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 the whole thing with 2 ounces of Tonka bean casing. I let it rest for 24 hours and then pressing. After the de-stemming I ended up with two plugs about 175g each. Pressed for several days and finally stoved for 200F for 4 hours while still in the press. ...

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! ...

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.

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. ...

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. ...

Well, hurricane Ian knocked out the power last night so nothing to do but make a Latakia blend whole leaf plug. Worked on destemming the red Virginia and cased it with the plum casing I used for the Virginia/burley Thumbed through Goff’s book since it was full of English/Balken blends and settled on this recipe called Cajun Muse: Latakia 37.5% (6 of 16 parts) Oriental 12.5% (2 of 16 parts) Virginia Bright 12.5% (2 of 16 parts) Virginia Red 25% (4 of 16 parts) Perique 12.5% (2 of 16 parts) Dropped it in the frame press two weeks ago and then moved it to a C-Clamp the next morning. I have to say I am impressed on how this plug looks. With the summer plugs I would keep them clamped and stored in the hot truck as a poor man’s stoving. The plug was slightly sticky, likely from the perique and sliced up nice but almost like a broken flake. ...

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. ...

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. ...