Curing tobacco tek

[Guest reville]

Can anyone advise on home curing of tobacco

what is the aim of "curing'

Im guessing you dont want to leave tehme out to dry in th open cos then theyd go stale??

[Guest wira]

Curing is done mainly to bring about the desired aroma, flavour, colour and texture in the tobacco leaf. I've tried curing in the past with little success at producing a smokable product. If you let the process go too far you can end up with really harsh, dark tobacco - it packs a punch, but is pretty horrid to smoke. If you just dry the leaf, it is green, dry, and often very mild to smoke, with none of the characteristic tobacco smell or taste. It seems to be pretty difficult to cure tobacco well in small amounts, as the bulk of big wads of leaves contributes to the fermentation/curing process working properly. Here's some stuff I've put together from a few sources on bulk-curing for commercial purposes -

When reaching maturity, the top of the plant is cut off to create more abundant leaf growth, and side-shoots are removed. Mature leaves are either harvested individually, or the whole plant may be cut at the base. The material is allowed to wilt and turn yellow, before being hung and dried [not too dry - this is a matter of expertise] for 8-10 weeks in a dark, well-ventilated room. For even colouring, leaves must be harvested at the same state of maturity. Midribs of leaves are resistant to drying, and need to be monitored for rot. The leaves are then assembled into parcels and stacked for careful fermentation [which develops the characteristic tobacco smell, taste and colour], with turning to avoid rotting. They are later spread and cooled, and sometimes a second fermentation is performed. The leaves may later be 'sauced', or soaked in a concentrated syrup of molasses other plant extracts [to add extra aroma, taste, body, and sometimes subjective potency], before being dried, shredded and slightly moistened, or even left whole and twisted into sticks. Commercial tobaccos are often a blend of different tobaccos, with a unique individual method of curing and sauce recipe. It should be noted that the curing process causes considerable loss [15-25%] of nicotine (French, F.L. 1964. Notes For Victorian Tobacco Growers. Vic. Dept. Agriculture, Burnley; Garner, W.W. 1951. The Production of Tobacco. The Blakiston Co., NY; Lehane, B. 1977. The Power of Plants. John Murray, London; Von Bibra, E. 1855. [1995 reprint] Plant Intoxicants. First publ. Nuremberg, Germany; reprint Healing Arts Press, Vermont).

In these cases specially constructed curing houses with racks and ventilation are used; sometimes heat sources are used to control the temperature inside the curing room. The above is an extremely simplified summary of the process - if you can find any of those references, especially the first two, they go into much more detail about the procedures.

[sholto]

dunno if i can add anything to that erudite reply, but...a simple tek that i gleaned from "Pharmako/Poeia" was to dry the leaves carefully, roll them into a giant cigar, then soak the roll repeatedly in a stew of tobacco juice. i haven't tried this- are there any comments?

[Guest wira]

I haven't tried that either, sounds interesting Making cigars is almost a whole different thing. The books I cited mentioned slightly different curing procedures [also different leaf grades are used] for producing cigar tobacco and pipe tobacco.

Maybe one day I should just copy all the info into an article for the site, and just say "compiled from..." ['cos it would be from several different sources] rather than pretend I wrote it. Might take me a while to find time to do that, so don't hold your breath

[Guest wira]

Btw, the main problem I've had with curing small amounts is that the leaf always dries before it even changes much from it's darkish green colour. I tried to get around this by continually moistening them as they hung in bunches, but the process was really uneven and some parts of the leaf would be turning dark brown and soft [ie. just about right] while other parts were still yellow. Maybe one day if I have enough space to grow a decent tobacco crop I'll have another shot at it, and try to do it properly.

Also for environmental reasons I think it's a good idea to grow tobacco in pots away from any fertile ground, because

a) tobacco takes a lot out of the soil, and if you feel the need to use fertilizer [which is usually needed in some form, for a healthy ongoing crop], then it's not going to be a good thing for the Australian soil

and have you ever seen how much seed these plants produce, in each pod alone? When I grew them it was in pots, and after the plants had seeded and the tops died off [they didn't die back fully, I clipped the dead tips and they kept sending out new growth], there were heaps of seedlings popping up in the pots. You don't want it to escape and become a weed, which would be pretty easy.

[Guest reville]

Thanks a lot Wira and Sholto,

Im feding mine with Sheep shit and a composted mix of straw/horse and cow manure i get from the vet stables at uni - sweet eh?

The cow manure is particularly useful for outdoor success with our Fungal biota .

[rkundalini]

For "kind of cured" brown tobacco you can also just leave the leaves on the plant until they wilt and go brown and dry of their own accord...

So cow manure is sweet eh? Never woulda thought...

[Guest reville]

Sure is.. nothing like 500 prep on your weetbix...

Ive been thinking of experimenting with using several dung loving fungi to help break down all this manure and straw..

I dont know whether ill get much but as an experiment i thought if i filled a hole with manure etc ( as i normally do) and instead of just planting my veggies on top , i innoculated it first.then covered (lightly) with soil and planted

it might work. either way it should break down the manure quicker

[G Dawg]

I read a while back that at a certain moisture level they pack tobacco into airtight containers,( could be called hogsheads or something similar ) and leave it to age for up to a year, and it loses part of it's nicotine content and develops the required flavour. I think it was in an old encyclapedia. I used to just chop off the leaves and hang them from the roof of my shade house until they went a medium brown colour. I put some chopped up stuff in a small container for a few weeks and I think it did improve it's aroma although it's probably difficult to get it to burn like commercial tobacco. I made a cigar, if you could call it that, but all it did was taste like shit and make me spew.

[Guest Ramon]

There is lots of notes of Queenslands Department of Primary Industry relating to growing and curing tobacco.