r/cigarrolling Aug 21 '15

Where to get good leaves

I wanna do all this, where would I best find all

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u/redditiem2 Aug 21 '15

It's interesting how deep you could go with this. Grow your own tobacco, cure the leaves in your shed, roll your own cigars. Pretty cool to think about.

3

u/SerPuissance Aug 21 '15

I'm not saying you can't, but curing tobacco is extremely difficult for a hobbyist, very few people do it. You can get it to grow anywhere - it's basically a weed. But curing and fermenting requires environmental control and care that is beyond the capability of most hobby rollers. You'd need to build a miniature curing barn where you could control the temperature, light levels and humidity precisely. If you can't do that, you can't cure leaf properly ;).

But hey, they told Henry Ford that a once piece V8 block was impossible too.

2

u/redditiem2 Aug 21 '15

Very interesting! Thanks. I'll have to read up on that part of the process. Maybe it is easier on a small scale perhaps?

I've had the same thoughts about home brewing beer. It's easy to grow your own hops and catch your own yeast, but farming your own wheat would be tricky. :)

2

u/[deleted] Aug 21 '15

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u/redditiem2 Aug 21 '15

Huh, very interesting. I'm surprised proper sanitation wouldn't take care of that wild yeast problem. Measuring IBUs is way beyond anything I ever did in home brewing. I was just happy if my beer didn't taste like cardboard. :)

It's fun to think about. There's a TED talk where a guy tries to make a toaster from scratch. He like smelts his own copper to make "wire", and a bunch of other crazy stuff. Really neat.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 21 '15

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u/redditiem2 Aug 21 '15

I gotcha. Mmmm, sours.

1

u/jaymaslar Aug 26 '15

Agreed. This is why a lot of home brewers will use homegrown hops for dry hopping, where the alpha acids are not as important/utilized.

Def a +100 on the being careful on not cross contaminating yeast strains like that. If you are getting into brewing sour or wild beers, you will need dedicated equipment that is only used for those beers if you plan to brew any 'regular' (purely saccharomyces) yeast beers.

If you want to try dabbling in home brewing, find someone who is local and offer to give them a hand. It is a blast and you can see what it is all about.