Snuff making 101

Better grind first and alkalize the powder.

Vice-versa is possible (according to old tobacco processing handbooks), especially when making carottes, but in such case it’s necessary to add ammonium salts which prevent moistened leaves from mould.

Also, you can mill dry leaves with dry alkalis and add water (if needed*) into resulting flour.

*Some types of snuff (Madras, Indian white type) are made without water.

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Thank you @volunge

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@ALLex, if I ever spot glutamate in any physical store, I’ll give it a try and get back to you here. As I have mentioned in some other thread, so far I only tried flavouring snuff with Maldon smoked sea salt, and found it toothsome.

On a side note, I have heard oral tobacco homemakers casing dip and snus with soy sauce.

I’m tempted to give a cigar snuff a whirl, but I cannot procure any where I am. Thank you for sharing your experience, it’s rousing!

You can save all the coarser grains each time you’re making snuff, and easily reduce them to powder with electrical coffee grinder when larger amount accumulates (at least 10 g; 15-20 g would be optimal for milling in e.c.g.). A very nice snuff can be made from them!

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@volunge you are right about saving coarser grains for electrical coffee grinder.

I wish i could send some of my homemades or some of the cigars i can easily procure here but apparently customs here are very strict and basically i cannot send any tobacco, i tried ones and failed.

A genuine query i have is if it is safe for health to snuff pure Fire Cured Tobaccos though… 

Thats the only doubt i have with Toscano snuff.

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So, yes, the oral snuff product, nowadays widely known as snus, before kneading and addition of humectants essentially is a pasteurized snuff. If you cook snus and like coarse moist nasal snuff, save a handful of non-kneaded (without a glycerine and/or PG) for your nose.

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Milling Burley this morning. Leaves naturally moistened outside overnight, about 10-14% moist now. I was interested to see if my coffee grinder would cope with naturally moist leaf (usually I dry them out to bone-dry before milling), and it turned out just fine. So, taking it “neat”, as is, without any additives whatsoever, reduced to <150 (pretty fine powder) and >150 / <300 microns (coarse).

Tin notes of both fractions are rather faint, but in the nose favour blooms beautifully. The finer one is quite drippy, the coarser is a bit cloggy, but both are very enjoyable. Backdrip is minimal, and not bitter or acrid at all. I do get some nice nicotine from these little snuffs. Not a powerhouse by any means, but still an enjoyable fix. I would rate it “low” for the coarse and “low-to-medium” for the fine (fine is on a par to non-alkalized American scotches, like Tops plain).

Nothing compares to the natural aroma of non-alkalized tobacco flour with natural moisture content!

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@volunge very impressive ! /Great color and beautiful grinds, I adore the coarser one. 

By the way my plain coarse homemade snuff with Cuban tobacco from tripa corta short filler relative cheap Cuban cigars had turned absolutely tasty!

I only used water and sea salt and a pinch of baking soda (in my next batch i will not use the soda, practically it was useless in that small amount).

I forgot it in a jar for a month or so. Yesterday i opened the jar and let it evaporate some of the high water content by letting it sit without the lid in a wooden drawer for a day. 

Today it has little but good moisture and a very strong and long lasting tobacco aroma in the jar and in the nose too. It smells very similar almost identical to the barnyard of NTSU, only slight better. The earthy cuban leaf did its magic. 

I now believe that an earthy cigar leaf can make a homemade NTSU with that distinct barnyard tobacco aroma and not the alkalizer content or the fermentation of ground tobacco.

I am flirting with the idea to dry it more and remoisturize it with paraffin oil. 

P.S. I will upload some photos of it later when i ll get back home.

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@volunge

Cuban tobacco homemade plain coarse snuff:

https://imgur.com/a/sT8qeYH


Smells amazing very bold tobacco aroma with the same barnyard aroma of NTSU snuff.

Much better quality aroma than NTSU though.


Nicotine is solid medium very satisfying.


*Made from budget Cuban cigar but really good value for money, hand-rolled short filler tripa corta cuban cigar, Jose L. Piedra.

Some people refer to those cigars as mixed filler (little short filler with 4 long pieces of leaves for wrapper and binders if I remember correct). They are not short filler like gas station cheap machine made fake cigars or like cigarillos. 

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@ALLex, indeed, looks akin to Ntsu. Nice! Can’t wait to source some cheap additives-free Cuban cigars and turn them to snuff. Will try them with and without the carbonate/salt, finely and coarsely ground (drier and moister, respectively). Just three more weeks to wait till this happens… Once again, thanks for the idea!

I was also considering procuring a tin of Robert McConnel Cuban pipe tobacco from their Pure line, along with a tin of Brasil for a homemade plain schmalzler, and Perique. However, despite the name, these Cuban and Brazilian pipe tobaccos contain some additives; namely, about 3.3% propylene glycol and about 0.1% undisclosed flavour (according to data on BMEL), and this somewhat reduces my interest in them (I don’t mind PG in snus, but in nasal tobacco I don’t need a fracture of it, and 0.1% flavouring agent might be enough to change the natural flavour). Their Perique is actually pure, tho.

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@volunge 
I have seen those cuban leaf pipe tobaccos but I really doubt their authenticity. 

I feel that cigars are better fermented and aged than pipe tobaccos plus they are labeled as premium products and pipe tobaccos in general are not. 

Also Cuban cigars come from Cuba made by Cuban brand and you know that you really get Cuban tobacco.

This Robert McConnel brand isnt a Cuban Brand or made in Cuba so I doubt they use the real deal. Maybe they use Cuban seed tobaccos grown in Dominica Republic.  I dont doubt their Brasil or Perique or other varieties but only the Cubans. Actually I would like to try their Brasil too.

Jose L. Piedra cigars makes beautiful Cuban snuff (medium to strong in nicotine)

The fine grind one I made is blonde brown in color and the aroma stays in the nose for very long for such a  fine dry plain snuff. 

You can achieve the same aroma (but I think with lower nicotine but not sure about that) with the wider available Guantanamera cigars, they are Cubans but machine rolled and with precutted cap but  they still carry the same cuban aromas and they are still decent cigars for the cheap price. (nothing like gas station fake cigars with that brown paper binder).

Jose L. Piedra though are hand rolled, capped and I much prefer them for an everyday budget smoke.

I like to buy them by the bundle of 25, as my everyday cigars and I usually burn a bundle per month (still cheaper than a months worth of cigarettes)  I think you get better quality because the 25 cigars are all wrapped and boxed together aging like that in humidors of tobacco shops. The aromas u get when opening the bundle is pure heaven and for a snufftaker will instantly remind him the barnyard earth of NTSU snuff. =P~ 

But you get the same either by buying one single cigar or a pack of 5 anyway.

I like to smoke them and turn one or two of the 25 into snuff. 

I am sure you are gonna make some amazing snuffs!

Dont turn them all into snuff though ! Smoke one with a cup of coffee or a liquor they are very decent ! :)>-

P.S. There are also decent cigars out of Cuba of course. The other day I smoked some budget value for money Dominican Republic Cigars (one with Connecticut wrapper and one with Maduro). They were decent for an everyday smoke with coffee. They smelled very earthy, deep, grassy, kinda chocolaty. Not an amazing smoke but the cigar itself smelled delicious which is what a good snuff needs. I havent tried make a snuff out of them but I am sure they will make a decent snuff too! (Natural non flavored cigars with no brown paper binder of course)
I will try to turn one Dominican Republic cigar into coarse NTSU style plain snuff and see. I will use a budget value for money one of course.

But Cuban cigars have that extra iconic unmistakable aroma which is simply the best.

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@volunge here is the finer dry one:

https://imgur.com/a/OgSF2dP


I swear it is more powdery by naked eye than it seems in this photo :))

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Very nice home made bases! I recently bought a rock tumbler for milking the leaves. I have yet to try it. I’ll report back once it is tested. The only place I have found pure msg is at a local spice shop for outdoor cooking. I can send some out if you all really want to try doing it to a sauce.

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@StudiodecolBleu, to be frank, I’m not sure about MSG, it’s rather controversial substance… Available on some local online stores where I’m at, it is ridiculously cheap. I’m really on a fence about adding it to tobacco.

But how’s your rock tumbler, have you tried running it yet?

@ALLex, you are right about Guantanamera Cristales being low-nicotinic. The pure flour itself smelled divine, and just like in your experience with other cigars, the amount of ammonia released after the addition of relatively small amount of potassium carbonate (as aqueous solution, with just a dash of salt) was astounding. Now I’m super stoked to get my hands on stronger cigars or cigarillos! I’ll try something from Partagas or JLP, and definitely Toscanos. Will get back here once it happens.

Ammonia-wise it was on a par to Taxi Red, but nicotine was rather underwhelming. Additives: 20% water (cigar itself had about 10% natural moisture, so it scored somewhere at 30%), 4% potassium carbonate, 3% sea salt.

P.S. 4% alkalizer in my books borders the upper limit of light-to-medium alkalinization.

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@volunge That looks like a great snuff !  Yeah Guantanamera are a little light on nicotine.

I found they make beautiful smelling dry fine grind plain snuff though (with the addition of a very low percentage of alkalized water like two or three drops like the moisture in a toast).

Yes that Cuban aroma of dried flour is divine.

All Cubans have that aroma profile which is the best tobacco aroma in my opinion. 

Other cigars (non cubans) are very barnyardy and earthy too.

Toscanos are a different story. Cigars from fire cured burley  aka cigars from pipe tobacco, but it is so good especially in a dry fine form or in a coarse dry form with a lot of paraffin oil to moisturize it. I found that water spoils the smokiness of this snuff but maybe that was just my unlucky observations. 

Anyway keep this beautiful looking coarse snuff closed and maybe the aromas will unfold with time, something i personally witnessed with those cigars snuffs. At first when i add the water content they smell like nothing and after some days or even weeks they got that first dry flour divine aroma they used to prior the alkalization. I hope it will evolve in a good enjoyable snuff. 

But yes JLP are stronger and Partagas are famous for being strong cigars.

On another note, I found another good cigarillo for snuff making which is widely available in most Europe. A Swiss or German company cigar called Villiger. They are widely available in almost everywhere that sells cigarettes, you can buy one for like a little over 1 euro.

They are not the best to smoke but not the worst and still for someone who can appreciate tobacco they give a very decent full body 25 minute smoke for when you dont want to burn something good, like for when gardening. 

I am talking about Villiger Exports Classics (the yellow pack - there are some other packs brazil and maduro but not available in my country) and Villiger Premium No7 Sumatra (or No3 its the same but in different size). 

Villiger Exports gives a very nice cigar aroma snuff and decent in nicotine. 

Villiger No7 Sumatra gives also a very nice cigar aroma snuff with a kinda flowery edge speaking in cigar terms (not actual flower aroma) and decent in nicotine too.  (definitely stronger than Guantanamera, I called them a solid medium- medium to high nicotine hit).

They both have a peppery cigar aroma, very bold and very classic cigarish tobacco.

They are almost the same with mild differences. I think they both contain around 15% Cuban seed tobacco and 85% North American tobaccos in a Sumatra wrapper. As a binder they have that crappy fake tobacco pressed paper but just leave that outside of milling and the outcome is a really bold cigarish peppery tobacco snuff. 

I have made only fine grind with them and end up mixing them together because they were  very close in aromas (not the same though). I have to experiment with a coarser grind too. 

Also the flour seemed decent in nicotine and in this batch I added only water with sea-salt to make it more nose friendly and no alkalizers and I still find the nicotine hit decent. I imagine if properly alkalized it would maybe result in a clearly strong snuff. 

Some photos here:  https://imgur.com/a/FHj2BQx

P.S.: I finally bought an electrical coffee grinder  \m/  :))

 

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@volunge 

I saw on the Whats in your nose thread that you made some Hollander Bolongaro from Poschl Pueblo Classic tobacco  and made my mouth water 
=P~

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Hello sir i use cigarettes tobacco should i add something to it

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@volunge I tried it last weekend. I have no moisture meter. I have four or five different kinds of varietals grown for cigar rolling. I broke up Maryland 609 by hand. Dry enough to break apart but not to dust. Once tobacco was in tumbler I looked for something to grind the leaves in said tumbler. Looking around I found 3 silver eagle half dollars. The tumbler was on for almost a day and half. But the ideal equipment was not used. I will find some mild steel bearings and give it a go. Thanks for checking.

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Hello @Abdoulaye! Maybe you should browse inside this thread. On page 11, for instance, there is a quick recipe for making snuff with roll-your-own tobacco.

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May i ask why sodium carbonate exactly?! Is it for making snuff more moister?

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@junipero thanks brother

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