New Roller Here Looking For Cigar Blend Clones

[john12865]

It's very common in home brewing to clone commercial craft beers and develop recipes to brew at home and share them with other home brewers. I've made minimal investment in some molds and tools for cigar rolling. Because of my inexperience I'm not certain where to begin with blending tobacco for cigars. Does anyone have a clone blend that is close to a commercially made cigar to share ? Any suggestions on mild, medium or strong profiles ? Hopefully, more experienced rollers will reply so that I have a starting point. Thanks, John

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

John,
Welcome to the forum. I encourage you to start a thread in the Introduce Yourself section of the forum.

To answer your question (from my perspective), it's somewhat impossible to clone any existing cigar without the exact tobacco that they are using, however, it would be easy to make cigars that are close, but just as good if not better. WLT has a lot of excellent tobacco, and has a variety which spans the spectrum very well.

My recommendation is not to work towards a clone, but to work towards cigars that you like.

A general rule of thumb that will help you to get started is to have a blend of at least two leaf types, and at least two stalk positions. Most guys will do more than that, (and you can certainly use one tobacco if you like it) but a 2x2 blend is generally the minimum. It would look like this:
3x T-13 viso
3x Criollo 98 seco
In this theoretical example, I've used two tobacco types (T-13, and Criollo), and two stalk positions (viso and seco).

A more balanced and complex blend would use more stalk positions and tobacco types.
A 3x3 blend would look something like this:
3x Dominican seco,
1x Corojo viso,
1x Nicaragua Habano ligero

By choosing different types, and manipulating the ratios of strong tobaccos to mild(er) tobaccos, you can fine tune the strength. The 3x3 example would probably be a medium strength cigar. If you wanted milder, maybe add another seco leaf, and if you wanted stronger, add another viso or ligero leaf.

Also, try the same blend with different binders and wrappers. This will help you to understand the effects created by those tobaccos.

 

[john12865]

John,
Welcome to the forum. I encourage you to start a thread in the Introduce Yourself section of the forum.

To answer your question (from my perspective), it's somewhat impossible to clone any existing cigar without the exact tobacco that they are using, however, it would be easy to make cigars that are close, but just as good if not better. WLT has a lot of excellent tobacco, and has a variety which spans the spectrum very well.

My recommendation is not to work towards a clone, but to work towards cigars that you like.

A general rule of thumb that will help you to get started is to have a blend of at least two leaf types, and at least two stalk positions. Most guys will do more than that, (and you can certainly use one tobacco if you like it) but a 2x2 blend is generally the minimum. It would look like this:
3x T-13 viso
3x Criollo 98 seco
In this theoretical example, I've used two tobacco types (T-13, and Criollo), and two stalk positions (viso and seco).

A more balanced and complex blend would use more stalk positions and tobacco types.
A 3x3 blend would look something like this:
3x Dominican seco,
1x Corojo viso,
1x Nicaragua Habano ligero

By choosing different types, and manipulating the ratios of strong tobaccos to mild(er) tobaccos, you can fine tune the strength. The 3x3 example would probably be a medium strength cigar. If you wanted milder, maybe add another seco leaf, and if you wanted stronger, add another viso or ligero leaf.

Also, try the same blend with different binders and wrappers. This will help you to understand the effects created by those tobaccos.

Thanks for your reply. I obviously have much to learn about cigar blending. Tobacco strains, location of it's growth and location of the leaf on the stalk. It is in many ways it is similar to the different strains of yeast, hops and barley brewers use and the location of where they are grown having very different characteristics.

 

[deluxestogie]

Welcome to the forum. ChinaVoodoo is a complicated guy. Go over to WholeLeafTobacco.com and select a couple of Cigar Blend Kits.

Nuance and blending tweaks will just come with time. Also, I always suggest ignoring cigar cosmetics when you're just beginning. Hand-roll one ugly cigar (no mold) at a time--then smoke that cigar before making another one. Repeat until you can reliably roll a cigar that draws well--typically 10 to 30 cigars. Forget about showing off cigars to friends and in-laws until you get to about 100. By that point, you can begin to play with a mold. Roll one; smoke one.

Have fun!

Bob

 

[john12865]

Welcome to the forum. ChinaVoodoo is a complicated guy. Go over to WholeLeafTobacco.com and select a couple of Cigar Blend Kits.

Nuance and blending tweaks will just come with time. Also, I always suggest ignoring cigar cosmetics when you're just beginning. Hand-roll one ugly cigar (no mold) at a time--then smoke that cigar before making another one. Repeat until you can reliably roll a cigar that draws well--typically 10 to 30 cigars. Forget about showing off cigars to friends and in-laws until you get to about 100. By that point, you can begin to play with a mold. Roll one; smoke one.

Have fun!

Bob

Thanks for your reply Bob. I am going the kit route to start out. I'm attempting to avoid making the dreaded dog rockets that we have all lit up at one point in our lives. As far as cosmetics, I'm not a cigar snob and there can be beauty in imperfection so impressing others is not important because I only have to impress myself and my Beagle. I had always thought that cigar rolling was much more complicated and after watching many hours of cigar rolling videos found that it is certainly well within my capabilities. Much like my home brewing it will be fun experimenting. I wish I had checked into cigar rolling a long time ago because I've been over paying for long filler cigars for 35 years now and that chit is going to stop immediately !!!!

 

[deluxestogie]

I wish I had checked into cigar rolling a long time ago,,,

The public availability of the very same, whole cigar leaf used in the finest cigar factories is a somewhat recent blessing. And none too soon. The pricing of long-filler cigars by the box is now about 10 times what I used to pay for the same brands in the early 1970s. (A can of tuna was then 39 cents, compared to today's 69 cents.) Even the decent knockoffs, like JR Alternatives, and true factory seconds, like Consuegra, have tripled in price over the past decade. [And those sneaky JR Alternatives are secretly becoming mixed-filler sticks.]

My occasional supply of actual, commercial, factory cigars now only arrives in gift wrap, from two of my brothers who are cigar people.

But be warned, once you discover that you can roll truly premium cigars that are generally better than the commercial ones, you may be addicted to rolling for life.

Bob

 

[john12865]

The public availability of the very same, whole cigar leaf used in the finest cigar factories is a somewhat recent blessing. And none too soon. The pricing of long-filler cigars by the box is now about 10 times what I used to pay for the same brands in the early 1970s. (A can of tuna was then 39 cents, compared to today's 69 cents.) Even the decent knockoffs, like JR Alternatives, and true factory seconds, like Consuegra, have tripled in price over the past decade. [And those sneaky JR Alternatives are secretly becoming mixed-filler sticks.]

My occasional supply of actual, commercial, factory cigars now only arrives in gift wrap, from two of my brothers who are cigar people.

But be warned, once you discover that you can roll truly premium cigars that are generally better than the commercial ones, you may be addicted to rolling for life.

Bob

Totally agree. I can remember when a gallon of gas was 75 cents and a pack of cigarettes was 65 cents. The anti tobacco crowd of liberals who raised taxes on tobacco with excuses to keep tobacco out of the hands of children is a farce. They haven't figured out how to tax Heroin or Crystal Meth which is an epidemic and takes many young lives every day across our nation, but they are tobacco free !!!
I can see myself becoming very good at hand rolling cigars. Was just watching the news today and they are shocked at the percentage of High School Students who have tried smoking electronic cigarettes. Never a mention about them shooting Heroin or smoking Meth between classes.
It's the electronic cigarette that is Truely Evil after all.

 

[Feet Up]

While it would be great for everyone to become expert blenders someday, cloning would be a great way to start. With all the advice here and everywhere else I'm surprised no one has made any attempts at a reasonable clone blend recipes. There must be a reason for it because it would be easy enough to say something like Opux X is

3x Dominican Corojo
2x Dominican Ligero

Dominican Wrapper etc.

It would be a lot of fun to trade these blend recipes. Does anyone have any favorite home blends?

 

[ChinaVoodoo]

Welcome to the forum. Please introduce yourself by starting a thread in the Introduce Yourself section of the thread.

Cloning is extremely difficult without the exact same tobaccos. Even if you have the same types of tobacco, the year, fermentation, the farm, region, weather, time of pick, curing methods, etc will all make the "same" tobacco very different.

If cloning were easy, all the lesser brands would be cloning the big ones.

 

[waikikigun]

It's very common in home brewing to clone commercial craft beers and develop recipes to brew at home and share them with other home brewers. I've made minimal investment in some molds and tools for cigar rolling. Because of my inexperience I'm not certain where to begin with blending tobacco for cigars. Does anyone have a clone blend that is close to a commercially made cigar to share ? Any suggestions on mild, medium or strong profiles ? Hopefully, more experienced rollers will reply so that I have a starting point. Thanks, John

Unfortunately there is virtually zero parallel here. I say that as someone who home-brewed for 15 years and has home-rolled for six years, bought fifty different kinds of tobaccos, tried tirelessly to come up with something resembling a pro cigar taste, and mostly failed. Whereas with beer it was, get the malt, get the yeast, get the hops, boom, you're good. You just won't have anything vaguely like that in the cigar rolling world. People outside of the world don't understand that. They think a particular cigar is some blend of seco, ligero, viso, a wrapper, some of them "Dominican," some "Nicaraguan," some "Criollo," and that's all there is to it. Nuh uh. You need the ACTUAL leaf those guys use, from that actual crop in that place, fermented and aged by those guys, not just leaf with words like "Nicaraguan" in their description. As for sharing that one master blend discovery? Doesn't usually work, because the leaf changes order to order and what was wonderful for you could well suck for them.

 

[waikikigun]

While it would be great for everyone to become expert blenders someday, cloning would be a great way to start. With all the advice here and everywhere else I'm surprised no one has made any attempts at a reasonable clone blend recipes. There must be a reason for it because it would be easy enough to say something like Opux X is

3x Dominican Corojo
2x Dominican Ligero

Dominican Wrapper etc.

It would be a lot of fun to trade these blend recipes. Does anyone have any favorite home blends?

Besides the significant fact that Fuente is not selling us the leaf used in the Opus x, there is another interesting thing to consider: the job of the blender is primarily not to create new blends, but to replicate last year's blend with this year's leaf. If you happen to dissect certain famous cigars every year, like I do, to see how the leaf choice seems to change year to year based on the crop, you'll see some extreme changes, such as 1 ligero one year to 4 ligeros the next year, to get the same flavor.

3x Dominican Corojo could have an endless variety of tastes, strengths, and ways in which it reacts with other tobaccos.

 

[deluxestogie]

the job of the blender is primarily not to create new blends, but to replicate last year's blend with this year's leaf.

Most newly introduced blends depend on a 3+ year inventory of the required leaf. If it is successful, then that leaf eventually runs out.

Bob

 

[Feet Up]

waikikigun: That's a great explanation! This is what I was guessing but it's great to hear it verbalized. I have been rolling cigars for about a year now on my own with all of the different tobacco leaf available online in my inventory and have been coming to that conclusion independently. First by rolling a purito single leaf and then blending now based on taste.

 

[DePasta]

There is also the casing question, many commercial cigar co.s use a proprietary recipe for casing the tobacco. Many may use chocolate with other ingredients (Padon, Rocky Patel). Not to mention proprietary aging methods....

 

[deluxestogie]

If a casing is used, then the cigar must by law be labeled as containing non-tobacco ingredients.

Bob

 

[Feet Up]

Would casing, assuming you mean having the cigar leaves or finished product being placed with an aromatic ingredient in an airtight container. I wonder if that would be classified as an ingredient since it's technically not rolled with the cigar. Like whiskey that is aged in an oak barrel.

 

[DePasta]

Watching this at 21:35 they are certainly using something for “moisture” but wonder if it adds flavor....it sure adds color.

Rocky Patel tour

 

[Feet Up]

Cool video. I wonder if the water, in t his case, starts clear and then becomes brown as they continue to wipe the wrapper and go back to the same well. One thing I noticed was how high cased their wrappers were when rolling. They were literally still dripping when cased and really wet when finally rolled.

 

[TigerTom]

Cool video. I wonder if the water, in t his case, starts clear and then becomes brown as they continue to wipe the wrapper and go back to the same well. One thing I noticed was how high cased their wrappers were when rolling. They were literally still dripping when cased and really wet when finally rolled.

I had the same thought, though the water looks more viscous than it would if just stained by tobacco juice. Some companies dye their wrappers to create color consistency but won't admit it. My boss caught this with a high-demand premium cigar. The rep was in the store and my boss said the wrapper looked dyed, which the rep denied. Since my boss was wearing a white undershirt, he licked the wrapper to moisten it and rubbed it on his undershirt leaving a very dark brown smear on his shirt. The rep was a bit embarrassed, to say the least.

 

[TigerTom]

Would casing, assuming you mean having the cigar leaves or finished product being placed with an aromatic ingredient in an airtight container. I wonder if that would be classified as an ingredient since it's technically not rolled with the cigar. Like whiskey that is aged in an oak barrel.

When this is the case, it is advertised in the product descriptions though it is not usually looked at as an ingredient. For example, the Fuente Añejo has a CT Broadleaf wrapper aged in used cognac barrels, the Diesel Whiskey Row Bourbon and Sherry Cask cigars have binders aged in used bourbon barrels and PX sherry casks, respectively. The Toraño Reserva Decadencia is made from leaves aged in used port pipes.

Infused cigars, such as the Drew Estate Acid line, are advertised as infused though the specific infusions are proprietary.