pipe tobacco

Making a whole leaf Virginia tobacco plug

AceFour

Jul 26, 2022 — 2 min read

Experimenting with Making a whole leaf Virginia tobacco plug. Tobacco was purchased Bright Virginia Flue Cured and Lemon Virginia Flue Cured from WholeLeafTobacco.com along with their commercial casing. Whole Leaf Tobacco commercial casing for flue-cured tobacco is just an inverted sugar water flavored with lemon peel. Next, was deciding on the blend.

The blend recipe was 2 parts Bright Virginia and 1 part Lemon Virginia tobacco. I got that rough ratio from an interview on YouTube with Mike McNeil of McClelland’s. That was the Aston blend they use to do long ago. An no, this is not even going to be close to that blend. If you know what or how McNeil’s did their magic with their Virginia's The blend recipe was 2 parts Bright Virginia and 1 part Lemon Virginia tobacco. I got that rough ratio from an interview on YouTube with Mike McNeil of McClelland’s. That was the Aston blend they use to do long ago. An no, this is not even going to be close to that blend. If you know what or how McNeil’s did their magic with their Virginia

The plug total weight was about 8 ounces with the leaves hand ripped to smaller pieces and stuffed in an tube aluminum mold. It sure seemed to be a lot of tobacco. it was difficult getting it all in the and slip on a C-Clamp and cranked it down as far you can. Each day I was able to crank a little more. By the 10th day it was impossible to get it any tighter. At that point the whole mold went into a truck in the hot summer for 5 days.

The result fresh out of the press was a very smooth Virginia smoke with no bite at all. I am letting this plug rest and I will revisit and see how it changes, if at all.

Update: 8-25-2023

It has been over a year and I decided revisit to see how it is coming along. I am happy to report that the bright Virginia has settled down. Fresh, the bright Virginia's, can be bitey. The blend has melded nicely and not bitey at all. The citrus notes are there and not grassy at all. This blend is quite a treat. I am looking forward to let this age a few years.

God of War - Red Virginia

The Virginia experiment continues and several months later the Bright Virginia plug that is cased half with Tonka Bean and half Blackberry just keeps getting better and better. I wonder what Tonka would do for red Virginia leaf. Well here we are. De-stemmed a pound of red Virginia and cased

Grateful Plug - Tonka variant

After doing the Virginia tonka experiment I thought, "Man, I bet this will match perfect with Grateful Plug!" Well say no more! It is done! Tonka/molasses version of 200g Grateful Plug stoved for 7 hours at 200 F This is a blend of 100g Bright Virginia cased

100g Virginia/Cavendish

Had some left over bright Virginia cased with plum so I blended 65g Virginia with 35g black Cavendish that Whole Leaf Tobacco had sent with my order. The Cavendish was granular so when I slice this up it will be more like a broken flake. Had it pressed for 7

Virginia Experiment (Tonka/Blackberry)

So found out I can get tonka beans on Amazon and thought let's give this a go! It is some quite fragrant stuff! To me it smells like white cake with cream cheese frosting! So made up the sauce: * 150g Water * 150g Sugar * 1 Tonka Bean * 1 cap

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God of War - Red Virginia

Grateful Plug - Tonka variant

100g Virginia/Cavendish

Virginia Experiment (Tonka/Blackberry)