I just tried PURE TOBACCO LEAF

[Kyle Weiss]

(...don't worry, this is long, but worth reading...I promise...)

You read that right. I've done something probably very few of you have--I've actually smoked tobacco with ZERO additives, ZERO binders, ZERO toppings, ZERO casing and ZERO pressing/aging/fermenting. Literally, plucked from the barn whence it dried, stuffed in my Brebbia, and lit up.

How is this possible? My buddy mark sent me some. I'm pretty sure it's Virginia that was air cured/dried, but mark will have to chime in on that.

Actually, he sent me some twice, but the first time there was a bit of a catastrophe, for I looked in the sealed, ziploc bag and it was filled with green fuzz rather than beautiful yellow, folded leaves. More on that later.

On this second attempt to smoke only the PUREST tobacco, I kept it in a jar that wasn't quite lidded fully, and let the Nevada air take care of any pesky moisture. In the jar, it smelled like... absolutely nothing. Maybe a hint of a dry lawn full of autumn leaves. Maybe. It was in leafy chunks, from the size of a silver dollar on up to about... a dollar bill. Cutting was required to get them loaded into the pipe.

First light was interesting. Very...nonexistent. I mean, there was smoke there, it just didn't hit me like a bowl full of something aged or with latakia. Halfway through, I got a slightly toasty and sweet note, but with a very underwhelming body. There was no thickness at all. This wasn't a bad thing, it's just odd how light it actually happened to be.

This was a very pleasant smoke, but it tasted--raw. Unfinished. Like eating perfectly cooked chicken, but with ONLY chicken. It tasted...like (chicken?) tobacco. Really, really good tobacco--there was zero bite, it smoked cool as a cucumber, the nic-hit was HARD, and there was a very pleasant simpleness to it. It was the most enjoyable, undynamic smoke I've ever experienced. It's delicious only because I like good tobacco. Like salad without dressing (or other additives), like a plain steak on a griddle, or toast with no butter. Probably just fine--except with no flair.

A few more good questions and theories come into play. Many of us are aware already that our tobaccos are cased and topped, aged and fermented to some end--some more, some less. Union Square has been touted as a "pure" Virginia, but I can now attest, it is not--it's just as simple as you can get without losing out on the things we come to know as "tobacco."

There is a reason I suspect (that has already been confirmed by Greg Pease) our pipe tobaccos are now pressed, aged, topped, cased, treated with smoke, what-have-you. There's also a reason why they are blended and mixed. All because there was someone with the notion to enhance certain qualities, like nicotine (why anyone first tried to inhale this stuff is beyond me...holy wow), flavor, body...and more.

Raw tobacco is technically boring, even if I, personally, enjoy the subtitles of the subtle. If this is all there was to tobacco, just some leaf dried out and stuffed in a pipe, I'd be a pipe collector and not much a pipe smoker.

Remember that green mold I experienced with the first batch? I'm actually glad it happened (even though I was disappointed)--it's another reason why tobacco is treated the way it is. Preservation. I have yet to find a sealed bag/tin/jar of "shelf-bought" tobacco that grew mold in two weeks. I know it's possible to have happen, but not quite like this.

So, back in the days of yore, this is what tobacco was like. It had to be. Eventually the love for this stuff we know as "pipeweed" went from just tossing a dry stalk in a stone hole and putting an ember to it, to a complex selective cultivating, drying, aging, fermenting, treating and finally, packaging method...how far it has come! Several hundred years ago, I can see some old salt working the plow sitting down after 14 hours of hard field work to enjoy this stuff, and I can only imagine what he might think if I traveled back in time to share with him the myriad tins and bags of what we're smoking in our pipes today.

I'm very, very glad I experienced this first-hand. Tobacco by itself is simple and good, from the first seed sown to the last wisp of smoke. I went "tobacco primitive" today, and I'm thankful where tobacco has gone, at least in a pipe sense. I can safely lay to rest the notion of what "pure" actually means--because if "simple" equals "pure," I have now known it. Pure is a good moment, too, such as with a pipe in hand. Fortunately, "pure" also sometimes means sophistication, process and even...

...a little spice to make things even better.

8)

(...thanks so much, mark, I hope this "review" is what you wanted... )

 

[docwatson]

Interesting post Kyle. You are certainly correct about tobacco first being smoked like you did, but it only took one bowlful before they realized it needed some curing.
I've smoked straight unadulterated sun cured tobacco (cigar leaf) which is quite good as I'm sure you already know. But when it comes to certain leaf especially Virginia and burley they are really nasty as you have experienced. Thank goodness we have hundreds of ways to make our favorite weed so tasteful.

 

[mark]

I'm pretty sure it's Virginia that was air cured/dried, but mark will have to chime in on that.
...thanks so much, mark, I hope this "review" is what you wanted... )

It's flue cured Virginia. Temperature and humidity controlled for eight weeks.

Great review Kyle.

I guess what I'm hoping to point out is that without topping or casing [whatever is used or however much] plain VA. leaf by itself is pretty boring. Not at all what you would expect, and certainly not what we're used to.

Union Square has been touted as a "pure" Virginia, but I can now attest, it is not--it's just as simple as you can get without losing out on the things we come to know as "tobacco."

BINGO,,,and Thank You.

 

[loneredtree]

Doc.

I think Kyle said the leaf was boring not nasty. I had read that untreated leaf is harsh. I does not sound like this sample was that.

l

 

[DrumsAndBeer]

Interesting read Kyle. My friend was attempting to grow, dry and cure tobacco from his yard but ultimately his entire yield ended up with the fuzzy green mold.

 

[jj1015]

Nice review! I've also had the experience of smoking "straight" tobacco (burley, grown within a mile of the house I grew in near Greeneville, TN), and it sounds to me as though we had similar experiences. Unprocessed tobacco, while smokeable, isn't nearly as good as the stuff we buy. Even the most "basic" blends are treated in some way, as this makes them better.

Personally, I fail to understand the interest in "pure" tobaccos that has arisen over the Internet in recent years. It seems like so many pipe smokers must convince themselves they are smoking a "natural" product to enjoy it, or they disparage the idea that a blend might have casing or topping. Growing up around pipe smokers (most of whom had at least some experience with growing the stuff), such an idea or prejudice never would have occurred to them. Of the folks I knew who grew tobacco, I knew only one of them who smoked their own leaf rather than buying a blend from the store (invariably a codger burley or aromatic). I knew a couple who would chew the leaf, but smoke it? Heck no -- they bought theirs from the store like everyone else, which tells me all I need to know about the relative merits of processed vs. unprocessed leaf.

 

[monbla256]

Nice review! I've also had the experience of smoking "straight" tobacco (burley, grown within a mile of the house I grew in near Greeneville, TN), and it sounds to me as though we had similar experiences. Unprocessed tobacco, while smokeable, isn't nearly as good as the stuff we buy. Even the most "basic" blends are treated in some way, as this makes them better.

Personally, I fail to understand the interest in "pure" tobaccos that has arisen over the Internet in recent years. It seems like so many pipe smokers must convince themselves they are smoking a "natural" product to enjoy it, or they disparage the idea that a blend might have casing or topping. Growing up around pipe smokers (most of whom had at least some experience with growing the stuff), such an idea or prejudice never would have occurred to them. Of the folks I knew who grew tobacco, I knew only one of them who smoked their own leaf rather than buying a blend from the store (invariably a codger burley or aromatic). I knew a couple who would chew the leaf, but smoke it? Heck no -- they bought theirs from the store like everyone else, which tells me all I need to know about the relative merits of processed vs. unprocessed leaf.

AMEN ! Having family that lived in N. Carolina and grew Virginia Brightleaf they did the same thing. I think the "natural" thing is an outgrowth of the same idea in food we find here in the US. As Greg Pease stated in one of his excellent essays, ALL blends/mixtures are cased/topped with SOMETHING or they would not be smokeable So much for the "straight Va." concept

 

[Greyson]

Really interesting read Kyle, thanks for posting.

 

[Sloppy Joe Hemingway]

Interesting reading, cool experience! So, this brings a question to my mind: how long after Europeans started smoking tobacco did they start adding flavors and casings to their tobacco?

 

[jj1015]

I don't know, but if you look at old depictions of smoking you will see that folks back then did NOT smoke at all like we do. American Indians didn't smoke daily, and they didn't use large bowls. This was largely a ritualistic practice, and they probably didn't imbibe much at any one time. The early Europeans, I think, used it equally sparingly (they had to -- at one point in the Netherlands, circa 1600 or so, tobacco was literally worth its weight in gold).
I believe -- someone correct me if I'm wrong -- that the first flavoring probably took place inadvertently by soaking the tobaccos in spirits to preserve it/keep it moist for storage. I imagine at that point they went "Ah-ha" and began experimenting with different ways to process it. But that's speculation on my part, based on what fragments of history I know.

 

[Kyle Weiss]

Lonered said it. It wasn't nasty leaf by any stretch--in fact, I look forward to smoking it again. :lol: I just have to be in the mood for just tobacco. I have these little Elizabethan replica clay pipes I think Dr. T gave me for my bombing, and they have very small bowls. With the nic-kick this stuff has, little pipes for a quick smoke would be ideal.

Monbla is spot-on: I think the rhetoric about "natural" and "additive-free" has gotten to a point where it's almost going TOO far in some cases, tobacco being the most obvious. With tales of what the cigarette industry does in secret to its precious death sticks to make them "a unique marketed product" and the anti-smokers rallying against tobacco, it's only natural the fans and users of any tobacco product wants to get as far away from "messed with" as possible. Processing isn't all bad, it's just a matter of how. Even fermentation, curing and aging is a chemical process, and sugars are also a chemical (hell, everything is), but "chemical" has become a dirty word among the laymen--even if it's a natural chemical process.

The civilized world has always been hand-in-hand with consumption--turning to overconsumption. The Natives of the "New World" didn't always cultivate tobacco, from what I read, they simply had it growing in their vast back yard. Even they pressed and cured it in huge logs, apparently. It took Europeans to find out how to farm it, selectively breed/hybridize the tobacco for taste, experiment on location (which meant soil makeup/chemistry), mechanize the aging process to make it really something you could smoke daily. Which brings up a thought: I might have smoked "pure" tobacco, but this is only after whatever seed mark purchased, where and how he grew it, and what flue curing technique he used to make it taste as good as it does. If I found a Nicotiana tabacum or Nicotiana rustica just growing wild someplace and stuffed a dry leaf in my pipe, it'd probably taste very different (and probably harsh as hell).

Mark, thank you again, this has been both educational and eye-opening. 8)

 

[PeterD]

...actually from my studies, the first additive or flavouring of tobacco was the use of molasses...which was used to cover the hogsheads in the holds of ships...as salt water would ruin the tobacco on voyages back to Europe. Sailors would cut off pieces of this "treated" tobacco and either smoke it or chew it.

 

[jj1015]

That makes a lot of sense -- thanks!

 

[fumo bro]

From what I understand, tobacco was smoked "raw" by Native Americans until Europeans began shipping the "raw" tobacco back to Europe. Tobacco was loaded on ships, and, after a long journey across the Atlantic, the sailors noticed that the quality of smoking was notably improved - the smoke was less harsh and the aroma was greatly improved. What happened? During the time it took to cross the Atlantic, the tobacco fermented. The fermentation process breaks down harsh nitrogen-based chemicals naturally present in the raw tobacco along with other chemical transformations yielding tobacco with refined qualities (such as burning characteristics, increased aroma, and almost void of harshness). Since then, tobacco has been cured and fermented.

I grow my own tobacco and I have smoked it in the raw form. The raw form tastes terribly and burns poorly - I am not sure why anyone would want to smoke tobacco in a raw form unless it would be out of curiosity as I was curious myself. After fermenting my tobacco, it smokes remarkably. All of the harsh chemicals are gone, the aroma is accentuated and it burns much smoother. It also lowers the nicotine content - you will get a hell of a nicotine buzz smoking raw tobacco.

I suspect Native Americans smoked tobacco in the raw form for two reasons:

1). They were unaware of the fermentation process at that time. At that time, who would have thought to stack tobacco leaves in a large pile and wait several weeks before smoking - remember, the fermentation process was discovered "by accident" from sailors after a long voyage.

2). They smoked it for its nicotine content. After all, it was the nicotine buzz which procured the use of tobacco in ceremonial practices.

With all said, fermentation should be regarded as a necessary and natural means of preparing tobacco for smoking purposes. Just like cooking, I like my steak medium not raw.

 

[dantiff49]

i think the indians may have added a natural herb.

 

[Anonymous]

In the first place, the tobacco strain that ended up being "Virginia" came from Cuba. That took a while, as the English and the Spanish were not having too much to do with each other of a friendly nature.

In the second, tobacco was packed in hogsheads for shipment to Europe (England) . . .

In the third, high-THC cannabis here is an import from the Near East. Native, wild stuff is a good source of hemp. And (in the context of 16th-19th Century technology) not much else.

FWIW

:face:

 

[Kyle Weiss]

There's a lot of speculation as to the exact treatment of tobacco by the original "discovering" Natives. The ships still at sail on that one for me, and probably won't ever come to port. Anthropological discovery and logging accounts for historical record wasn't nearly as important as discovering new and better ways to promote trade and sales of goods (and taxing such things) to the various countries of European origin. So, exactly how tobacco started out could be a subject lost to time--I suspect it has many beginnings depending on region, and it's likely early cultivation in some areas had already taken the plant well beyond its "original" state. The explorers, conquerors and traders just took tobacco to the next level.

One thing is for sure, Mark's leaf was damned tasty, in that "I'm gonna eat a raw turnip!" kind of curious way. I didn't hate it. I might rarely seek it for some unknown reason. :lol: Many hands had their way with the strain of seed long before mark carefully sowed it into the ground and brought it up according to practice in his locale, giving it a nice, even flavor. Maybe one day I'll try "wild tobacco" and be in for a real treat.

8)