I had been trying to think of something interesting to post. As for the past few years I have just been a user of Snuff and known in my local Tobacconist as such I could not think of what to add. Well I do have a very large collection of books on Snuff as PDFs and also I have been conducting some experimentation (yes I am completely crackers). When I am in my idler hrs (and being lucky enough to have access to a well-equipped laboratory). I started to get the idea to grow some tobacco plants for the sole purpose of making snuff! Well the plants grew (you just fall in love more with the snuff when you see the plants growing) and then air dried them in the sun, cured them and aged them a little, ground them up, well the results were not bad, not bad at all. I then got to read information about Snus, and more importantly some super low nitrosamine Snus (search google: Northerner, purified Snus) and I was intrigued to read that it had lower N’s than Nicorette gum! Well I checked this out and it is absolutely true, in fact you get more of a dose eating quite a lot of common foods. Well the following season, I planted my crop of four plants (a secret location/back garden) and decided to try drying some leaves quickly, others slowly. Curing well I made a carrot! (Like the original snuff) just left it, some I pasteurised using steam, and some I put in the oven. I really went mad when I tried a completely new method that I will not mention just yet. Back in the UK I had the chance to get some of my samples analysed by a friend, I also gave him some commercial snuffs (I don’t want to give names or locations). This is all preliminary stuff (snuff?) and I know that most of the commercial English snuffs have extremely low levels anyhow, but what I am hoping to do is find the best way to make the lowest N’s snuff at home, I am going to publish the method under a Nom de plume for anybody interested. I hope to have this completed by next December 2011. As I need to re run this years work a second time. If anyone has any interesting documents/ methods regarding steam curing, then post I will test the results. (Although I wont be drawn to comment on anything just yet). If there are any producers out there? then i might have a chat in whispers regarding ideas… Happy snuffing.
Snus does not have low nicotine.
@Tom: That’s true, but the original poster was not referring to nicotine, but rather nitrosamines (carcinogens found in tobacco).
oh… I misread it.
If he/she’s using sun dried N. tabacum, the snuff would be low nicotine as well. Wouldn’t be much good in a carrotte either, since the enzymes &/or microorganisms that cause slow fermentation would be destroyed. This link might be of some use.
Hey Snuff Grinder, thank you for that very interesting. I see by your tag that you make or made snuff at some point would be interested how it turned out? i have never tried Torque snuffs are they nice?