More Info on WLT Burleys?

[makhorkasmoker]

Hi all. For the last couple of days I’ve been enjoying smoking 2 WLT burleys: Kentucky burley and red tips.

I understand that the red tips are the upper leaves of the plants. But where were the leaves of the Kentucky burley on the plants? Lower, middle, upper, a mix?

I usually smoke c&d dark burley, which is piled a little like cigar leaf. Is Kentucky burley or red tips piled? Are either of them kilned? Or aged? Or are they simply air cured and that’s it?

I’m really enjoying both, so much so that I doubt I’ll bother with the c&d dark burley anymore. But I would like to know more about them.

Thanks!

Bill

 

[Old Cob]

Hey Bill,
Descriptions of tobaccos and tobacco varieties drive me nuts. I can find little agreement on it even in this country. I think it would take a phone call to WLT and ask. I recently watched a couple of C&D's tobacco selections youTube videos. One on white and dark burleys, the other on dark fired Kentucky. Mr Reeves describes white burley as air cured and coming from a mid-stalk region. He says dark burley comes from an upper-stalk, and being thicker with more nicotine and it is stacked and fermented a second time. Dark fired, which he describes as not a burley at all, he calls simply "Kentucky" or "Dark Tobacco", has a sticky, very large leaf with much greater nicotine. WLT has a number of leaves that are a bit confusing in their description. WLT's "Kentucky Burley" muddies the water by adding "Kentucky". Place of origin? I'm just guessing, but "Kentucky Burley" may be what others call "White Burley" and "Kentucky Burley Red Tips" may be what C&D calls "Dark Burley". Leaving WLT's "Light Fire Cured","Kentucky Fire Cured VA 309" and"Dark Air Cured" as "Dark" tobacco or "Kentucky" tobacco. Just a guess. How any of them are processed would take a call to find out.

Old Cob

 

[deluxestogie]

Much of the tobacco grown in Kentucky is burley. Practically all commercially grown burley in the US is one variety or another of white-stem burley. The lower leaf is usually just labeled "burley", while the upper leaf is called "burley red tips". Traditionally, burley is simply air-cured. I find it more interesting after kilning. Most tobacco manufacturers utilize some additional process for their burley, such as kilning (which is a means of fermentation) or toasting. The so-called "red burleys" are mostly history at this point, having given way to plantings of white-stem burleys in the late 19th century.

From Doug Moats' Nicotiana Project:
"Light air-cured" Type 31.

Grown and air-cured for cigarettes, pipe and chewing tobacco.​

Plants are stalk-cut, left to wilt in the field, and barn dried in four to eight weeks using ventilation systems to control humidity.​

Air-Curing is performed in widely ventilated barns under natural atmospheric conditions with little or no artificial heat; it takes about 3-12 weeks. Light air-cured tobacco is very thin to medium in body, light tan shaded toward reddish brown in color and mild in flavor.​

Burley tobacco is grown in rich limestone soils, primarily in Kentucky and Tennessee. It is light brown to reddish in color and has a somewhat greater filling power than flue-cured tobacco. Burley is light in body and neutral in flavor with a low sugar content and high alkaloid content. Burley smoke is more basic (pH) than flue-cured tobacco.​

​

Burley, Type 31. That type of air-cured tobacco, commonly known as Burley, produced principally in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, and Missouri.​

Bob

 

[makhorkasmoker]

Thanks to you both for the info. It is fascinating to me just how different these WLT burleys are from both c&d burleys, both white and dark. For one thing WLT burleys have a much stronger nic hit. For another, Kentucky burley has flavors that are absent, or nearly so, from both the c&d burleys. I went through 10+ pounds over several years of c&d dark burley, and once in a great while I’d get a bit of wild tasting leaf, a little like some flavors in Turkish tobacco but quite different. I really liked that wild taste and wondered what it was. I thought c&d or smoking pipes and had gotten some other type of leaf mixed in with it by accident. But now, smoking the Kentucky burley, I taste it with every smoke, and I realize it must be a flavor burley naturally has but is mostly lost with the piling—and whatever else they do to it. Even their white burley has none of that particular flavor, at least that I can detect .

Anyway I’m enjoying these WLT burleys a lot. It really is a totally different experience

 

[deluxestogie]

Keep in mind that C&D tobacco always has humectants (glycerin or propylene glycol or both) added. Twenty or so years ago, that was not the case.

Bob

 

[treecutter]

Just to understand, Is it possible that WLT's Kentucky Burley could be TN 90, or something else.

 

[deluxestogie]

Is it possible that WLT's Kentucky Burley could be TN 90, or something else.

Yes. It could be TN 90 or something else. Flue-cured, burley, Maryland, and the dark-cured varieties are usually sold by USDA market class, rather than a specific variety that might have been planted.

Bob