I would like to share my personal experience of heat-treating a small batch of Virginia tobacco that was left very bland by air-curing only. I use the term "heat-treating", because I have no idea what this process actually was. Flue-curing on top of air-curing? Artificial aging? Oven-baking? Pressure cooking?
It started when I had about a 20 liter / 5 gallon bag of air-cured Virginia, don't know more specific name for it, it was that same mini-sized Finnish Virginia that is shown in grow blog here https://fairtradetobacco.com/thread...finland-2023-victory-garden-style-mysc.11895/ but grown earlier and indoor setting with south-facing windowstill but in springtime and little artificial light so probably very-very light-starved the whole time. The plants got really tall, about 2 meters, thin leaves, and air-cured to sickly pale grayish-yellow mostly. Very weak looking color that actually looks better on camera than in real life, and indeed the taste and nicotine content was very weak, felt like smoking if not nothing at all, at least like those Ultra-Light commercial cigarettes of the past, like 1/5 or even 1/10thth of the normal strength and taste. The bag of dried leaves was then forgotten to hang in the closet for about a year as I considered it a loss.
This is from a different batch of indoor-grown stuff for ornamental purposes mostly, but same seeds and the leaves looked very much the same, very thin, very weak looking in all aspects. Taste and smell was hay-like, to say the least. Very unlike tobacco.
Until I brought them out for experimenting with heat probably inspired by reading how they heat, press and age pipe tobacco but can't remember for sure. I moistened the leaves liberally with a mister, packed them very tightly in a glass jar of about 1,5-2 liters, so in about 10% of their original volume, added moisture with mister bottle between layers, and packed the jar very tightly full and put the lid on not completely airtight so it would not explode, but quite closed still. Then put the jar in kitchen oven following this schedule (writ it down back then):
- 3 days in 44-55 Celsius (113-131 F) continuosly, then
- 2 days in 75 Celsius (167 F) continuously, then took them off. Did not add moisture in the whole time, the moisture was kept in the jar pretty well because of the almost-tight lid. The temps are quite exact and confirmed with a good thermometer unrelated to oven thermostat kept immediately next to the jar the whole time.
- There were 2 quick bursts of increased heat, because I cooked food in the same oven, took the jar off for like 1 hour, and put it back in about 150-200C (302-392 F) heat that was left by the food cooking but the thermostat already switched back to 75C/167F so the high heat spikes did not last longer than 1 hour, tops.
And after those 5 days when I took the jar out, it looked like this (yes, stems were sadly included, but look at the color change..!) Very dark brown, and very strong smell of ammonia that mostly left when I kept the lid open for a while. After the ammonia smell was gone, the smell is GOOD, hard to describe but obvious hints of chocolate, dark strong beer, roasted coffee, dark sugar and syrup, etc. Very "dark", very full smell, and not a hint of burned aroma. Polar opposite in smell strenght compared to what went in. I have not tasted it properly yet, but burned some in an ashtray, and the burning smell is quite pleasant too, not a hint of hay left, and not cigarette-like either, more like late granpa's pipe smoking. The obvious lack of nicotine that probably resulted in the light-starved indoor grow setting can't be fixed but at least I got a very rich-smelling low-nicotine filler for future blends, I think.
If I guess right, the most of that taste and color strengtening was done by the last 2 days spent in 75C/167F temperature. I have tried fermenting earlier, and that did absolutely nothing to these sorry leaves in temps that permit bacterial activity, I assume 75C is far too high for that, so this sort of heat-treatment was not fermenting I suppose. I was not aware of the flue-curing schedule back when I did this, but the temps seem to be quite similar than that, maybe on the higher end of spectrum. But in this there was some forced pressure and humidity added, and the input leaves were already air-cured and not fresh, so I don't think this counts as a flue-cure either.
Whatever it was, it worked for me, almost miraculously well. Had to post this because it's one of the few successful things happened with this hobby this far. Cheers!
E: Oh, and this treatment fixed the odd burning qualities, too. Before the heat treatment the leaves burned oddly, hissing and sparkling almost like there were little smokeless powder mixed in. Maybe excess nitrogen left? Well after the heat treatment they burn much more calm, almost no audible sound and sparkling.
It started when I had about a 20 liter / 5 gallon bag of air-cured Virginia, don't know more specific name for it, it was that same mini-sized Finnish Virginia that is shown in grow blog here https://fairtradetobacco.com/thread...finland-2023-victory-garden-style-mysc.11895/ but grown earlier and indoor setting with south-facing windowstill but in springtime and little artificial light so probably very-very light-starved the whole time. The plants got really tall, about 2 meters, thin leaves, and air-cured to sickly pale grayish-yellow mostly. Very weak looking color that actually looks better on camera than in real life, and indeed the taste and nicotine content was very weak, felt like smoking if not nothing at all, at least like those Ultra-Light commercial cigarettes of the past, like 1/5 or even 1/10thth of the normal strength and taste. The bag of dried leaves was then forgotten to hang in the closet for about a year as I considered it a loss.
This is from a different batch of indoor-grown stuff for ornamental purposes mostly, but same seeds and the leaves looked very much the same, very thin, very weak looking in all aspects. Taste and smell was hay-like, to say the least. Very unlike tobacco.
Until I brought them out for experimenting with heat probably inspired by reading how they heat, press and age pipe tobacco but can't remember for sure. I moistened the leaves liberally with a mister, packed them very tightly in a glass jar of about 1,5-2 liters, so in about 10% of their original volume, added moisture with mister bottle between layers, and packed the jar very tightly full and put the lid on not completely airtight so it would not explode, but quite closed still. Then put the jar in kitchen oven following this schedule (writ it down back then):
- 3 days in 44-55 Celsius (113-131 F) continuosly, then
- 2 days in 75 Celsius (167 F) continuously, then took them off. Did not add moisture in the whole time, the moisture was kept in the jar pretty well because of the almost-tight lid. The temps are quite exact and confirmed with a good thermometer unrelated to oven thermostat kept immediately next to the jar the whole time.
- There were 2 quick bursts of increased heat, because I cooked food in the same oven, took the jar off for like 1 hour, and put it back in about 150-200C (302-392 F) heat that was left by the food cooking but the thermostat already switched back to 75C/167F so the high heat spikes did not last longer than 1 hour, tops.
And after those 5 days when I took the jar out, it looked like this (yes, stems were sadly included, but look at the color change..!) Very dark brown, and very strong smell of ammonia that mostly left when I kept the lid open for a while. After the ammonia smell was gone, the smell is GOOD, hard to describe but obvious hints of chocolate, dark strong beer, roasted coffee, dark sugar and syrup, etc. Very "dark", very full smell, and not a hint of burned aroma. Polar opposite in smell strenght compared to what went in. I have not tasted it properly yet, but burned some in an ashtray, and the burning smell is quite pleasant too, not a hint of hay left, and not cigarette-like either, more like late granpa's pipe smoking. The obvious lack of nicotine that probably resulted in the light-starved indoor grow setting can't be fixed but at least I got a very rich-smelling low-nicotine filler for future blends, I think.
If I guess right, the most of that taste and color strengtening was done by the last 2 days spent in 75C/167F temperature. I have tried fermenting earlier, and that did absolutely nothing to these sorry leaves in temps that permit bacterial activity, I assume 75C is far too high for that, so this sort of heat-treatment was not fermenting I suppose. I was not aware of the flue-curing schedule back when I did this, but the temps seem to be quite similar than that, maybe on the higher end of spectrum. But in this there was some forced pressure and humidity added, and the input leaves were already air-cured and not fresh, so I don't think this counts as a flue-cure either.
Whatever it was, it worked for me, almost miraculously well. Had to post this because it's one of the few successful things happened with this hobby this far. Cheers!
E: Oh, and this treatment fixed the odd burning qualities, too. Before the heat treatment the leaves burned oddly, hissing and sparkling almost like there were little smokeless powder mixed in. Maybe excess nitrogen left? Well after the heat treatment they burn much more calm, almost no audible sound and sparkling.
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