February 15, 2012   13 notes

tzaddi53:

09-17-2008

Things move pretty quickly this time of year as fall approaches and weather patterns shifting quickly. A few weeks back I was caught off guard by a bit of a wind storm and although I acted quickly to bring in the tobacco hanging out under my open air canopy much of my last harvest ended up receiving a beating. 

What to do? What to do? With the humidity reaching single digits and the low teens during that time frame it was important that I rehyrdate the leaf before I could handle to prevent further damage. After conditioning the tobacco to the point of being able to handle it I decided that I would take what I had, remove the central vein and cut it up for cigarette and pipe tobacco.

Stacking up the leaf and cutting it up in thin strips or as the culinary world refers to it, a chifinade was something I had done before when confronted with cosmetically imperfect tobacco leaf.

This would allow me to use it for a pipe tobacco mix or for cigarettes although I don’t smoke them. Most importantly it would permit me to store it, making room for the next harvest.

As I was preparing the chifinade I was struck with another idea that involved making a pipe blend with some perique and latakia pipe tobacco that I had on hand. The word “coins” comes to mind.

I proceeded to lay out the leaf, layering it while applying sprinklings of the latakia and perique, like it was some kind of pastry.

Once I was satisfied that I had sufficient layers I proceeded to roll it tightly and then cut it like one would a cinnamon roll = coins.

Having completed the first part of my task I placed my efforts in a quart Mason jar and prepared a large pot of water on the stove. I then suspended the Mason jar with it’s tobacco contents in the water, brought the water up to 200° F and held it there for several hours to ensure the entire contents was up to temp. Some might call this “stoving” while others might refer to it as “hot-packing”. No matter, I carefully took the jar out of the hot water bath and applied the lid and as it cooled the seal was complete, hopefully locking out potential pathogens but still allowing the mix to age.

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02-10-12

Over 3 years have past and I am ready to open that jar!

Though this was pretty cool!

(via isensualist)

  1. thecoonfire reblogged this from tzaddi53
  2. crookconsecratedbychrist reblogged this from controlled-burn and added:
    spectacular. I hope...one day grow my own tobacco.
  3. bbau33 reblogged this from isensualist and added:
    Though this was pretty cool!
  4. controlled-burn reblogged this from tzaddi53 and added:
    is just so exciting
  5. isensualist reblogged this from tzaddi53
  6. tzaddi53 posted this