Fleabag
New Member
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.
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.
