Shredding whole leaf tobacco

[Haebar]

I started a new project this morning. Ordered some tobacco leaves from Whole Leaf Tobacco | Premium American Tobacco (http://wholeleaftobacco.com/) and a simple hand shredder in the past few weeks and am now de-stemming it and shredding it. Fun! This is dark air cured.

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/ah50/haebar/Cigarbum%20002_zpsn4elod3z.jpg

[Haebar]

Well, so far this has been a very educational experience, if not a cost-effective experiment. I have a newfound respect for commercial pipe tobacco pricing and what a bargain it is. I spent over 3 hours de-stemming and shredding a quarter pound of Yenidje Oriental leaves tonight! The burley has been the easiest to work with and the Orientals the most labor intensive with the small leaves that they have.

[Emperor Zurg]

Yeah, just from trying my own hand at blending different tobaccos I've often wondered why anybody messes with it. The lowliest tobacco blender does SUCH a better job at coming up with something that tastes decent and doesn't fry the tongue. You're certainly not going to save any money if you consider your time worth anything, and you're probably not going to come up with a blend that's anything better than 'smokable'. I've read threads on here and other forums that pretty much back this up. If you find it fun to mess with and appreciate the challenge (and it certainly is a challenge) to actually create something you can use, that's one thing. However, being the consumer type that I am, I don't foresee myself ever venturing into it. Building the equipment however, would be something I could get into. I'd have built a flake slicer by now if plug tobacco wasn't so rare and hard to come by.

[GWBowman]

yea, sometimes hobbies and saving money are on opposite ends of the spectrum

[Haebar]

This is 1/4 lb. of Yenidje Oriental tobacco after de-stemming (2 hours):

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/ah50/haebar/Simpsons%20Comics%20001_zpstqfunqma.jpg

After shredding:

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/ah50/haebar/Cigarbum%20001_zpsxugg7cez.jpg

[Emperor Zurg]

Have you sampled a bowl just because? I would have :pipe: Although I wouldn't expect it to be all that good all by itself.

[Haebar]

Have you sampled a bowl just because? I would have :pipe: Although I wouldn't expect it to be all that good all by itself.

I haven't tried any of the Yenijde straight; it is intended for blending. The shredded product sure smells interesting, it's a cacophony of bold spicy scents.

[Tobias Lutz]

Nice, Tab! That looks a lot more efficient than what I have done in the past (rolling the leaves and chiffonading them with a chef's knife).

[Bruck]

Nice work, Haebar!

You can't really compare hobbyism to manufacturing :) As you know, I roll my own cigars for a hobby, but they're never going to look as good as the cheesiest commercial cigar, nor taste as good as a Padron, and if I tried to sell them, I wouldn't even make enough money to cover the licensing fees. It's just the fun of craftsmanship and coming up with something unique.

[Haebar]

Nice work, Haebar!

You can't really compare hobbyism to manufacturing :) As you know, I roll my own cigars for a hobby, but they're never going to look as good as the cheesiest commercial cigar, nor taste as good as a Padron, and if I tried to sell them, I wouldn't even make enough money to cover the licensing fees. It's just the fun of craftsmanship and coming up with something unique.

Good point! I am having a lot of fun with it; have never handled whole leaf tobacco before. Love the feel of it in my hands; it has a wonderful waxy, leathery feel. I like taking a leaf and spreading it open. And I am becoming much more efficient at destemming it. Last night I did a quarter pound of Virginia in 15 minutes. The Perique was interesting too, dark, exotic, and unique smelling.

[Haebar]

Update: I am becoming much more efficient at stripping the stems from the leaves; I guess it comes with practice. I did a 1/4 pound of Virginia the other day in less than 15 minutes. The orientals, with the small leaves will continue to be troublesome, just by the sheer numbers of leaves. Even with them I have come up with ways to speed up the process. I've seen stem-stripping tools available... anyone ever tried one of them?

Also thinking about applying a small amount of lakeland-type toppings if I can find a source for them, particularly the tonquin bean top dressing. Don't much care for the grandma's perfumey stuff though.

[Emperor Zurg]

Also thinking about applying a small amount of lakeland-type toppings if I can find a source for them, particularly the tonquin bean top dressing...

LMGTFY (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Tonquin+bean+extract)

[Haebar]

This is a pound of flue-cured Virginia scraps after cleaning. I bought a sampling of the bags of scraps just to see if they would be useful for making pipe tobacco. When I took them out of the shipping box, I immediately regretted having bought them in spite of the low price. However, after working this batch up, they were not as bad as I thought they would be. Lots of stems and a few discolored pieces, but in the end, I am pleased with the yield.

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/ah50/haebar/Cigarbum%20001_zpsqaespmaw.jpg

Update: The bag of American Virginia flue-cured scraps were completely unusable; I'll use them in the garden somehow. However, the Assorted Virginia flue-cured scraps were about 80% usable for pipe tobacco and the Fronto scraps were about 90% usable. Even so, I won't buy anymore of the scraps.

[Bruck]

This is a pound of flue-cured Virginia scraps after cleaning. I bought a sampling of the bags of scraps just to see if they would be useful for making pipe tobacco. When I took them out of the shipping box, I immediately regretted having bought them in spite of the low price. However, after working this batch up, they were not as bad as I thought they would be. Lots of stems and a few discolored pieces, but in the end, I am pleased with the yield.

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/ah50/haebar/Cigarbum%20001_zpsqaespmaw.jpg

Is that your tobacco salad bowl? :)

[Haebar]

Is that your tobacco salad bowl? :)

Yessir, it's a huge stainless steel bowl. It's good for blending too. You can swirl it around and if you shake it a certain way, you can make the tobacco fines and dust come to one end where you can spoon it out.

I have "processed" so much whole leaf tobacco today that my right hand is sore from cranking the hand-shredder. I had to switch to turning the handle with my left hand. If the tobacco has a certain amount of moisture in the leaf that it gums up the shredder and I have to stop and clean out the grooves with a knife. They must have a bad year for American flue-cured Virginia because it was in bad shape. I got some Canadian flue-cured and it was in fine shape.

[Haebar]

Started working on a pound of 1997 Latakia from Whole Leaf Tobacco this morning. It is tedious work removing the stems from these tiny leaves. The box in the upper left is the raw leaf, the bottom left box are some of the stems removed and the tobacco in the pan on the right is what has been de-stemmed. I had to take a break after almost three hours of working on it.

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/ah50/haebar/Cigarbum%20001_zpswn5308im.jpg

[Haebar]

Here's a picture of the shredding process. This is some Virginia Gold Fronto leaf, very good condition leaves that I got from Whole Leaf Tobacco.

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/ah50/haebar/Cigarbum%20002_zpshqwk0nwk.jpg

I also bought a kit for making Balkan Sobranidje tobacco. The assumption is that you will use it for making cigarettes, so they included two different casings to be used on two of the three different types of leaves.

[Bruck]

Looking forward to the results - you'll have to let us know how the blending goes.

BTW, re Virginias - I get pretty much all mine from Larry the Tobacco Butcher. BTW, his website's out of date; he's got a lot more stuff that what's there. PM me for details if you're interested.

[Haebar]

The biggest challenge of all was processing the Latakia! Destemming a pound of it took about 3-4 hours. Then I cut it up with an ulu on a cutting board; I had tried shredding it with my shredder, but the end product was too fine.

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/ah50/haebar/Cigarbum%20001_zps16buxgwa.jpg