Hello from NZ: @Fleabag

Hi guys, Fleabag here. I've been lurking on here for a good while and thanks to all the great info I now have home made cigars that are pretty nice.

Not a big smoker but I'm enjoying the cigar culture. It's laid back, friendly and interesting with many aspects to suit my nature. We have a pretty good growing climate where I am in NZ but the tax climate is completely insane so got to home grow!

A quick log of my journey so far below but TL;DR I grew some baccy to test and have rolled some nice sticks. I'll probably do a bit of a post-grow log for documentation purposes at some stage.

I started this journey with nic gum and patches for health reasons and wondered if there was a more natural way to take nicotine when it dawned on me, Cigars! Rolled tobacco leaf without any industrial additives, why didn't I think of that sooner. I found a crasty old tiny gas station type cigar I had kicking around for the last 20 years from a work sample, lit it up on a quiet evening and actually enjoyed it. This led to the acquisition of some Macanudo Maduro Diplomats and some Perdomo 10th Anniversary Sun Grown because they looked cool and I had no idea what I was doing. Realising my folly having smoked one of the Diplomats a bit too quick (very nice, really enjoyed the maduro flavour until I went green) I thought I would save them to commemorate major world events and get some more manageable sized ones to build up my nic tolerance. I hunted down some smaller more manageable Macanudo Ascots and other small cigars to try while adding the odd nice looking cigar to my collection for special occasions.

Now my wallet is utterly destroyed and sucked dry so it's time to enact a principle a friend taught me. If you want something 'naughty' like alcohol or smokes or cakes, you need to at least give it a go yourself from scratch to fully appreciate it. I distill my own rum, gin, whisky, brew ginger beer and plum wine, shoot and butcher my own red meat so the next logical thing was to figure out cigars. After much research on here I received some seeds from one of our friends - Habano 2000, Criollo 98, Havana 608 and Florida Sumatra. Apparently a good cigar mix. So far proven correct.

Growing got started about 2 months late but eventually had two of each variety in my garden bed for testing. They grew to a pretty good size into April while I also experimented with net pots of various sizes and hydroponics to see what I could come up with this season. A massive storm rolled through just as the garden planted ones were looking pretty good and I lost a good amount. I had really only started priming the Criollo 98 as it seemed to come ripe quite early so at least had a good bunch of Criollo wrappers. Still by September I had about 600g of reasonably good leaf dried and speed aged ready to go. Rolling puros for taste testing was a mission so I ended up making a giant cigarette roller type thing which made some great looking sticks right off the bat, full cheat mode. Shockingly to me, I could actually tell the difference between the four varieties when I'm usually hopeless at that sort of thing. Trying out different ratios and wrappers of each and using every last off cut to roll some surprisingly excellent rando sticks has been loads of fun. I'm enjoying the sense of accomplishment and have a new found respect for those who grow and roll the bought cigars in my small collection.

There have been many rabbit holes and there will be many more. Thanks for all the time you guys have taken to record everything here, it allowed me to get good results first time. I would have winged it and been put off the whole thing through frustration otherwise.

Welcome, Glad you could join us.

Welcome to the forum @Fleabag. You may wish to scan through the topics in our Index of Key Forum Threads, linked in the menu bar.

Nice cigar. A home-rolled cigar is a joyous cigar.

Bob

Welcome!

Welcome to FTT

pier

Welcome to the community. Congrats on a successful first run on making your own cigars. As a fellow lurker, I hope to have as much success from first grow in 2026.

Welcome. Thank you for joining us.

Welcome, I'd sure like to see some pics of your sticks whether they're naughty or nice. I've also been tempted to roll up some random sized stuff of whatever leaf I have just to learn and gain experience. Just need to find one of those elusive round tuits. For now all I got are square ones.

Thanks for the welcomes guys!

I have plenty of time but nearly zero will power and my brain fuel tank is running on fumes. Last few years have been full on at work and the poor old brain is worn out. Good thing I have a couple of weeks off not that it is helping at all haha.

I did a couple of super crappy cheat sticks the last couple of days from scraps and some terrible storm damaged wrappers. I have hardly any full leaf to use for the filler, it is mostly ripped up small stuff. Not ideal but the ones I have rolled joining bits together seem to work and if dried for a while then left in the humidor for a few months they burn pretty well. The storm damaged wrappers have quite a bit of green on them though so I get that raw green taste coming through. Still better than paying $65 for an afternoon smoke and I don't feel I have to smoke it until my mo catches fire.

This is how I cheat roll one generally when I'm not practicing rolling properly mainly due to lack of decent full leaves. I find some large bits of bottom leaf that will burn well to use as a sort of binder, usually Havana 608 which I seemed to end up with quite a bit due to its wind resilience. Lay it up evenly with equal parts Havana 608, Habano 2000 and Criollo 98 to about 1g less than my target weight. Also often with whatever scraps of who knows what in the scrap bag.

Looks like crap, and it is.



It is then rolled up a bit manually and usually turns out better than this, but it unrolled for the photo.



Once crammed into the oversized cig roller I find a leaf that is semi reasonable to practice with so I don't use up my few good ones. This one has some big green patches but trimmed to a good size and wrapped it all up pretty well.



Get it started around the bunch, close up the roller and roll it around keeping it somewhat tight. The leaf is cased so its nice and stretchy. I add a bit of xanthan gum to stick the end of the wrapper down usually.



I'll leave it in the roller somewhere warm for a while to allow the moisture from the wrapper to soak away, kind of like a cigar mold. If I'm making an actual attempt at a nice cigar I'll use decentish binder and dig out a nice wrapper and once it has sat for a while in the roller I'll put the wrapper on it. They come out looking pretty reasonable. Rangi ones like this look rough and end up with the odd gap here and there.



Made a small cheat roller for rolling small 4" by 32 cigars to use small wrappers for a quick smoke. I have a larger belt for it which will make a 4" by 44 which I quite like too. The big one makes something like a 6" by 44 if I'm careful but usually I have to trim a good bit off and only end up with a 5 1/2". I add the off cuts into my next rangigar.



This is the one I rolled previous which tasted a bit raw and was pretty patchy on the ash, like I could see through it at some points haha. It had a super light draw and burned quick with loads of smoke, good fun.



Ones rolled with some actual leaf sections and a binder and wrapper can come out pretty good, though the ash sometimes goes wherever it pleases.



I find even with the most rando bits of scrappy rubbish leaf I can roll reasonably consistent ring gauge since the size is dictated by the belt length. Still got to get the right amount of baccy in there in the right spot so it draws good and isn't tapered plus it's a bit fiddly getting the wrapper on. Bit of a moral boost to get something in the humidor after multiple failures at manually rolling though.

This is one I rolled manually with some good sized leaf and a rubbish wrapper. It was indeed pretty bad but shows how even after many hours of practice some people just lack skill at rolling cigars and must use cheat methods haha.

Really fascinating. Thank you for sharing your experience. You ought to be proud of your sticks you've rolled regardless of any flaws.
Rolling with random bits is all I have to work with right now too if nothing more than to get a feel for it. I hear that a lot of cigar rolling is about getting the feel for it.