I can’t speak to the drying process on cigars but I can tell you they use 60% bovedas to maintain shelf life.
I wonder are fresh cigars better than humidor cigars?
@bunny
Any comments?
I have never had fresh cigars, I usually just go for the frozen ones, they are cheaper.
But otherwise I have not smoked a cigar in many years (since before it was fashionable), I can not say what people do now.
out of curiosity, how long do you dry before going into jars for the 4 week burp, and do you hang dry or use drying racks? Beautiful buds
No pre-drying at all. Final trim right off the plant so I just go cut a bowl of buds that will take me about an hour to finish, break up the colas and trim as you see in the finished buds. Any more than an hour and the leaves get soft and makes it harder to trim plus my arthritis can flare up and I have to quit early sometimes and don’t want a bunch left over to go soft.
Now I make the bulk of it into oils so a quick snip to take off stuff with no sugar on it then into the freezer or solvent it goes. Need to use naphtha for that stuff tho so the water in the buds doesn’t mix in.
For smoking bud it goes into doubled up paper bags for a few weeks slow drying if I can stretch it that long then still moist goes into cans for burping for another few weeks.
Very fussy but worth it if you want a great cure. Easy to screw up and get mould. Just ask me how I know.
Tobacco curing is an art and various methods are used.
Flue curing is like hanging pot to dry so it takes a while to dry so humidity and temp need precise control for better tobaccos but a lot is packed in bales and basically fermented using internal heat to really bring out the flavours and smells.
We grew some tobacco plants here and I just hung them in the shop to dry over a few weeks picking leaves as they went a nice golden brown. A bit harsh but totally smoke-able.
There’s lots of different strains of tobacco just like pot tho I doubt as many.
Hang dry on the stem. All leaf left on except fan leaves. Done in a basement with gently moving air. 60/60 but it floats as high as 67 for temp and 65 humidity. Wait like 3 weeks. Sugar leaf will be crispy on outside but buds should have some squish. After the 3 weeks remove sugar leaf and move to gamma bucket for burping normally another week. Then it’s sealed and gets a little digital hygrometer thrown in. I also believe this slow dry makes a smoother smoke. Imho
@LabRat yo dude do you have a write up somewhere about your process? I have wanted to try some of the long dry process but not sure how to go about it.
I do almost exactly the same process now and results are stellar, it’s also very easy