So the time has come ... my last years harvest was a modest amount of several different types of tobacco ... but it cured well in the end and has been doing a bit of ageing since October.
I figure that seeing as the process of snusmaking is essentially a forced ageing process then there was nothing to stop me having a go with my own leaf to see what a simple recipe would give me. I find this very exciting because this batch will be a "from seed to snus" batch - something I've been wanting to try since starting this whole home-grown caper.
So I spent a while grinding down some of my own leaves. For this recipe I used a single variety - Dark Virginia. But I had processed it in 2 different ways - the first component was simply the cured leaf ground to flour. But the second was making a flour from a carrotte of tobacco I had prepared in the autumn. The carrotte is a bundle of leaf that has been de-stemmed and then rolled up in canvas and then had rope very tightly wound around the whole package producing a very compressed stick of tobacco that looks something like a dried up black banana! The aroma of this carrotte is very complex and different to that of the simply dried leaf as if it has undergone some kind of fermentation. Anyhow - I thought I'd try mixing a 75:25 blend of standard leaf flour to carrotte flour.
Recipe was simple - 100g of flour, 160ml water, 9g salt mixed and cooked up at 75ºC for 48 hours then mixed with 2.5 tsp of lye water and returned to 75ºC for a further 12 hours.
The first thing I noticed is that my home-grown stuff reacted very differently to the grinding process - I had dried it out in a low oven before as I normally do, but it had not developed a decent percentage of "dust fraction" which is the very fine powdered part of the tobacco flour that binds the snus together nicely when mixed with water. When I added my salt solution it was clear that this snus was not going to hold together well as los!!! It reminded me of Gellivare a little.
The second thing I noticed was that the delicious aromatic smell of the carrotte flour (it smells a bit like molasses mixed with leather) had completely disappeared in the first cooking procedure ... so I would think that this ingredient is a bit of a waste of time for future attempts.
And thirdly ... tasting just after the snus has been taken off the heat for the last time is never advisable! But I always do it to try and get an idea of how it's going to turn out ... I would say that this Dark Virginia batch isn't showing a lot of promise. It's still got the full harshness of a snus that is still giving off copious amounts of ammonia and as such is pretty unpleasant, but under that it's got a kind of grassy, mealy, cake-like taste ... there doesn't seem to be much depth of flavour.
So all in all - I'll let you know how it turns out - but I have a hunch that this one will absolutely need some kind of flavouring to it. It could also do with a touch of sweetness as well. I will leave it in the cold shed to de-gas for a week or so and then taste again ... if it's as bad as I anticipate I will try a little lemon oil and liquorice powder.
I figure that seeing as the process of snusmaking is essentially a forced ageing process then there was nothing to stop me having a go with my own leaf to see what a simple recipe would give me. I find this very exciting because this batch will be a "from seed to snus" batch - something I've been wanting to try since starting this whole home-grown caper.
So I spent a while grinding down some of my own leaves. For this recipe I used a single variety - Dark Virginia. But I had processed it in 2 different ways - the first component was simply the cured leaf ground to flour. But the second was making a flour from a carrotte of tobacco I had prepared in the autumn. The carrotte is a bundle of leaf that has been de-stemmed and then rolled up in canvas and then had rope very tightly wound around the whole package producing a very compressed stick of tobacco that looks something like a dried up black banana! The aroma of this carrotte is very complex and different to that of the simply dried leaf as if it has undergone some kind of fermentation. Anyhow - I thought I'd try mixing a 75:25 blend of standard leaf flour to carrotte flour.
Recipe was simple - 100g of flour, 160ml water, 9g salt mixed and cooked up at 75ºC for 48 hours then mixed with 2.5 tsp of lye water and returned to 75ºC for a further 12 hours.
The first thing I noticed is that my home-grown stuff reacted very differently to the grinding process - I had dried it out in a low oven before as I normally do, but it had not developed a decent percentage of "dust fraction" which is the very fine powdered part of the tobacco flour that binds the snus together nicely when mixed with water. When I added my salt solution it was clear that this snus was not going to hold together well as los!!! It reminded me of Gellivare a little.
The second thing I noticed was that the delicious aromatic smell of the carrotte flour (it smells a bit like molasses mixed with leather) had completely disappeared in the first cooking procedure ... so I would think that this ingredient is a bit of a waste of time for future attempts.
And thirdly ... tasting just after the snus has been taken off the heat for the last time is never advisable! But I always do it to try and get an idea of how it's going to turn out ... I would say that this Dark Virginia batch isn't showing a lot of promise. It's still got the full harshness of a snus that is still giving off copious amounts of ammonia and as such is pretty unpleasant, but under that it's got a kind of grassy, mealy, cake-like taste ... there doesn't seem to be much depth of flavour.
So all in all - I'll let you know how it turns out - but I have a hunch that this one will absolutely need some kind of flavouring to it. It could also do with a touch of sweetness as well. I will leave it in the cold shed to de-gas for a week or so and then taste again ... if it's as bad as I anticipate I will try a little lemon oil and liquorice powder.
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