AceFour's Notebook

Grateful Plug - Tonka variant

Wednesday, Mar 6, 2024

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

Tonka/Molasses Grateful Plug

This is a blend of 100g Bright Virginia cased with Tonka bean casing and 100g burley cased with molassas casing. I will let the plug rest for a few days but I am smoking the burnt ends I trimmed off the plug and I have to say, this one is the winner. I will likely end up making all my Grateful Plugs this way!

@ AceFour

1 minute read

100g Virginia/Cavendish

Saturday, Feb 17, 2024

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 days and was leaking goo pretty good.

Once pulled it smelled amazing. Slice off a broken flake and packed in the Radice twin-bore oil cured pipe once owned by Sante Giuliani aka Fishing Banjo. The smoke is just a pure pleasure to smoke. Rye bread with sweet preserves.

@ AceFour

1 minute read

Virginia Experiment (Tonka/Blackberry)

Friday, Jan 26, 2024

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 full of distilled white vinegar

Put in a sauce pan and put on medium heat. Let it boil until sugar dissolves. Let stand and cool.

@ AceFour

2 minute read

2023 Year End Thoughts

Saturday, Dec 23, 2023

It certainly was a fun year of pressing tobacco. Still trying to figure out the elusive straight Virginia recipe. I have gone through a couple of my old straight Virginia plugs to see how they develop. The first one I did was a Bright/Yellow Virginia plug and it is not bad. Not grassy and more of rye bread. I will try a few more odd ball ideas in 2024

Logo’s were fun and made a few t-shirts of Grateful Plug logo and gave those away in various tobacco bombs. Also made a Zippo Grateful Plug logo lighter. That was a bit of annoying interaction and will just leave it at that.

@ AceFour

2 minute read

Bright/Red Virginia Plug

Friday, Dec 8, 2023

I had some left over plum cased Red Virginia and blackberry cased Bright Virginia. Made a 200g plug of about 60% Bright to 40% Red. Total YOLO plug. Then I really screwed up and forgot it was stoving in the oven. It had been in the oven 7 hours at 200F while under pressure in the steel mold with a c-clamp. I went off to play a local poker game and got a text from my wife asking if she should turn off the over. Ooops! So she did and it cooled down overnight before pulling out of the form.

@ AceFour

1 minute read

The best, cheapest plug cutter

Tuesday, Nov 21, 2023

Now I have an antique plug cutter made of cast iron and a new blade made by Bingham Knifeworks. It cuts like butter.

It is fairly expensive and it takes time to cut the plugs and you tend to have inconsistent thicknesses of the flakes as a result.

Enter the cheapest meat slicer on Amazon !

What is nice is you get two blades. You can adjust the thickness of the cut. What you need to do is extend the holding tray right up the the blade. I used two box tops from cigar boxes.

@ AceFour

1 minute read

Wet Plugs

Saturday, Oct 28, 2023

Recently, for unknown reasons, I had a batch of Red Queen plugs that were very wet. Not sure the exact reason for it but humidity while pressing might have hand in it. The plugs were full of juice running and the flakes, when sliced, were very flexible.

Since I don’t soak tobacco like the commercial guys with PG for mold control the only real solution is either stove it for a couple of hours at 200F or slice and air dry before bagging. I like to stove under pressure so in this case I just sliced up and let it dry for a few hours before moving to jars/Mylar.

@ AceFour

1 minute read

Tobacco Pressing Resources

Wednesday, Sep 6, 2023

Blending/Processing Whole Leaf

Press:

Noodle Press (Cheap and simple, good for 50g pucks)
PVC and Hockey Pucks (Cheap and little effort, good for 100g pucks)
Shop Press (Saves time pressing 1 minute vs 10 days with a C-Clamp)
2’ Stainless Steel Tube T43311 (Expensive but you can do 4 - 5 200g whole leaf plugs at a time)
3/4" Richlite high temperature cutting board (custom order and cut to size for stainless steel tube)

Whole Leaf Vendors and Casing supplies

@ AceFour

1 minute read

Whole leaf Virginia plug with blackberry casing

Tuesday, Jul 26, 2022

Making whole leaf Virginia plug with blackberry casing is the same procedure as whole leaf Virginia plug blend. The difference is we are making our own casing.

The casing is made by using 1 to 1 ratio by weight of water to sugar, add a cap-full of white vinegar. Next, crush up a handful of blackberries and filtered the juice through a coffee filter. Bring the whole mixture to a boil and then let it cool down.

@ AceFour

1 minute read

Ways to pressing pipe tobacco

Tuesday, Jul 26, 2022

There are several ways to pressing pipe tobacco and as elaborate as your budget will allow. Why press? It melds the flavors better of the tobacco no matter if you are doing raw leaf or using an existing blend. Many folks like make tobacco cakes and plugs.

Blend pressed without prior drying

Moisture content will affect how the plug compacts. One experiment was pressed right our of the bag and another press where the tobacco was microwaved for 20 seconds and tossed it like a salad to get the excess moisture out. The straight out of the bag pressed for 3 weeks quickly expanded like a crumble cake after 3 weeks. Not a lot of color change. The microwaved tobacco came out as a black plug as dense as Salty Dogs. The dense plug was cut into flakes and was a sweet mellow smoke that went for an hour and 45 minutes with no relighting.

@ AceFour

3 minute read