Taking a poll on variety to age.

[WillQuantrill]

I recently made an impulse buy (pictured) after much research on Perique tobacco. I figure I can scale down the St James process with this 2.5 gallon white oak barrel. As I am not growing any Perique this season I was thinking I would age some whole leaf in this as an interesting experiment. After some thought I settled on a pipe variety as a unique blending component but can't decide which variety. I'm currently seasoning the interior of the barrel like you would a humidor to a proper RH. The idea here is whatever leaf I decide on, with the forums input, will be stuffed into this barrel for almost 2 years. Perique will be grown in 2026, figure 2 months to air cure, 6-8 weeks kilning and an additional 2 months to rest. Leaning towards Burley or Dark Air Cure as I have had some success with different finishes on these. So... what say you? Anyone have experience like this?

 

[Juxtaposer-]

It’s my understanding that a Perique process uses partially color cured leaves where the stems still have a little green in them.
I imagine tobacco put in there would dry out. pressing tobacco into that might help.
Do you have a screw jack for that? How about smashing some Burley in there and pouring a couple of gallons of rum over it! I know, you could squeeze a quarter ton of twists in there. I don’t think that barrel is as small as you think.
Just shooting at the hip with these comments

 

[ShiniKoroshi]

Don's Dark Air is already a good smoke with higher PH than his Perique (IMO) but its a better candidate than Burley. If you are experimenting....how about this? Take equal weight of Brightleaf and Burley. Dry the Burley and bring the BL into high case. After 24 hours press all the juice out of the Brightleaf and case the Burley with it. Then la pression et perique.

 

[WillQuantrill]

It’s my understanding that a Perique process uses partially color cured leaves where the stems still have a little green in them.
I imagine tobacco put in there would dry out. pressing tobacco into that might help.
Do you have a screw jack for that? How about smashing some Burley in there and pouring a couple of gallons of rum over it! I know, you could squeeze a quarter ton of twists in there. I don’t think that barrel is as small as you think.
Just shooting at the hip with these comments

I do apologize I didn't fully explain the process. The reason I was thinking I would "dry age" is so the barrel isn't saturated with any other liquids that would alter my eventual Perique process in the future. Dry age is much more subtle but... I have 2 years. Haven't worked out a press/screw jack setup for it yet.

 

[ProZachJ]

I watched a video on burley produced sometime mid last century by a cig manufacturer. In their process they were dry aging their burley in barrels for 3 years.

 

[WillQuantrill]

It’s my understanding that a Perique process uses partially color cured leaves where the stems still have a little green in them.
I imagine tobacco put in there would dry out. pressing tobacco into that might help.
Do you have a screw jack for that? How about smashing some Burley in there and pouring a couple of gallons of rum over it! I know, you could squeeze a quarter ton of twists in there. I don’t think that barrel is as small as you think.
Just shooting at the hip with these comments

Now the thought occurred to me, a Virginia may pick up more aroma from the barrel as it seems to dry age better? Also, I would periodically check RH just like a humidor.

 

[Juxtaposer-]

Now the thought occurred to me, a Virginia may pick up more aroma from the barrel as it seems to dry age better? Also, I would periodically check RH just like a humidor.

It has been said that Burley tobacco picks up flavor better. Maybe generally yes. I have no experience with dry aging so I won’t be much help here. I do suggest going with your gut feelings once you make your choices. Other ideas would be using two or even three cultivars instead of just one. I vote Burley because it is the closest to the Perique you will be using so in this way your barrel remains “pure”.

 

[WillQuantrill]

PURIQUE BURLEY BARREL! That kind of reasoning makes sense to me. In addition, as I use Burley as the base in my "Natural" dip it could enhance that recipe. Furthermore I went through my inventory tonight and discovered I still had 3 lbs of Burley Tips from WLT in addition to what I grew last year I can spare one pound for this. I really enjoy this leaf, so I included a picture of a beautifully large one. So I destemmed the pound while I smoked cigars in a separate thread. I lightly spritzed with distilled water as I went. Once destemmed I gently folded the ends of leaf inward and folded the halves in while piling in the barrel. I lightly pushed it all in and was kind of surprised how much volume it filled. Now we wait
...

 

[WillQuantrill]

Belated update: so a week ago I remembered I had an unused storage container with gasket on the lid I had bought for tobacco overflow. And, I had ziplocks of pipe tobacco already shredded that was starting to dry out. By golly the damn barrel fit sideways snuggly with the lid on. I left a hygrometer in the barrel so every so often I can check RH inside and spritzed the contents while fluffing the tobacco inside then I put a piece of masking tape over the lid for securement. Stuffed the ziplocks in then layered the outer walls with cardboard. So I spritz the outward face of the cardboard and put back in every so often when the RH drops below 60%. My hope is that eventually the RH will stabilize with that much organic material in the container eventually raising the humidity inside the barrel. Already smells very nice, I think this will work well for 2 year storage.

 

[WillQuantrill]

Update almost 4 months later and my theory worked. I got curious enough and opened up the aging storage, cracked open the barrel to check RH and it has stabilized in the mid-60%'s. The leaf inside I would describe as low case, once the RH stabilized I left the container alone for weeks and weeks. Kind of cool experiment when you can forget about a test for a few weeks only to stumble onto the tote and find out everything is perfectly fine. Lets continue the waiting for another 20 months for a most exclusive blending component. It smells great.

 

[The_Non_Compliant_One]

It makes no sense.. if you grew the burley yourself it might. But last time i checked... there are places online selling whole leaf tobacco, that is from the 2016 to 2019 tobacco crop years.

 

[WillQuantrill]

It makes no sense.. if you grew the burley yourself it might. But last time i checked... there are places online selling whole leaf tobacco, that is from the 2016 to 2019 tobacco crop years.

Maybe the previous posts might add context, but the whole leaf you are referencing hasn't been "barrel aged" which is fairly popular in the cigar leaf industry. Want to try it as a unique pipe blending base.