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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 ...

Whole leaf Virginia/dark fired Kentucky plug is the next experiment to perform. This is made with equal parts bright Virginia flue cured, red Virginia flue cured and dark fired Kentucky. All of these leaves were purchased from Whole Leaf Tobacco. First step is prepping the leaves. Prepping the leaves, by unfolding, de-stemming and hand ripping the leaves and placing in a plastic bags. Use one bag for bright Virginia and one back for the dark fired Kentucky. De-stemming is easy my grabbing the tip of the stem at the top of the leaf and pulling down. After you may what to hand rip big leaves into smaller pieces and put in a shopping bag. Next we need to case the bright Virginia. ...

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. ...

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. ...

I am an amateur tobacco blender. I make personal blends and blends for Afterburner Cigar Lounge in Lillington, NC. I don’t really make any money on it but it does give the local shop something unique to sell and a way for others to obtain some of my blends. I do it for fun, not for money. The goal of this site is to inspire others and credit those that have helped me in this hobby. One of my first blends was various iterations until Red Queen V was created. From there I started playing with pressing tobacco. Lately I have been experimenting working with whole leaf tobacco. ...

Casing/Recipes Ernie Q on casing, pressing, and blending Blend Your Own Pipe Tobacco book Spirit Infusion Making “Cavendish” at home Press Noodle Press PVC and Hockey Pucks Shop Press 2′ Stainless Steel Tube T43311 3/4″ Richlite high temperature cutting board Whole Leaf Vendors and Casing Supplies Whole Leaf Tobacco Leaf Only Flavor Extracts and Cacao Nibs (use “like a spoonful per 16oz of casing”) Cutting How thin can you go? (Inexpensive method for producing uniform thin flakes) Bingham Knifeworks (custom blade design for vintage plug cutters)