Growing cigar leaf in central Italy: @UmbriaFarmer

[UmbriaFarmer]

If your too worried with the higher temps you can always lower the temp to between 110f- 118f but you will also have to lower the RH to be around 62-67% to significantly reduce mold risk. Thats how i have done it this year. It is just an experiment but its working. Also the lower temp and Rh dont darken the leave as much as higher temps and rh

I'm no longer worried. Bob provided clear impeccable citations of where his figures come from and now, with that worry gone, I am extremely happy with my setup. It needs to be practical and functional on a relatively large scale (96 plants, 1800 leaves) and not need full-time round the clock nursing. Now I open it up about every 3 days (I monitor the internal temp and rh from home with an app), pull out the 40-odd hands of 25, re mist them then replace them in a different order. Been 2.5 weeks now. I have the rh at about 92 which in practice is moist but nowhere near soggy. If it goes down to 80, 82 ish, the outer leaves start to verge on crispness...which I don't really like as I know both microbial and enzymes transformations generally are much quicker and more thorough when wet rather than dry. Anyway, my point is, it's so low maintenance I am super happy to let it carry on for 8 weeks. Also, it's not even half full yet and I reckon by about Sunday my 3rd priming will have finished curing and that'll be another 35 hands to put in!

 

[FarmingMachinery]

Great update, @UmbriaFarmer! Your low-maintenance approach is really impressive — monitoring temp/rh with an app and only opening every 3 days is very practical for that scale.

You're absolutely right about the humidity. At 92% RH, the microbial and enzyme transformations are indeed more active and thorough — that's why bulk fermentation works so well. The key is keeping it moist but not soggy, which you've nailed.

As your scale continues to grow (1800 leaves and not even half full — that's great!), you might eventually hit a point where manually re-misting 40+ hands every 3 days becomes time-consuming. I've seen small commercial fermentation chambers that handle humidity automatically — built-in misting systems, programmable temp/rh cycles, and even remote monitoring built in. They're essentially the same principle as your setup, just automated. But for now, your DIY approach is clearly working great.

How's the fermentation progressing otherwise? Any ammonia release yet, and how's the color developing on the wrapper leaves vs the ligero?

 

[UmbriaFarmer]

Great update, @UmbriaFarmer! Your low-maintenance approach is really impressive — monitoring temp/rh with an app and only opening every 3 days is very practical for that scale.

You're absolutely right about the humidity. At 92% RH, the microbial and enzyme transformations are indeed more active and thorough — that's why bulk fermentation works so well. The key is keeping it moist but not soggy, which you've nailed.

As your scale continues to grow (1800 leaves and not even half full — that's great!), you might eventually hit a point where manually re-misting 40+ hands every 3 days becomes time-consuming. I've seen small commercial fermentation chambers that handle humidity automatically — built-in misting systems, programmable temp/rh cycles, and even remote monitoring built in. They're essentially the same principle as your setup, just automated. But for now, your DIY approach is clearly working great.

How's the fermentation progressing otherwise? Any ammonia release yet, and how's the color developing on the wrapper leaves vs the ligero?

Yes, ammonia started after a week. It was interedting because the smell of ammonia didn't start to be noticeable until the hands had been out of the barrel for a few minutes. I was airing them out and rearranging them when I suddenly thought I could smell the urinals in a mens washroom. Really stinky! Then of course I realised it was coming from the hands. I can't say about colour difference between wrapper and ligero as the ligero hasn't finished curing yet - it takes much much longer for 2 reasons, I believe. One is obviously the leaves are much thicker, like a lot thicker, the other is that we are moving into autumn here now so afternoon temps are down from about 38 to about 32°C and night time humidity up from about 65% to 85%, so understandably the ligero cures more slowly. Nonetheless it is still curing beautifully, I am observing the rate at which the midribs are dtying out and I predict the viso/first ligero priming will be ready on Sunday, maybe monday. So that will be a busy morning for me as it amounts to about 35 hands. I will get up before sunrise, that way the leaf will be just soft enough from the night time humidity for je to take it down without doing any damage. Then I mist it, leave it for an hour, mist it again and place it in big plastic bags, leave it for a couple of hours, then open the bags up, tie it into hands, weigh and record everything then load it into the piss-stinking fermentation barrel!

 

[UmbriaFarmer]

So, for anybody who's interested, yesterday I added a further 12 hands to my kiln from the second priming, so mostly viso, which yesterday had finished curing. It amounted to about 40% of the second priming, the remaining 60% or so needs another week to finish. So I opened up the kiln and again the first thing I noticed was a clear acidic note to the vapour that slightly caught in the back of my throat. Apart from that, very rich dried, candied fruits like a rich fruitcake really. The oldest hands in there have been fermenting for almost 3 weeks. Very little ammonia, which surprised me. I also noticed the oldest hands are now considerably darker than the new ones. Overall things are proceeding better than I dared hope for.

 

[UmbriaFarmer]

So another good day of progress with my cigar leaf production program.
The last of the 3rd priming of my criollo finished curing and yesterday it poured with rain all day so this morning the humidity was still so high that the hanging leaf was all soft and supple so there was no need to spritz it before taking it down. Tied it all into hands of 25 leaves and got 21 hands in total.
Although not in the photo, I also took down 6 hands of the 4th priming, all ligero which had finished curing. Interestingly, the average weight of a hand of the 3rd priming, viso, was 175g whereas the average weight of a hand of the ligero was 325g - it's much heavier, denser leaf.
All now loaded into the kiln, rh about 90%, temp getting back up 50C with a running tool of about 75 hands in the kiln fermenting away happily, which makes me happy too.

 

[deluxestogie]

What material have you used (the blue bands) to tie the hands?

Bob

 

[UmbriaFarmer]

What material have you used (the blue bands) to tie the hands?

Bob

Braided cotton thread. There's a local kinda ethnic store that sells these reels of cotton string from India, coloured with vegetable dyes and they sell about 8 different colours. I'm not a kind of hippie type usually but I liked the idea of it being vegetable dye. The 2 ligatures means it was the second batch of X priming, so I can keep track of how long hands have been fermenting and from which priming they originated. So the 1st part of the 1st priming have natural jute ties, the second from that priming have two ligatures, 2nd priming have red cotton, third have blue, 4th have red and blue intertwined etc. Sounds a bit random but I record everything in my book. I weigh everything too at every stage. Btw Bob, my apologies for my post elsewhere the other day. Point taken, won't happen again.

 

[deluxestogie]

Braided cotton thread.

I was worried, from the bright blue, that it might be rubber or plastic. Cotton is good.

Bob

 

[UmbriaFarmer]

I was worried, from the bright blue, that it might be rubber or plastic. Cotton is good.

Bob

No, I'm pretty cautious about plastiky stuff in contact with tobacco especially if its sitting at 125°F and high humidity for weeks at a time. Who knows what kinda crap could leech out. That's also why I used a stainless barrel instead of a plastic one. I know smoking in general is maybe not the healthiest pasttime known to man but there's no need it make it worse that it need be...

 

[UmbriaFarmer]

So today the last of my 4th priming, ligero, had finished curing so I took it down, tied it into hands of 25 and loaded it into the kiln for fermentation. It was difficult in the dappled sunlight to take a good photo, but it has cured into a really beautiful mid brown shade. I tallied everything up and now I have a total of 72 hands in the kiln, so 1,800 leaves of seco, viso and ligero criollo leaf, much of which has already been fermenting for a month now. Very exciting for me.

 

[UmbriaFarmer]

Yesterday I opened my kiln for the every 3 days airing out and rearranging, and I could detect some notable changes in the aromas, now that about 50% of the hands are halfway through their 5th week. Firstly there is zero ammonia detectable. Secondly, up until now, when I've stuck my head into the kiln upon opening, I've been receiving a distinct but mild acidity in the aromas/steamy vapours that catches on the inside of my nasal passages. Well that has disappeared completely now. Thirdly, the complex dried fruit/candied citrus peel/ripe fig compounds are diminishing quite a lot and becoming more linear and less complex, less multilayered. Fourthly, and this is weird and hard to describe, but the predominant aroma now I can only descrive as dental surgery waiting room! It's a rather pleasant, slightly tarry, medical establishment kinda smell, and as I said the absolute first recognition that rushed into my mind was the dental surgery where I got my teeth cleaned and scraped last week.
Anyways, last week I removed one hand of the first seco priming that was from the first hands to be put in the fermenter 4.5 weeks prior, took it home, graded the leaves, got them into their respective proper case and rolled 5 coronas, using just my leaf. I did this because I'm so curious to even get a sneak peek at what my production this year might be like but also as I thought it would be interesting to smoke one fresh, leaving the others to carry on fermenting/maturing in the humidor then compare notes down the road a few months to try to understand and document the changes that occur with ageing.
So last light I smoked the first one, at just a week old and was very surprised by it. First thing I noted it was very mild, no real throat kick at all but seeing as it is 100% volado/seco, that's to be expected. It burned surprisingly well. Decent smoke volume, no tunneling nor canoeing. The ash was well stratified and very tough and stable. The aroma coming off the burning foot was delicate, had a slight and very pleasant ammonia component to it, mixed with a sweet, almost Habano 2000 quality and the retrohale was pure central American leaf. So although it was clearly a very green, fresh and un-evolved cigar, it was an extremely encouraging experience. I couldn't help but think that if it's like that now with just volado and seco, imagine what it might be like with viso and ligero after they've aged for a year or more? Can't wait......