Ammonia
- Thread starter Serin
- Start date
You can make better, by not copying them.
Have you looked into building a kiln?
They tend to mellow tobacco more reliably than additives do.
If it’s toasted, it might not age in a kiln like raw tobacco…….
Looks like citric acid might be worth a try?
fairtradetobacco.com
Looks like citric acid might be worth a try?
How to make strong tobacco more mild and smooth
I found this a very interesting subject and wanted to share. Ever want to make your cigars smoother and less harsh? If so, then this may be an experiment to try. It's very inexpensive and easy to perform. According to the Bureau of Plant Industry from the Department of Agriculture in 1908 they...
You could make some of it into Cavendish and then mix some of the Cavendish with some that has not been processed. Are you blending your tobaccos? What is your blend?
fairtradetobacco.com
Making Black Cavendish Pipe Tobacco
Black Cavendish is a style of tobacco processing that produces a mild, very dark tobacco, that can be used for pipe blending. Black Cavendish is notable for its ability to readily absorb added flavors for aromatic blends. Unflavored, it also makes a wonderful blender when mixed with stronger...
pottsS
Well-Known Member
Sometimes when forage crops are poor quality farmers use anhydrous ammonia to increase the feed value, the palatability and to help preserve silage, there is lots of information available on that process, I'm not sure how relevant it is, and I don't know where you'd get a small amount of anhydrous.
https://www.gov.mb.ca/agriculture/crops/crop-management/forages/ammoniation-of-forages.html
https://www.gov.mb.ca/agriculture/crops/crop-management/forages/ammoniation-of-forages.html
burley virginia this is the blend i think the professionals for smoothing tobacco don't limit themselves only to the usual ingredients in fact the commercial product has something different in itself for example the burley is too smooth and the virginia has a completely changed ph in the more products famous and renowned the amount is used both to enhance the taste and to make the nicotine more available I have smoked Italian branded products that do not use particular additives in fact they are not good products
Laredo
Active Member
I am by no means an expert, but I’ll throw in my 2 cents. I only got into making my own cigarettes with “whole leaf tobacco” a little over a year ago. The first batch I ordered was already blended and threshed, so I have no idea what tobaccos were in the mix. I use full flavor tubes and with the pre blended tobacco, it was a bit too strong for me. I tried that threshed blend with light tubes, and it was pretty good.
I ordered something different for my second batch of whole leaf. I ordered 80% Virginia Flue Cured Brightleaf Sweet and 20% what was called “American Flue Cured.” That blend was too light, and had a bunch of forward tongue bite. I could also get a throat hit out of it, but it was different than the “traditional” throat hit from a cigarette. Maybe it was the acidity of the sweet bright leaf. I don’t know how to explain it, but it kind of takes your breath away like breathing in some CO2. I do a fair amount of home brewing and the throat hit was similar to opening a fermentation vessel and taking a big sniff. Maybe the CO2 combines with the moisture in your throat to form carbonic acid???
But anyway, I ordered a couple pounds of “Regular Burley” from the same company (that I ordered the whole leaf from) along with one pond of “Canadian Flue Cured” to try and add some more flavor and nicotine. When I got the order, I rolled a smoke with 100% burley and thought it was going to kill me, lol. Strong, harsh, and tasted like a cigar. The Canadian Flue Cured was ok at 100%, but still had too much forward tongue bite, but definitely less than the Bright Leaf Sweet. I combined all tobaccos and the blend was pretty good. It ended up being about 85% flue cured and 15% burley. Still a bit lacking though, needed more nicotine.
Since I still wasn’t satisfied, I ordered a pound of mid-stalk burley, a pound of red tip burley, and a pound of flue cured from @BigBonner. Wow, the burley was really nice. Smelled different than the other burley I had bought, but I know it was aged for at least two years. His flue cured was also quite good. After a few trials of different combinations, I ended up putting all three pounds into the main blend. Ended up right about 80% flue cured and 20% burley (I will probably do 10% mid-stalk and 10% red tip in the future). Just today I rolled my first carton of smokes with the 20% burley blend and have smoked two of them. It is quite nice and is the blend I am going to stick with. No forward tongue bite and a decent throat hit with a good nicotine content for my tastes.
I don’t know if you can get rid of all the throat hit. I reckon you could blend in the precise amount of burley to completely neutralize the acidity of the flue cured, but I would think you would still have some sort of a throat hit. I have not spent much time with casing sprays, toasting, stoving, or making cavendish. I tried some citric acid spray and some stoving, but it isn’t my cup of tea. I want to keep it as simple as possible.
I would suggest you find a known good source for some well aged burley, or buy some untoasted whole leaf burley and kiln it and see how it goes. I bought a cheap little manual cigarette stuffing machine to do my testing. I figure 1 gram of tobacco is good in a cigarette so it is pretty quick and easy to do some trials and dial in what you like. I use a small 500g capacity digital scale for measuring my trial cigarettes. Once the tobacco is shredded and ready to roll, making a prototype cigarette with a manual machine only takes a minute or two.
I have read, and can attest to the fact that smoking well aged, unprocessed burley (no ammonia, or toasting, or other treatments), takes a bit of getting used to. When I first added burley to my all flue cured blend, I could taste the “cigar like flavor” in it at 15%. Now, after a few weeks, I can’t taste it at 20%. It is either I got used to it, or that something has changed in the tobacco itself, or a combination of the two. I store my tobacco at about 14% moisture content. I have read that “cold sweating” tobacco can improve the flavor. From what I understand, cold sweating is mixing your tobacco blend and then letting it hang out at room temperature in medium case.
Besides perfecting your blend (I haven’t tried any Oriental tobacco, fired cured, or dark air cured yet) you can play around with the moisture level of your finished, rolled cigarettes. As I mentioned, right now, I am keeping everything at about 14% moisture. That is about 69% humidity. I have had my threshed tobacco at that moisture level for a year and have not seen any mold issues. For whole leaf tobacco, I do remove the mid rib stem from each leaf and cut the leaves down for storage. It basically looks like threshed tobacco but with zero stem remnants.
At first I was keeping my rolled smokes at 69% humidity, but I have found that I prefer to have my cigarettes dried out prior to smoking them. They seem to be hotter and stronger tasting when at 14% compared to being dried out. I use to keep a 69% Boveda humidity pack in my humidor, but now I don’t. I basically let them dry out to whatever room humidity is. At the moment, that is around 50 to 55% RH. Boveda makes quite a few different levels of humidity packs so it might be worth experimenting with.
Anyway, sorry for the long post. I hope it helps.
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When you buy tobacco let it age in the vapour proof bags. When you open them the ammonia smell is there as it is released as the tobacco ages and that is what smooths out tobacco. Order more that what you need. Whole leaf ages well. Sweating tobacco also works. It's simple and posted about heading fishing when hot outside 30 degrees Celsius. The tobacco was hot in the plastic tub I use. I just call it the hot car method but I was out since 10 am to 7pm.
If it's anhydrous ammonia, the fact that DHS and the cops watch for it are the very least of your problems. You won't find me anywhere even remotely near that stuff.
Huffen'Snuff
Well-Known Member
I heard a rumor a good while back that the big commercial cigarettes have ammonia added to the tobacco to make it more addictive.
They do a process to increase the effect of nicotine in the tobacco. Ammonia is a natural process of aging. I am smoking an old bag of flue cured. The smell was overwhelming until it mixes with Oxygen. The aging process is fermentation and wetting and remoistening tobacco. Sweating tobacco works as well as temperature variation. I am happy with some of the good stuff. Mixing it with some of bonner's and it's amazing. On it's own is amazing. Moving to Edmonton and will at least have a balcony. Prior too I have had conversations with Doug from RYO magazine and got a lot of tips with tobacco to try. One year I had emailed Don cause the tobacco was super bitter and Un smokable. He was wonderful in trying to replace or return it but I said let me try something first. I put all the bags on the radiator. Hot water heat then opened a bag shredded an pressed it and it was not only smokable but super smooth and sweet. So there's lots you can do to tobacco to change its profile and taste.