impact of shred type on tobacco blending

[tullius]

In light of recent experiences, I'd like to start a discussion on the above to see if others concur or differ or have other insights.

When I first started shredding and blending pipe tobacco, I used deluxestogie's carotte & slice technique. As suggested, the resulting coins were again cut in half. This will be heretofore affectionately referred to as "Bob's chop". The technique worked well for me, producing varying slice thicknesses of ~1/16" to ~1/4" depending on how careful/impatient I was slicing (or how sharp the knife remained: tobacco is dirty, edge dulling stuff), and smoked cool, tasty and flavorful after the usual initial charring relights. I developed several decent blends, and a couple really good ones, using components rendered from WLT leaf using Bob's chop method.

After acquiring a new in the box made in Italy old stock Imperia 150 pasta machine on ebay for 99 cents (all metal gearing), I began using that to process leaf after the mid-rib was removed by hand. Using the tagliolini cutter of the duplex head (the fine cutter), I get a very uniform shred of about 1/8 of an inch, or ~3mm. It also makes very nice tobacco flavored pasta if you don't clean it.

Long story short, I find I lose some of the nuance of my Bob's chop blends when smoked with a finer more consistent shred, enough that the blends will have to be reformulated. No big deal, but a bit of a bother. My observations have held consistent over 3 different blends thus far, and I suspect they will hold over all.

Have others noticed this too?

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

Yes. I think it mostly comes down to burn temperature, in my opinion. Thinner shred needs to be packed tighter otherwise it will burn hotter. Hotter burn will taste different. Also, flake--whether from plug or carotte--will be partly stuck together. It will burn cooler, but the outside of each bit will burn at a different rate from the inside, thus adding a bit of variety in combustion product. And, shred dries out faster, even while smoking.

Before revamping your blends, perhaps try packing the narrower shred tighter.

Also, you can take that shred and make press cake out of it. This will emulate the coin slicing to a degree.

Here is an instructional. You can skip to part two, really because you don't need to make slices first.

Making Press-Cake

Part 1. Press cake differs from flake in that it is shredded tobacco which has been pressed, where the latter is pressed plug which has been sliced. Why make press cake? Two reasons: it's easier to blend with, and it's easier to evenly apply pressure to. Here is my mold. I cut a piece of...

fairtradetobacco.com

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

You know, even the caulking gun does a good job.

 

[GreenDragon]

Yes. I think it mostly comes down to burn temperature, in my opinion. Thinner shred needs to be packed tighter otherwise it will burn hotter. Hotter burn will taste different. Also, flake--whether from plug or carotte--will be partly stuck together. It will burn cooler, but the outside of each bit will burn at a different rate from the inside, thus adding a bit of variety in combustion product. And, shred dries out faster, even while smoking.

Before revamping your blends, perhaps try packing the narrower shred tighter.

Also, you can take that shred and make press cake out of it. This will emulate the coin slicing to a degree.

+1

 

[deluxestogie]

"Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn!
I've grown accustomed to her face
She almost makes the day begin
I've grown accustomed to the tune that
She whistles night and noon

Her smiles, her frowns
Her ups, her downs
Are second nature to me now
Like breathing out and breathing in

I was serenely independent and content before we met
Surely I could always be that way again
And yet
I've grown accustomed to her look
Accustomed to her voice
Accustomed to her face"

Over the years, I've shredded with scissors, knife, hook or crook. I eventually settled on my unpeeled, sliced carrot method--because:

• it was physically easier to do this using my 6" Kuhn-Rikon kulu blade to make a pipe shred, than using other tools at hand
• I prefer a wider pipe shred than what is commonly available on mechanical shredders
• the final pipe blends visually resembled some of my favorite, commercial English pipe blends from the early 1970s--plucking a nostalgia heart string.
• it's just simple to do, and avoids the cost of a shredder

So, like most brilliant insights, it wasn't one. It was more like a cow path--the lowest energy route back to the barn.

As to the curious question of why it tastes different from uniformly shredded, uniformly mixed--homogenized, if you will--preparations of the same recipe, I think others have addressed a number of likely possibilities. I'll add one more.

In studies of flavor blending (of equal intensity components), expert testers were able to identify at least some of the ingredients within the blends presented to them until the number of different ingredients in the blend reached around 30. At 30 and beyond, even the expert tasters/smellers were unable to identify even a single one of the ingredients. While the various blends presented categorizable qualities, none of their individual flavors/aromas seemed to be there.

How many distinct flavors are there in a single pipe tobacco "ingredient"? I have no idea. But I would suppose quite a few. And a blend of 4 or 5 components could easily surpass the 30 simultaneous ingredient threshold of human olfaction. I would surmise that:

• the coarser the blend, the fewer simultaneous ingredients are currently combuting
• the finer and more uniform the blend, the greater the number of simultaneous ingredients currently combusting

It's the difference in taste between beef stew and a puree of beef stew.

Bob

I'll add this interesting topic to the Index of Key Forum Threads.

 

[tullius]

Yes. I think it mostly comes down to burn temperature, in my opinion. Thinner shred needs to be packed tighter otherwise it will burn hotter. Hotter burn will taste different. Also, flake--whether from plug or carotte--will be partly stuck together. It will burn cooler, but the outside of each bit will burn at a different rate from the inside, thus adding a bit of variety in combustion product. And, shred dries out faster, even while smoking.

Before revamping your blends, perhaps try packing the narrower shred tighter.

Also, you can take that shred and make press cake out of it. This will emulate the coin slicing to a degree.

Already considered pipe packing and tried it out various ways, to the point of using both thumbs to lever down to the point of clogging the draw. No dice, smoked the same flavor as lightly packed. Do think you're on to something with the burn temps though, and pressing.

Dunhill EMP is lightly pressed according to their literature, so this is on my list to try. Have many tools on hand to use, including caulking guns, bench vices, wood vices, bottle jacks, screw jacks, pipe clamps, hand clamps, c-clamps, etc. Will try pressing before reformulating and report back. Thanks very much for your post, it gave me some ideas.

It was more like a cow path--the lowest energy route back to the barn.

(...)

It's the difference in taste between beef stew and a puree of beef stew.

I strongly recognize the first analogy, and think the final observation is getting right on down to the brass tacks.