Why would anyone pay a visit to the effort to make their own cigarettes? While i can only answer personally the reasons are several. Coming from a low-country town in Carolina, I can still very well remember the sweet and pungent aromas of the tobacco auction season and the myriad sights and sounds that accompanied the auctioneer and buyers as they walked among the beautiful rows of golden leaves.
Due to my age, I can also recall sitting in the company of many others once they instructed me in just how many leaves to grasp by their stems while then wrapping another upon the top to produce a hand of tobacco. My father, being from upstate Nyc where propane was used for many purposes, owned a propane gas company and soon afterwards invented the system that inaugurated the move from wood to propane in flue curing bright tobacco. Those many aromas and the bustle for the auction season still lingers with me as Individuals back on the many sensory delights of fine tobacco just out of the curing barns.
Maybe from that being exposed I was exposed to an appreciation of what tobaccos SHOULD smell like. In fact, I even remember watching once as Applied given a lecture on the differences between our fine Carolina brights versus those “other” tobaccos that were left in the land. the burleys of the up-country. To even further educate me, I was once given a demonstration of how burley was soaked in the solution of sugar, salt and water, wrung out, shaken, and then reconstructed as a twist for dehydrating. Back then chewing tobacco was regardless of whether similar twist or a plug, not the subtle stuff of today’s highly cased bags.
Years later, when Irealised i was grown, I was encountered with many of the “store bought” cigarettes that rarely had filters. Lucky Strikes, Home Run, Camels, Chesterfield, Phillip Morris and others. Eventually, the American taste turned to filtered cigarettes and decrease of intense toasted flavors and Turkish blends. However, as cigarette tobaccos were more and more enhanced with additives better transportation and communications led into the growth of international blends in pipe tobaccos where Balkan, Turkish, and English blends led to a plethora of pipe shops as well rapid growth in new blends, cuts, and flavors.
Maybe it is a personal recollection as many on the older ways seem better, but it seems that in now having a lot of options among cigarettes today, much of the flavor and aroma has already gone. With the hundreds of additives now the standard, are we using tobacco or some lesser grade tobacco and myriad coloring?
When I first imagined Roll Your Own cigarettes my thoughts were of the old men I which are used to see who fascinated me with their dexterity whenever they hand rolled a smoke from one of the numerous over the counter varieties found in many groceries and pharmacies. For myself, this meant something that inevitably leave you with a mouth full of bitter shreds and a smoke that was dry, harsh, and packed the subtlety of a mule knock.
However, after a moment of exploration on the online world I soon found presently there were indeed alternatives. Reading in RYO Magazine in addition a quick call to D&R in Smithfield, North Carolina, I was soon eagerly awaiting a shipment associated with the injector, some filter tubes and a wide choice of blends. Upon their arrival, my wife and I spent a few days sampling and experimenting.
I am now glad to say that had been both thrilled with our purchases and what we have since experienced. Now, the house no longer has that foul reek of inferior tobaccos, in fact, the actual blends actually are more a fragrance than what previously was more that foul stench of stale cheap tobaccos. Too, right now both rediscovered the overwhelmingly pleasant taste and aroma of great tobaccos. However one totally unanticipated side benefit is that almost any smoke far fewer cigarettes as the wonderful D&R and other blends are infinitely more satisfying. Even more, there is lengthier that coughing and congestion that used to accompany each morning’s waking.
Today, we have come a long way, once we now experiment with our own blending and have studied the many varietals, variations, and characteristics. For general smoking there is the light blend, but sometimes there is the enjoyment of a solid Turkish blend or a good dessert blend with just slightly of Latakia. Sometimes a sweet smoke and tips times more of an English blend. The fun part is that along with own custom made cigarettes we now have opportunity to enjoy the highest quality in an incredible range of styles. Sometimes a thin, rolled smoke, other times a thicker injected smoke, with NO additives.
When we once tried the premium brand of pre-made commercial cigarettes, the two of us looked at one another with a grin. No taste, no flavor, an awful bitter residual, and terrific, right ? too familiar stench suspended in the air. As though an interesting spin on an old commercial, we are now smoking far less, but enjoying it so substantially more!
Smokey Johns Tobacco Company
424 Elmwood Rd, Lansing, MI 48917
(517) 703-8170
https://goo.gl/maps/sqMd1YLqExwwJctn9
Posted on:
July 11, 2019