Here's my take on boiling tobacco, or repeatedly soaking it (assuming you avoid having it mold).
So long as you allow the soggy tobacco to reabsorb all the cooking water, you won't lose any nicotine. The cooking itself alters many of the aromatic compounds, and evaporates some of the more volatile ones. This technique is often used commercially to render less desirable tobaccos into something more desirable, though flavored casings are usually added as well.
Repeated soaking probably does not particularly "age" the tobacco. (Besides, flue-cured tobacco is not capable of "aging" much at all, due to the destruction of its primary oxidase enzyme during the flue-cure process.) It probably, though, reduces some of the residual sugars, and increases the pH slightly--making it less acidic (likewise reducing tongue bite), which you may or may not desire. Cooking results in darker, blander tobacco, and is how Cavendish is made.
I suppose that you could render superb American bright leaf into the blander Canadian style by such a method.
If you start with harsh, crappy tobacco, then repeated soaking and drying cycles will likely be an improvement over what you had to begin with. Doing this with excellent American tobacco, such as Virginia Lemon would probably not be to the liking of many American smokers.
I have used a Cavendish method (steaming, but kept clear of the boiling water) to make some of the 100 varieties that I've grown--some being primitives, some being just crummy--into blendable, smokable pipe tobacco. But the best leaf is always better when left alone.
In the situation posed by the originator of this thread, probably light steaming or light toasting, or both would help mellow the shredded tobacco. A mild citric acid casing might also help. (WLT offers several carefully crafted casings for cigarette tobacco.)
Bob
So long as you allow the soggy tobacco to reabsorb all the cooking water, you won't lose any nicotine. The cooking itself alters many of the aromatic compounds, and evaporates some of the more volatile ones. This technique is often used commercially to render less desirable tobaccos into something more desirable, though flavored casings are usually added as well.
Repeated soaking probably does not particularly "age" the tobacco. (Besides, flue-cured tobacco is not capable of "aging" much at all, due to the destruction of its primary oxidase enzyme during the flue-cure process.) It probably, though, reduces some of the residual sugars, and increases the pH slightly--making it less acidic (likewise reducing tongue bite), which you may or may not desire. Cooking results in darker, blander tobacco, and is how Cavendish is made.
I suppose that you could render superb American bright leaf into the blander Canadian style by such a method.
If you start with harsh, crappy tobacco, then repeated soaking and drying cycles will likely be an improvement over what you had to begin with. Doing this with excellent American tobacco, such as Virginia Lemon would probably not be to the liking of many American smokers.
I have used a Cavendish method (steaming, but kept clear of the boiling water) to make some of the 100 varieties that I've grown--some being primitives, some being just crummy--into blendable, smokable pipe tobacco. But the best leaf is always better when left alone.
In the situation posed by the originator of this thread, probably light steaming or light toasting, or both would help mellow the shredded tobacco. A mild citric acid casing might also help. (WLT offers several carefully crafted casings for cigarette tobacco.)
Bob
