Home-grown snus ... tastes like Gellivare/Landstroms!

[squeezyjohn]

Finally I grew a decent crop of tobacco and cured it all successfully - and I have just completed my first batch of snus made from this tobacco with no flavour additives ... and not a word of a lie it tastes for all the world like Landstroms!

The variety is called Silver River and it makes a tobacco plant that is very large and productive - 20 plants yielded about 3-4kg of lamina flour for making snus. This is enough to make 80-100 cans of loose snus - for most users that is pretty close to a years supply! In addition to being very productive - this particular tobacco is one of the quickest and easiest to cure that I've ever tried - in cooler, damper climates like the one I live in - that's a Godsend! The snus made from this tobacco that has been naturally air-cured has a bright, aromatic, resinous flavour that makes it taste as if it has had herbal essential oils added subtly to it with a strong virginia tobacco base. The snus is regular strength - it's not a high nicotine tobacco.

I have a tin of Landstroms left and this homegrown-homemade is the closest thing I've tasted. The Landstroms is a bit sweeter - and frankly the tin is so old that I'm sure the flavours have faded a lot in the freezer.

If you were thinking of having a go at growing any tobacco for snus ... I would heartily recommend Silver River if you can get the seeds (and you can online)

[squeezyjohn]

Here's a little photo diary of the Silver River growing from transplants to the fully cured leaf (click on the thumbnails):

The seedlings were started in April in pots in the greenhouse and then planted out at the end of May


Just a week after transplanting out in June


By July


And in August they're 7 foot tall


When harvested in august and early september the leaves look like this - the biggest are 3½ foot long by 2 foot wide


And here they are 3 weeks later hanging brown and air-cured under my shed eves.

They were then ground in to fine flour using a regular food blender.

[Skell18]

Good job mate! It's not as if your past endeavours were shoddy either! How coarse is yours? Does it bake easier than landstroms and gellivare did?

[squeezyjohn]

Actually it bakes like an absolute pig - just like Gellivare & Landstroms did! It's not massively coarse and it does stay together fine once it's in place. But it's absolutely lovely!

I have to say that when you grow your own (especially a new variety) you put so much time and effort without really knowing what it's going to end up tasting like ... it's a massive bonus that these plants give this result given how good they were to grow and cure here in the UK.

[whalen]

Fine looking cropper there! And to hear that it made a fine snus almost brings a tear to my eye. It is wonderful when things go well!

[whalen]

Were you seed bagging to prevent cross pollinating? Would only happen with your own varieties, I mean how many other crazy fookers are growing baccy around you there in the UK? Massive win this years efforts....KUDOS!!!!!!

[squeezyjohn]

Thanks Whalen ... yes - I was growing 5 varieties and saving seeds from all of them so I made some bags from a fine mesh to make sure the different varieties stayed true.

[sirloot]

kudos !

[Mill]

This is very, very impressive!

[Snusdog]

So let me get this straight...SJ discovered a type of Tobacco leaf.......planted it......watched it grow.......cured it.....and made it into snus..........all before Gellivare/Landstroms could find more square cans to ship their product in.

Makes sense

At some point when I get around to growing some leaf of my own........this will be where I start...........the thought of having a home grown supply of Landstroms is almost call to break the fleshlight out

Well done SJ......and thanks so much for passing all your findings along to the rest of us

[MojoQuestor]

Agreed, kudos sj