I decided to experiment with some of my Virginia tobacco on Monday. I took some fairly coarsely shredded VA leaf, mixed it with some similarly shredded Perique, and just for fun, tossed in a piece of Light Fire Cured from the little sample that WLT sent with my order. I included that mainly because it was handy, and I wanted to see if I could taste it in the mix.
The VA was pretty dry, despite my having misted it with water a few times. Still very low case. Since I intended to press it, I misted it with a couple squirts of Woodford Reserve bourbon. I mixed it all up well and loaded it into the noodle press. I screwed the press down in stages over about an hour until I had it down petty tight.
Having heard good things about using heat during the pressing process, and not having tried it until now, I stuck the press in the oven and warmed it up to somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 degrees or so. I think I had it in there for an hour or so, then pulled it out and let it cool for a few hours.
The resulting plug is solid, tough, nearly black, and displays no tendency to expand or separate. It’s got a typical VA/Per aroma. After removing it from the press I let it sit in a little plastic container with a snap-on lid for probably 6 or 8 hours until I had an opportunity to try a little bit of it.
I sliced off a little chunk, then cut it up into smaller chunks. It doesn’t fall apart at all. I rubbed out the chunks enough that I thought I’d be able to get it lit, and loaded up a corncob. While I smoked that little bit, I sliced the rest of the plug into very thin slices. It slices very nicely; it’s moist and dense so you can really get it shaved thin. I cube-cut some of it and left the rest as slices.
This stuff is seriously pretty good. It’s smooth, no bite, no overpowering Perique. The nicotine level is what I would consider a notch past mild, meaning that by the time I’m down to the second half of the bowl I can feel it – but it’s not too much. The flavor is very nice, not overpowering at all but quite robust.
I’m naming this one “Dark Lady”.
Today (Tuesday) i finished up the last bit of the bowl from last night, and it was still smooth and flavorful. I didn’t detect any rough edges (so to speak) or any taste that I didn’t like, until I decided to see how it did when smoked fast. That resulted in a couple of puffs that were less enjoyable — still not bad, but you have to expect that Virginias are not going to take well to smoking them too hot. Once I slowed back down to a normal pace, the taste returned to normal. So far, so good.
I liked it enough, in fact, that after that bowl was finished I loaded it up again. I rubbed out one of the small flakes, then loaded up the rest of the bowl with my cube-cut chunks just to see how those worked. I think those are probably just too big to burn well; I’ll slice any further batches into flake. The cubes taste fine, but require more re-lighting than I’m happy with. It’s distracting and not terribly enjoyable to spend a lot of time re-lighting your pipe. OK, so lesson learned, it’s a flake, not a good candidate for a coarse cube cut. That’s fine; cube cut tends to easily send burning embers everywhere as lot easier than a regular shred packed bowl anyway, and I don’t own a smoking jacket – yet.
This bend may just be a winner, I think. I’m going to take some up to Ted’s and see if the owner wants to try a bit; he’s a VA/Per lover. Oh, and I have not so far detected the fire cured leaf. I know it’s there, but there’s so little of it I think it just isn’t really detectable. I need to try a bit of that on its own to see what it’s like.