The definitive snuff flavoring technique thread

Good call copper, I’ll just edit that out. It never really belonged there, now that you mention it.

I found a somewhat informative report on how Wilsons of Sharrow flavors their snuff. They add their essential oil mixes directly to ground snuff. It is good to get confirmation on their methodology. [quote][color=#66FF33][/b]With the family’s permission, I have listed the blended tobaccos and ‘essential oils’ that are added to create each individual bouquet of Wilson Snuff and Fribourg and Treyer Snuff, yet the ratios will never be exposed to me. Once these ingredients were mixed into a container in the family scenting room, the door was opened and the container was handed to awaiting employee, who poured its contents into the mixing machine. Located on the first floor of mortars and pestles, a large geared water powered barrel, capable of holding 1000 pounds of ‘flour’ (ground, unscented snuff works), was the mixing machine. This water powered barrel simply spun around at a slow revolution, mixing together the family secret ingredients as well as the blends of Burley, Golden Virginian, Flue cures and, sun cures, that create each individual flavor of snuff. A link to the archived Sheffield Exchange website The table on this page listing the natural ingredients of many Wilsons and Fribourg & Treyer snuffs is extremely handy to have.

Samuel Gawith do it the same way, though on a rather smaller scale - I’ve seen it done at the factory.

I wrote and asked for a list including all the snuffs (the one on there is truncated), but they won’t give it; claiming secrecy. I found that odd, since it looks like it was clipped from something that had been published at one time.

With the exception of Schmalzer and carrottes, most commercials snuffs are scented after grinding. The indirect method is best for home grinding. The multiple sieving and rubbing out lumps necessary with the direct method gets to be a royal pain in pretty short order.

I’m moving toward flavor first then grind. Direct for me just makes a royal mess. Indirect is friendly but slower than what I’d prefer. My only concern is drying before grinding. I don’t want to lose expensive flavorings into the air in my shop, I’m also thinking that some flavors, especially oil based ones like florals, might work best if added in a blend step right before packaging. I’m guessing that oils would sit on, rather than infuse into the leaf powder. Hopefully no clumping. Also, this should make an impressive fragrance bloom on opening the tin and provide a lingering nasal fragrance since oil won’t transfer through nasal membrane (at least I think not).

Here’s what I’ve come up with so far from testing. Indirect flavoring is where a highly aromatic flavoring is placed in the same enclosed airspace as tobacco. Since the aromatic scent takes to the air, and tobacco is extremely absorbent of airborne scents, the tobacco picks up the flavor with no direct contact. This is very ideal when the aroma of a plant or other material is non-toxic, but the material itself would be harmful or otherwise detract from the quality of the tobacco. Rose flowers are an example of something where this is useful. Direct flavoring is the inclusion of a flavoring into the tobacco itself. This is normally a liquid. Such could range from essential oils, natural flavor extracts in a solvent, synthetic flavors such as liquid artificial flavoring used for candy, fruit juices, fruit peel oils, etc. I should note that not all flavorings work well with tobacco. Most should be okay for snuff providing the concentration is kept low enough as to avoid nasal irritation. Also, care should be taken to not add flavorings prone to spoilage. So far in my testing: Soda syrup concentrate (flavoring but no sugar) did very poorly. They are predominantly a fruit or other acid mixed with non-aromatic synthetic fruit flavorings. The acid does nothing in terms of aroma and lowers ph making the nicotine hit greatly reduced. The non-aromatic fruit flavoring is subtle at best and easily missed. Using more flavoring trying to increase aroma wasn’t effective. (note: smoked, this flavoring for tobacco was equally ineffective) Synthetic candy flavor oils are incredibly concentrated and highly aromatic. On the other side, nasally most of what I tried gave a fairly poor presentation of the flavor. Just imagine shoving those little red candy red-hot hearts from valentines day up your nose. Flavorful? Yes. Pleasant… hardly. As far as smoked, they actually did better than expected, at least a few flavors.

Contd. Extracts in solvent as used for flavoring baked goods fared somewhat better than the candy flavor oils. Made with natural ingredients the aroma was closer to what would be expected from a commercial product. However, the same issue I had with soda syrup came to play. Non citrus fruits have very little oil in the juice, much of it is simply sugar water and acid. Because of this, flavors like raspberry and cherry didn’t transfer well at all into the tobacco. Others like orange and aniseed did extremely well. Both sniffed as snuff and smoked in a pipe, the aroma was reasonable and pleasant. Also in the extract category is liquor extracts, mentioned briefly because I tried it. Tests with Rum extract produced a vile tobacco, worse than I can politely convey in words. Maybe it works in baked goods, but I don’t suggest it on snuff. Bleh! Chocolate flavoring is easy to make using cocoa powder and vanilla. 2 or 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder in a coffee cup, pour just enough hot water enough to dissolve. Cover and let it cool to room temperature, add a few drops of vanilla extract to hit a sweet chocolate smell, and then use as desired. Makes 2 or 3 ounces. Dissolving in grain alcohol is closer to a true extract, but I find water does well except the tobacco takes longer to dry. I’ve never tried pure essential oils… they’re outside the budget for the project I’m working on.

I know it’s not strictly a flavouring sense (although the tobacco of choice obviously effects the flavour of the snuff), but I’d be interested in having a go at making my own SP snuff. Is there a strict rule on the type of tobacco to use?

I really enjoy the warm, robust, almost leathery scent (along with bergamot and citrus, of course like all SPs) of WoS’s Gold Label. Probably because they use all American tobaccos like Virginia, etc. It’s pure bliss. So @danw1988 although I can’t help you with flavoring, I will recommend Virginia tobacco because its GREAT in an SP.

Thank you @transistor . I’ll bear this in mind. I’ve never actually tried Gold Label, so I’ll give this a try also.

@transistor Do they make any Latakia tobacco based snuffs that you know of? I would think that would be the “ultimate” in robust leathery scents.

@snuffnpuff Molens makes a latakia scented snuff (not made with latakia tobacco apparently)

@PikeMopers hmmmm… interesting, thanks.

wow! I forgot about this thread. Any pipe tobacco with Latakia makes wicked snuff no problems.

You might like the new toast range from Mr Snuff if you are into latakia.

@snuffster new toast range? by who?

@danw1988: For their SPs, WoS uses Zimbabwe Burley (flue and dark fired), so I think using a dark burley would be the place to start.

I’ve been using for that essential oils, and it’s very good. But what I’m not confident of is using synthetic oils. On one side - their aroma is stronger than of natural aetheric oils, and usualy the variety of tastes is a lot wider. But the big question - are they completely safe? Can’t they cause serious damage such as cancer?

After almost two years I certainly have some things to edit on my original post. Maybe sometime next year.