Cherry Red

[Hemlock]

Hi all
Haven't posted in a while but still managed to get a few plants in this year. Germinated late in May and just about done harvest remarkably late here in Ontario.

Grew some Cherry Red. Big plants. Have struggled to fix the yellowing in the crock pot freezer kiln flue process. All lead was primed when mature to ripe.
Only benchmark is Virginia Gold last year. The Cherry Red seems fine until moving to wilting and drying and then get all kinds of reddish brown colours. Have tried airflow, humidity adjustments but always changes colour as soon as I move to 105 F or even air dry after yellowing.

Hoping I've still preserved the sugar. Anyone experience challenges on this varietal to keep it yellow gold vs reds in leaf above the lugs? I wonder if this is why it's called "cherry".

Aroma is great, and look forward to aging before making my pipe tobacco plugs. I hope my flue curing is just an appearance issue.
Feedback welcome!

 

[GreenDragon]

If you compare yours to the Virgina Red Leaf sold on WLT they look comparable. Good job! I'm predicting they will make fine pipe blends.

 

[Hemlock]

The grow and curing experiment continues for this strain.

These leaves above are Cherry Red Leaf and Tips. I did my best in trying to control for colour. However even following the typical flue cure temp and RH curve they developed into deep orange and mahogany shades and didn't stay yellow as I was aiming for. Only sand leaves and cutters seem to cure yellow in my setup.

The aroma of thiese leaves is that of butternut squash and raspberry jam. I hope I locked in the sugars by the drying. I seems from literature search that this varietal may have high polyphenol oxidase (PPO) and genetic characteristics that make it prone to the colours (in my case without a professional flue curing kiln).

Will age these a bit and make some Virginia flake in a year if I'm patient enough.

That's the end of this grow season and looking forward to next year.

I hope this has been helpful to other growers considering this heirloom seed.

 

[Hemlock]

View attachment 61377
The grow and curing experiment continues for this strain.

These leaves above are Cherry Red Leaf and Tips. I did my best in trying to control for colour. However even following the typical flue cure temp and RH curve they developed into deep orange and mahogany shades and didn't stay yellow as I was aiming for. Only sand leaves and cutters seem to cure yellow in my setup.

The aroma of thiese leaves is that of butternut squash and raspberry jam. I hope I locked in the sugars by the drying. It seems from literature search that this varietal may have high polyphenol oxidase (PPO) and genetic characteristics that make it prone to the colours (in my case without a professional flue curing kiln).

Will age these a bit and make some Virginia flake in a year if I'm patient enough.

That's the end of this grow season and looking forward to next year.

I hope this has been helpful to other growers considering this heirloom seed.