Anyone ever used the "Rapid Aging" process with your Virginia tobaccos?

[Haebar]

A fellow was telling us about it last night; he was sold on it. He told me to take a new tin of Christmas Cheer in the oven (unopened) at 160 F for four hours. Then he said that I should compare that tobacco to a fresh tin. I was advised that one can do the same thing with bulks in Mason jars.

Anybody tried this?

[c.ortiz108]

A fellow was telling us about it last night; he was sold on it. He told me to take a new tin of Christmas Cheer in the oven (unopened) at 160 F for four hours. Then he said that I should compare that tobacco to a fresh tin. I was advised that one can do the same thing with bulks in Mason jars.

Anybody tried this?

[Bruck]

Sounds like a recipe for disaster.

[OnePyroTec]

A fellow was telling us about it last night; he was sold on it. He told me to take a new tin of Christmas Cheer in the oven (unopened) at 160 F for four hours. Then he said that I should compare that tobacco to a fresh tin. I was advised that one can do the same thing with bulks in Mason jars.

Anybody tried this?

Heard of it but never tried it. I think PipeStud had a blurb in his blog about it at one time.

[BryGuySC]

I've heard of leaving a tin of tobacco on the dashboard of your car to get the same effect.
Never tried it.

[Emperor Zurg]

I've heard of it but assuming people buy tobacco blends they like, I don't know why anyone would do it.

Furthermore, the way I look at it, it's not really 'aging' but more like stoving the entire mixture at once so I doubt you'd get an accurate idea of what the mixture would taste like in 10/15 years... if that was your motivation anyway.

Digressing away down a rabbit trail:
I generally avoid buying tobacco I don't like. But that being said, if I was stuck with a few tins that I just couldn't stand, I might try something drastic in a last-ditch attempt to change them into something I could stand... however, the few tobaccos I've tried that had absolutely no redeeming qualities were nasty aromatics and I doubt any amount of baking would neutralize the goop, chemical taste and bite that made them foul in the first place. Maybe +1200 degrees for an hour or two would do it - like hucking the entire tin in the burn barrel or wood stove...

[Haebar]

I'm kind of questioning the health and safety aspects of putting tobacco in a sealed glass jar in the oven for hours. Still, if I get some nippy Virginias, I may do this just to see what happens.

[Emperor Zurg]

I'm kind of questioning the health and safety aspects of putting tobacco in a sealed glass jar in the oven for hours. Still, if I get some nippy Virginias, I may do this just to see what happens.

Well I don't see a health problem with it, especially with canning jars (other than the fact that tobacco isn't known to be health food in the first place...). I do a lot of canning in the fall and there I'm bringing an entire canning jar, lid and contents to ~212 deg (full rolling boil) for sometimes up to an hour and a half. I doubt 160 deg is going to bother anything even if you left it in the oven for a week.

[T.E.Fox]

The internal pressure of a sealed vessel might be a consideration, but it would have to be a fairly weak jar to yield at only 160f.

Funnily enough I read in a growing guide that harsh tobacco can be moistened and thrown in the oven at 250f for ten minutes to make it smoother tasting, so I tried it with a couple bowls worth of Lanes 125th (because it's a fairly straighforward blend, and it was at the front of the cellar, and it was a free sample). Letting it rehydrate a bit overnight, so hopefully can compare the two. Smelled of pop tarts while in the oven - all those sweet VA sugars caramelising I guess.

[T.E.Fox]

Next morning update: after gentle rehydration overnight I was able to try some of the toasted mixture. It smells, in short, bad. Theres an overwhelming scent of dried grass and stale dope leaf. Theres a subtle hint of sweet VA in there, but it comes with a burnt note. Admittedly, in the pipe it tastes fine, relatively speaking. Much like it did before but noticably milder and somewhat bland. I might pass it off to a mate who smokes cigs which seem to be made of similar tobacco, heh.

I feel that the temperature was just too high, perhaps a lower temperature might allow the sugars to develop without burning and leeching the important oils from the leaf.