What causes sooty mouth feel?

[piping_presbyter]

I’m wondering what causes a somewhat sooty mouthfeel? I don’t mean an acrid taste, but a kind of thick smoke that coats the mouth, which I consider neither good nor bad.

A blend I recently made had this effect. Do you think it is the cavendish, dark air va, Latakia, or glycerin?

• Blend
  • 2 Perique
  • .5 dark air cured va
  • 7 lat
  • 2 basma
  • 1 red sweet cavendish
  • 1 bright sweet cavendish
  • 1.5 red
  • 1 bright
• Process: case lightly with glycerin and water, press, rest.

 

[deluxestogie]

I haven't the slightest idea what a sooty mouth feel might be, if not soot.

• 1 red sweet cavendish
• 1 bright sweet cavendish

What are these? Are they each a specific variety? Has some sweetener been added?

My first thought is the glycerin. High temperature combustion of glycerin yields just carbon dioxide and water. But at lower temps, in the presence of a host of tobacco leaf combustion products, you can get some mystery chemicals. You can eliminate glycerin as a variable by trying the blend without it.

• 1.5 red
• 1 bright

I will assume that, immediately preceding "bright", the ingredient called "red" refers to a flue-cured Virginia red, rather than any of the other tobaccos called "red".

Bob

EDIT: I see from my two sequential quotes that you may have made Cavendish from flue-cured bright and flue-cured red. I'm doing a lot of guessing.

 

[piping_presbyter]

I haven't the slightest idea what a sooty mouth feel might be, if not soot.

What are these? Are they each a specific variety? Has some sweetener been added?

My first thought is the glycerin. High temperature combustion of glycerin yields just carbon dioxide and water. But at lower temps, in the presence of a host of tobacco leaf combustion products, you can get some mystery chemicals. You can eliminate glycerin as a variable by trying the blend without it.


I will assume that, immediately preceding "bright", the ingredient called "red" refers to a flue-cured Virginia red, rather than any of the other tobaccos called "red".

Bob

EDIT: I see from my two sequential quotes that you may have made Cavendish from flue-cured bright and flue-cured red. I'm doing a lot of guessing.

You guessed everything correctly. The red va and bright va were were each made in the style of @ChinaVoodoo, with a small amount of glycerin added (1 gram to 2oz tobacco).

Additional casing was added after blending everything. I want the kind of sweetness I get in, say, Red Rapparee.

The feel of the smoke is neither good nor bad, necessarily, but I’ve only previously experienced it with C&D Bayou Night and Billy Budd. It costs the mouth a bit. The more I think about it, it surely must be the glycerin.

I’ll try a non-cased batch and report back.

 

[deluxestogie]

I’ve only previously experienced it with C&D Bayou Night and Billy Budd.

C&D was free of humectants 20 years ago. (As was Rattray's.) For the last dozen or so years, it has been cased with humectants: propylene glycol and/or glycerin.

Bob

 

[burge]

I won't use additives. My guess the pipe is burning too hot. To sweeten cdn Virginia perique. Burley makes thing bitter. Is the Cavendish overcooked?

 

[piping_presbyter]

No idea if the cavendish is overcooked (my first time making it) but I received a sample of cavendish from wholeleaftobacco that I will compare it to.

 

[deluxestogie]

In general, commercial Cavendish is propylene glycol soup, with some cooked tobacco added. Cooking your own Cavendish, using only water to moisten the leaf, you can't "overcook" it. The longer you steam it, and the more moisture it is exposed to during the cooking process, the darker its color becomes--and the more sluggish its burn rate.

Bob

 

[burge]

That is good to know about Cavendish. Thanks Bob