Dunhill cigarette tobacco blend

[btenn4]

Hello! New to the forum and to raw leaf tobacco for cigarettes and I really have enjoyed learning the process of cutting tobacco and creating cigarette blends. It's been a long learning curve for me on figuring out the differences between the various tobaccos, their flavors, and distinguishing what I like and dislike.

This is kind of a long shot, but figured I'd ask, is anyone familiar with either Dunhill International reds (when they used to be made in Switzerland) or Dunhill Fine Cut black? I'd like to try to recreate either of those cigarettes using raw leaf tobacco and casings.

The only issue is I'm not really sure what ratio or what tobacco to try to recreate a Dunhill. Some places I've read state that it is most likely a straight Virginia blend with lighter shade of leaves. I've tried various Virginia pipe tobaccos, along with D&R Three Sails and Windsail Platinum, G&H Kendal Gold, but none of those were remotely similar to a Dunhill.

 

[anon]

I’ve discovered that most of the flavor from fine tobacco comes from various aging and fermentation processes, not actual flavorings. The cut is also going to make a huge difference. You’ll probably need a cutter that will do at least .8mm for the fine cut. Smaller than that is hard to find.
There are also a variety of “toasting” techniques associated with most commercial cigarettes.
There’s so much to learn with this plant and the learning curve is steep. And you have to get the order of operations correct as well.
I’m in a similar situation. I’m attempting to get as close to a Dutch Zware style tobacco as possible. I’ve adopted a strategy that I think will eventually yield results.
There are some general things I know for sure: 1) the tobacco must be fermented. So, I start with a lot of tobacco fermenting in a very standard way. I then take small amounts out periodically to see how much fermentation time is needed in each stage. It seems to me that there are at least three separate fermentation stages for my objective — aerobic, anaerobic and fermentation with the casing applied (then a resting/aging process).
2) I know that the casing contains molasses, invert sugars and sucrose/glucose sugars, licorice and very likely rum. So, I make a base casing from those basic ingredients and then adjust small batches of the casing to see what results from different ingredients. I’m actually now experimenting with fermenting the casing itself with yeast (very promising development).

I would say the principal ingredient that has the most impact is time. There are ways to hasten it a little, but you’re going to have to embrace the fact that certain stages in processing any tobacco requires waiting…which is agony if you love good tobacco. Also, always bear in mind the type of tobacco you’re producing. Cigars and pipe tobacco are completely distinct from cigarette tobacco in terms of the order of operations and the duration of each stage. Moreover, rolling tobacco is vastly different than cigarettes in its preparation. So always think of ways to adapt the advice of the cigar/pipe/RYO guys to what you’re attempting to do — copying their techniques whole wont give you what you want.

If you don’t mind reading tedious scientific papers, there’s endless resources online. The one benefit of the tobacco lawsuits is that it forced all cigarette makers to release all their internal data. My advice for you is to find the recipe for Pall Malls or Chesterfields from back in the 1950s. Those were amazing cigarettes from what I hear, back when big tobacco still cared about delivering a top quality product instead of the cheapest possible crap they could get away with. Both recipes are available…you just have to dig in and find them. It tells you step by step what to do…you’ll just have to calibrate the operation to tiny homebrew scale. From what I remember, both were heavy on licorice. Get some powdered licorice extract. It’s amazing on tobacco. It blends very well with maple syrup for your casing.

 

[btenn4]

I’ve discovered that most of the flavor from fine tobacco comes from various aging and fermentation processes, not actual flavorings. The cut is also going to make a huge difference. You’ll probably need a cutter that will do at least .8mm for the fine cut. Smaller than that is hard to find.
There are also a variety of “toasting” techniques associated with most commercial cigarettes.
There’s so much to learn with this plant and the learning curve is steep. And you have to get the order of operations correct as well.
I’m in a similar situation. I’m attempting to get as close to a Dutch Zware style tobacco as possible. I’ve adopted a strategy that I think will eventually yield results.
There are some general things I know for sure: 1) the tobacco must be fermented. So, I start with a lot of tobacco fermenting in a very standard way. I then take small amounts out periodically to see how much fermentation time is needed in each stage. It seems to me that there are at least three separate fermentation stages for my objective — aerobic, anaerobic and fermentation with the casing applied (then a resting/aging process).
2) I know that the casing contains molasses, invert sugars and sucrose/glucose sugars, licorice and very likely rum. So, I make a base casing from those basic ingredients and then adjust small batches of the casing to see what results from different ingredients. I’m actually now experimenting with fermenting the casing itself with yeast (very promising development).

I would say the principal ingredient that has the most impact is time. There are ways to hasten it a little, but you’re going to have to embrace the fact that certain stages in processing any tobacco requires waiting…which is agony if you love good tobacco. Also, always bear in mind the type of tobacco you’re producing. Cigars and pipe tobacco are completely distinct from cigarette tobacco in terms of the order of operations and the duration of each stage. Moreover, rolling tobacco is vastly different than cigarettes in its preparation. So always think of ways to adapt the advice of the cigar/pipe/RYO guys to what you’re attempting to do — copying their techniques whole wont give you what you want.

If you don’t mind reading tedious scientific papers, there’s endless resources online. The one benefit of the tobacco lawsuits is that it forced all cigarette makers to release all their internal data. My advice for you is to find the recipe for Pall Malls or Chesterfields from back in the 1950s. Those were amazing cigarettes from what I hear, back when big tobacco still cared about delivering a top quality product instead of the cheapest possible crap they could get away with. Both recipes are available…you just have to dig in and find them. It tells you step by step what to do…you’ll just have to calibrate the operation to tiny homebrew scale. From what I remember, both were heavy on licorice. Get some powdered licorice extract. It’s amazing on tobacco. It blends very well with maple syrup for your casing.

I appreciate the advice, I've never experimented with aging tobacco before but will give it a shot and see what type of effect it has on the Virginia.

I don't believe Dunhill cigarettes were very similar to older Chesterfield or Pall Malls. I might be wrong but I strongly believe Dunhills (being a British cigarette blend) were probably a Virginia blend without Oriental or Burley. The Dunhills of old didn't have any kind of perfumey aroma of Oriental or earthy Burley aroma, not even faintly. Pall Malls I believe were an American blend of Virginia, Burley, and possibly some Oriental. Chesterfields I believe were Virginia and Maryland in a 50/50 ratio.

I'll probably just have to experiment creating Virginia blends of various shades (cutters, bright, red) in various percentages and age them I suppose.

 

[deluxestogie]

Oriental tobacco varieties of the Samsun type (e.g., Samsun, Bafra, Trabzon, Katerini, etc.) lack the floral aroma of all the Basma types (e.g., Izmir, Basma, Xanthi Djebel, etc.).

Bob

 

[btenn4]

Oriental tobacco varieties of the Samsun type (e.g., Samsun, Bafra, Trabzon, Katerini, etc.) lack the floral aroma of all the Basma types (e.g., Izmir, Basma, Xanthi Djebel, etc.).

Bob

I've never tried WLT's Samsun tobacco, but have tried Peter Stokkebye's Turkish Export which lists having Samsun tobacco in its blend. I did not like it very much, it had a very odd funky type of aroma which was quite offputting, I'm guessing it was from the Samsun.

When Lemon and thin leaf become available again on WLT I'll order some and play around with various ratios of straight Virginia and age them for a few months and see what I'll get, maybe it will yield something more similar to a British type of cigarette blend. Out of everything I've tried so far, I like straight Virginia blends the best. American type blends aren't really my favorite when it comes to cigarettes.

 

[johnny108]

If you have a Dunhill cigarette, have you thought about cutting it open and taking a look at what’s inside?
Color/texture can be divided up into small piles, giving a rough idea of ratios.
Color can also be a bit of a help in identifying what’s in there, giving you a good starting point for what to buy as whole leaf, or grow yourself.
It’s been done on the forum before (Gauloises , believe), but it really proved modern commercial cigarettes are filled with junk.

 

[btenn4]

If you have a Dunhill cigarette, have you thought about cutting it open and taking a look at what’s inside?
Color/texture can be divided up into small piles, giving a rough idea of ratios.
Color can also be a bit of a help in identifying what’s in there, giving you a good starting point for what to buy as whole leaf, or grow yourself.
It’s been done on the forum before (Gauloises , believe), but it really proved modern commercial cigarettes are filled with junk.

Dunhill International reds used to be made in Switzerland up until about 1 year ago. I never tore one open but I remember distinctly looking at the end before lighting it and it had a very light yellow colored tobacco, something comparable to Lemon Virginia I suppose.

The ones on the shelf now are made in Nigeria and are complete trash. I did tear one of those open and indeed, it did not even look like tobacco was inside, just some brown stems and chunks of garbage lol