been told to come back to them in a couple years because maybe my palate will have changed by then, and I will like them more.

But a part of me wants to start experimenting with home blending. So what tips and suggestions do you have for doing this?

I imagine I need some sort of method to know what I'm putting into a blend so that if I love it, I can reproduce it later. So do I need a scale to weigh out the tobacco? I mean, how scientific are we getting here?

Also, after I blend two or three tobaccos together, do I need to let them "marry" a bit in a jar before I smoke it? Should I try to press them? Can I just blend and immediately smoke?

How much should I mix all at once? An ounce or two? Less? A single bowl?

There's a part of me that thinks I should take all 20 tins and randomly mix two or three at a time to jar up as a "mystery blend" but I feel like I want to take a more purposeful approach.

 

[Sigmund]

In the long run its usually ideal for the flavors to settle together. That said, you dont have to wait. One bowl experiments work just fine and no need to waste mixing too much at once. If its good in a one bowl try its probably a touch better in a couple of weeks. Its not night and day so if it sucks move on to the next idea.

Keep in mind your tastes may change and develop. At first I always diluted lat blends. Now few are too strong so dont waste pounds of blends. Whatever you do have fun

 

[cosmicfolklore]

It's kind of sloppy to just mix together already cased and/or topped blends... and call that blending. Yeh, yeh, yeh... I know that some small-shop blenders do this.... but, if you really want to delve into blending, start with unadulterated leaf, maybe from a whole leaf source or grow some.

Just a year is not long enough for your palate to change, as I bet you haven't even established a palate yet. But, the best reason to have these set back, is because one day, after you've settled on Virginias, or burleys, or... ugg aromatics... you are going to want something as a change of pace. This is when having a few stashed back will come in handy.

 

[makhorkasmoker]

I second starting with straight mostly unadulterated blenders. C&d has a good selection. I like whole leaf even better.

I’d start with basic bases. Get a feel for them. See which suits you. Then add the condiments bit by bit.

As for marrying, it matters more for me with certain tobaccos. Blends with Latakia and especially perique really benefit.

I threw away a lot of blends before I began home blending. I still have a shelf full of commercial blends I’ve kept because so many here say I may start liking them one day. So far they serve as occasional points of negative comparison. I prefer home blends

 

[Brad H]

I’m no expert blender by any means. I found it helpful to smoke the leaf straight to see what properties the leaf has. That way you can know if you want to add more or less of the tobacco into a blend.

 

[anotherbob]

I've been smoking a pipe for about a year. In that time, I have opened and NOT enjoyed around 15 or 20 tins. With these, I usually put it in a mason jar and cellar it.

I've been told to come back to them in a couple years because maybe my palate will have changed by then, and I will like them more.

Might like them more.

But a part of me wants to start experimenting with home blending. So what tips and suggestions do you have for doing this?

Start small. Blend one bowl at a time. And make sure you know what percentages you have used. Sometimes the magic exists in just the right ratios.

I imagine I need some sort of method to know what I'm putting into a blend so that if I love it, I can reproduce it later. So do I need a scale to weigh out the tobacco? I mean, how scientific are we getting here?

You don't need that but it can make the difference between being able to reproduce your successes.

Also, after I blend two or three tobaccos together, do I need to let them "marry" a bit in a jar before I smoke it? Should I try to press them? Can I just blend and immediately smoke?

How much should I mix all at once? An ounce or two? Less? A single bowl?

There's a part of me that thinks I should take all 20 tins and randomly mix two or three at a time to jar up as a "mystery blend" but I feel like I want to take a more purposeful approach.

That's what I tend to do with the last not quite a full bowl of random blends. The results certainly range but it's still fun.

 

[Hutch Piper]

My recommendation would be to keep sampling to find out what you really like before blending. My tastes really changed after about a year into it. Now I have really hones in on the type of leaf I enjoy, and have done a little blending myself.

 

[krizzose]

Statistically speaking, I’m not a very good home blender. I’m on #28, and of those only about 6 were “pretty good”, and I’ve only made more of 2 blends that I tweaked before considering final. So, I recommend that you carefully consider the source of the following advice.

Every blend I tweaked was improved by the addition of some amount of plain burley (I mostly use PS702 or Peretti BPC), even blends I intended to be Virginia forward.

 

[Gerald Boone]

It's kind of sloppy to just mix together already cased and/or topped blends... and call that blending. Yeh, yeh, yeh... I know that some small-shop blenders do this.... but, if you really want to delve into blending, start with unadulterated leaf, maybe from a whole leaf source or grow some.

Just a year is not long enough for your palate to change, as I bet you haven't even established a palate yet. But, the best reason to have these set back, is because one day, after you've settled on Virginias, or burleys, or... ugg aromatics... you are going to want something as a change of pace. This is when having a few stashed back will come in handy.

"if you really want to delve into blending, start with unadulterated leaf, maybe from a whole leaf source " I very much agree with you. " ugg aromatics" again very much agree.

 

[Gerald Boone]

My recommendation would be to keep sampling to find out what you really like before blending. My tastes really changed after about a year into it. Now I have really hones in on the type of leaf I enjoy, and have done a little blending myself.

" keep sampling to find out what you really like before blending." Very much agree.

 

[Gerald Boone]

I've been smoking a pipe for about a year. In that time, I have opened and NOT enjoyed around 15 or 20 tins. With these, I usually put it in a mason jar and cellar it.

I've been told to come back to them in a couple years because maybe my palate will have changed by then, and I will like them more.

But a part of me wants to start experimenting with home blending. So what tips and suggestions do you have for doing this?

I imagine I need some sort of method to know what I'm putting into a blend so that if I love it, I can reproduce it later. So do I need a scale to weigh out the tobacco? I mean, how scientific are we getting here?

Also, after I blend two or three tobaccos together, do I need to let them "marry" a bit in a jar before I smoke it? Should I try to press them? Can I just blend and immediately smoke?

How much should I mix all at once? An ounce or two? Less? A single bowl?

There's a part of me that thinks I should take all 20 tins and randomly mix two or three at a time to jar up as a "mystery blend" but I feel like I want to take a more purposeful approach.

I like to smell the tobacco first. I usually can tell what I am going to like or not like. Personally I like perique or to a lesser extent latakia. Right now I am smoking straight perique because smoking perique is realized eschatology for me. The blending I have done is usually downgraded versions with pure leaf (no toppings not aromatic) with perique/latakia added. Who am I kidding it's mostly latakia or perique. I like it that you also have tobacco that is well....not quite what I had hoped for. I have a few pounds of that. I think the main thing is to have fun. I would suggest maybe you can make small batches and schedule an afternoon with the enjoyable task of testing what seems best. For you maybe sort what tins stand out as really good or really bad. Test a bowl with a possible blend. Have fun This is a fun process. Hoping you have that moment when you exclaim Hey! this is really good, I want some more of this tobacco.

 

[Briarcutter]

Do whatever you like. Mix up one bowl at a time and see how you like it. Blending,mixing,experimenting, call it what ever. The downside to mixing more than a bowl or two it that if you don't like it you're stuck. Just have fun and enjoy the ride.

 

[woodsroad]

I've been smoking a pipe for about a year. In that time, I have opened and NOT enjoyed around 15 or 20 tins. With these, I usually put it in a mason jar and cellar it.

How many HAVE you enjoyed?
Which blends are they?

I've been told to come back to them in a couple years because maybe my palate will have changed by then, and I will like them more.

Perhaps.

But a part of me wants to start experimenting with home blending. So what tips and suggestions do you have for doing this?

I imagine I need some sort of method to know what I'm putting into a blend so that if I love it, I can reproduce it later. So do I need a scale to weigh out the tobacco? I mean, how scientific are we getting here?

Yes to all that.
If you mix up something that you like, or almost like but it needs tweaking, you’ll need to be able to reproduce it. So keep a log book, weigh everything.

Also, after I blend two or three tobaccos together, do I need to let them "marry" a bit in a jar before I smoke it? Should I try to press them? Can I just blend and immediately smoke?

Yes to all that, too.
There aren’t any rules, do what you like.

How much should I mix all at once? An ounce or two? Less? A single bowl?

At least an ounce. Smaller quantities may not be reproducable due to rounding errors and problems evenly dispersing minor additions like Perique.

There's a part of me that thinks I should take all 20 tins and randomly mix two or three at a time to jar up as a "mystery blend" but I feel like I want to take a more purposeful approach.

If you didn’t like them singularly, what makes you think that you’ll like them all glommed together? Maybe, if you didn’t like a straight Virginia, some burly and Perique might ring your bell, but randomly mixing tobacco and hoping for a good outcome will probably disappoint.

 

[SmokingInTheWind]

I've been told to come back to them in a couple years because maybe my palate will have changed by then, and I will like them more.

I have found that some time in a jar knocks off the rough edges of some blends. I’ve revisited blends I didn’t care for fresh from the tin and found a noticeable improvement. A few months in a jar smoothed them out and I enjoyed them. I would say the tobacco changed, not my palate. This has been the case with some C&D burley blends and also some English blends. Revisit a blend you don’t care for a few times before writing it off.

 

[InWithBothFeet]

I think it depends on how good you are at picking out the flavors. If you're a "supertaster" and can say that this blend tastes "like a velvet elvis portrait on a full moon on a saturday night between the hours of midnight and 1:23am", then blending specific portions of a leaf might work. If you are like I am and there are two different types of tobacco, one tastes good and the other doesn't, then getting into the nitty gritty of blending doesn't make sense. I ended up with 3 or 4 different english blends and they all tasted like an english blend, so I combined them in a bowl and put them in a large jar. The combined tobacco tastes.... like an english blend.

 

[jdlander]

How many HAVE you enjoyed?
Which blends are they?

It's odd, because I have "not enjoyed" several tins from each tobacco category ... several aromatics were just bland. Several English tins were too strong. Several burleys seemed to have no character or flavor. Some Virginias seemed to bite too much.

Here are two tins so far that I have LOVED:
-Three Nuns
-HH MacBaren Rustica (Honestly, if this was still available, I would buy as much as my budget allowed)

Any pipe tobaccos out there similar to these two that I should try?

 

[khiddy]

.Here are two tins so far that I have LOVED:
-Three Nuns
-HH MacBaren Rustica (Honestly, if this was still available, I would buy as much as my budget allowed)

Any pipe tobaccos out there similar to these two that I should try?

Unfortunately, Mac Baren was the only blender doing anything with Rustica in quantity, and their steam presses did things to the leaf that no one else (except perhaps Gawith Hoggarth) is doing. I also love HH Rustica and hope that Per Georg Jensen, its creator, is going to bring something similar back to the market with another blending house, even if it’s not steam pressed like the HH line.

 

[telescopes]

Think of blending like composing music. Your major chord is your base. Try to find a blending Virginia or Burley that you want to make as your base. If you don't have that available to you, then look for one particular blend that represents a major note that you would like to expand on. This base should compose 4-6 parts of what you are planning to make.

Now you need a 4th and a 5th. How do you want to accent the base. Perique, Latakia, various cavendishes all can work here. Maybe you have a particular blend you really like for the flavor note. Insert here. Maybe you would like to add some Oriental notes. Add it here. To your base, add 1-2 parts of your accent blend.

For the 5th in the structure of this musical composition, add 1/2 - 1 1/2 parts of a note of tobacco that you feel can work to either bridge the major and minor notes you previously put together or works to create a very faint but noticeable background note.

Of course you can add some minor chords in keeping with the analogy.

Fold them together and let them sit for a while. Press them or stove them or do both to enhance the process.

Great ratios I have found that have worked for me or 5.5:1.5:1 or five and a half to one and a half to one - which makes a half pound if converted to ounces.

I hope this helps you think about blending.

 

[Sobrbiker]

I’d suggest figuring out from what you’ve tried, what genres of blends appeal to you overall. I like dark VA/DFK blends the most overall, but that doesn’t mean I like all VA/DFK blends by any means. Bit more I know enough of what I do like to be able to make a blend I’m on the fence about more palatable by mixing a component I’m familiar with.
My tastes changed a lot (as many others report as well). I smoked a lot of English and more Balkan blends (more lat, less orientals) almost exclusively and now almost never want to smoke them. They won’t go to waste, tons get gifted, and open/bulks can either hang out or given away.
I also have a couple pounds of some interesting aro blends I made by doing what you’re thinking of doing that are on containers, probably 15oz of each….

I’d suggest getting 1-2oz samples of bulks that are primarily singular variety and getting to know what each is really about as well, then buy the time you figure out your groove you can make educated small mixes, and if you want more you can make bigger batches.