I stuff my own cigarettes with ‘smooth pipe tobacco’, which is basically cigarette tobacco with a more friendly tax classification. I’ve been thinking about making my own snuff recently, and it occurred to me that this smooth pipe tobacco might be a good source of base tobacco material. The reason I’m so interested in doing this is that you can get a pound of tobacco online for around the $12 mark, and that pound might even end up heavier after the resulting snuff was brought up to a good humidity level. If I can work out how to do this, I could get a pound or so of a basic unflavored snuff for $12, and then experiment with different flavorings to make my own snuffs, which is an extremely appealing idea to say the least… I cleaned out my injector machine the other day, and tried snuffing some of the powdered tobacco that had accumulated in the mechanism, but it burned like hell! What could the reason be for this? Could it be casings that have been applied to the tobacco? Maybe it’s just that the dust was too dry, not having been stored in an airtight container? Maybe it’s the wrong kind (cultivar) of tobacco? Has anyone had any success with ryo tobacco?

Cigarette tobacco - or as they have started calling it ‘dual’ tobacco for tax reasons - is a way off being snuff, so snuffing it as it is will burn. If it is actually re-packaged, ordinary RYO it may also have stuff in to make it burn evenly etc. Whatever, it can be made into snuff, as mostly any commercial tobacco can be. Its always a lottery using commercial stuff as to how it turns out, but it can turn out reasonably well. Just remember, if it is lousy tobacco, no amount of pimping it will turn it into awesome snuff. But you may get something useable out of it. When making snuff from raw tobacco you would have to deal with the potential for mould and oven it for a while, but with what you are using its probably pretty sterile. Get it to the the texture you want using a coffee grinder and get some hydration into it - more or less depending on taste. Hydrating it back a touch will smooth it out and between that and getting the grind nice and smooth you will get rid of some of that burn. Once its smoothed out and juiced up a bit you have your basic snuff. You can then experiment with your homemade casing sauces - just go with what you like. I would actually get this to the point of being a basic flour with a bit of added water and flavour it with any strong commercial snuff you like. A small tin of menthol added, just 10g or so, or a strong floral would cover any short comings. All in all its like making a roast dinner out of a tin of spam but odd things like this can work out ok.

So the problem is mainly the additives in the tobacco? I had a feeling that it might be the cultivar(s) used in the blend being different from those generally used in snuff. Quality of this stuff varies a great deal from brand to brand, the one I’m using at the moment is pretty nice (for smoking at least). I think I’ll try different grinds and moistures, especially the moisture part, as I like moister snuffs specifically due to the reduced burn. If I were to order whole leaves, which cultivars would you recommend to get something similar to, say, an SP type snuff?

There are dozens of ingredients in mass produced cigarette tobacco blends and many, many variables accrue - just assume they play their part in the end product; simply; you will work out by experience what works and what doesn’t. I wouldn’t even be thinking about strains just how the tobacco feels, smells and smokes. A lousy smoke is unlikely to be a great snuff. A good bodied and rich tobacco may be wonderful. Or not. Until you have tried it or talked to someone who has used a certain brand you can only go off broad principles. Making snuff is like baking; start with simple recipes that work and then experiment. If you want to go from scratch try Rustica foliage.

You’d probably be better off using a genuine pipe tobacco, rather than cigarette tobacco that has merely been re-labeled. Many pipe blends already have casing added, or use a blend of tobaccos that are tasty without added flavoring. There are some decent RYO/MYO tobaccos available, but most of the re-labeled stuff comes from low-grade leaf. The better the quality of the original leaf, the better the snuff it will produce.

I wanted to avoid real pipe tobacco because it often has fire cured tobacco in it, which I’m not fond of. My hope is to create a basic plain snuff to experiment with, so unflavored tobacco seems to be the way to go. I imagine that the tobacco used for snuff isn’t the highest grade, since it’s going to be pulverised anyway, just like they don’t use T bone steak to make sausages. I’m getting some new tobacco in the next few days, so I’ll experiment on a small portion and report back. As an aside, I once put a very small piece of pipe tobacco under my lip, and even though I’m no stranger to nicotine, I nearly threw up from the nic rush.

Some one a long time ago ground up a bunch of Bugler with amazing results, if I’m not mistaken.

Cigarette tobacco is mostly flue cured burley tobacco. can turn out some nice nutty snuff, but real plain. edm

That’s good news to me, nutty and plain fit well with what I hope to make. I like nutty, and the plan is to make a plain snuff to be used as a base. I’m thinking things like citrus zest and essential oils, and maybe violet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clA7fjn9ryw Great tobacco make a great product. I would use T-bone to make sausages and it be the best ever! Grow your own backy and your certain what you have to start with. Maybe it a couple decades you can create perfection.Trial and error till you get it right.Hope you succeed

@doctorbeat, I RYO pipe tobacco, and I oven-toasted some and ground it fine in a mortar and pestle. Odd that you found it to burn with heavy nic; in my experience it was very plain with almost no detectable nic hit. If anything there was a very faint toasted scent, almost like pumpkin seeds. I tried a few pinches and ended up pitching it; never did mess with flavoring or saucing it. But best of luck to you; hope you come up with something good!

@basement_shaman thanks for the video, I haven’t seen that one before. Anybody know what the snuff containers being used by the lab testers at 6:10 are? They look like the now-discontinued Robby’s Top Mint containers, but are a different color. I wonder if they are selling any snuffs in this container still? I’d love to get my hands on one. @James S. The heavy nic. wasn’t from the RYO tobacco, it was from some real pipe tobacco (dark and sticky stuff, though I don’t know which brand) that I placed under my lip. I most definitely got a burn from the RYO tobacco though, my eyes were streaming and I had a fit of sneezing. If you use a crank-type machine, you’ll be familiar with the dust that collects on the inside. That’s what I snuffed. Maybe it was the fact that it was bone dry, maybe it was the casings, maybe I just snuffed too small an amount (I only tried a tiny bit) or maybe a combination of all three. Is it possible that you got low flavor and nicotine because of the toasting? I understand that toasting makes the tobacco milder. I have yet to pick up a mortar and pestle, but I might have a look in my machine and see if there’s enough powder in there to try adding moisture.

Well, I just dried, ground, sieved, and then moistened some ‘Direct Buy’ RYO tobacco and tried snuffing it. The taste was just fine, a nice plain snuff with the ‘baking’ aroma that I love. What surprised me somewhat though, was the enormous nicotine hit I received! I’ve never experienced a nic hit from snuff, just the ‘lift’ that people often describe. This snuff made me slightly dizzy and nauseous, and made my forehead sweat, just like the first cigarette of the day if you smoke it too fast. I wanted a snuff with a decent amount of nicotine, as I want to use snuff to dramatically reduce the amount I smoke, but this may be a little too much. I’m going to leave it an hour or two and try another (much smaller) pinch. I wonder if this could be due to additives in the tobacco? I’ve read that cigarette companies use additives to increase the availability of nicotine in their tobacco, so maybe that’s it?

If its cigarette tobacco its probably from the addition of free based nicotine

@doctorbeat: yeah I used to use a crank-style injector…I had a Premier Supermatic (broke), an Excel (half-broke) and then some other one whose name I can’t recall…finally I gave up and I use the old flip-style; really it makes a fine stick once you get your portioning right and less parts to break. Much like you I enjoy retro-tech; if I had my way I’d be driving a White OO steam roadster to work and lighting my house with gasoliers…

Also most cigarette companies (at least here in the US) add stuff to the cigarettes to make them keep fresh for longer periods of time. So I would be cautious about using RYO or any thing else like that as snuff, but there are online vendors that will sell you tobacco leaves by the pound such as this site http://www.leafonly.com/ I’m pretty sure that they ship internationally as well. Best of luck to you.

I would use it as a blender - you can tone it down by adding a large chunk of any mild snuff that you like. Whatever, it seems like a success in general terms. There are not many true, high nicotine snuffs out there - things like toasts and scotch snuff are very efficient as opposed to very strong, due to the surface area. Things like Quit, which are higher in strength, will have a large proportion of stemless tobacco in them.

One suggestion I have when you’re preparing snuff or pipe tobacco is to blend small batches, when mixing. While it is very easy to add different tobaccos to one another, it is very difficult to take those tobaccos out of a blend. Buying a case of mason jars was one of the best investments I ever did. Blend less than you think!

Yeah I found leafonly.com, I think I’ll order from them instead of using the RYO. Minux, you’re right about blending. I was experimenting with the mill and the sieve I made, and accidentally added the RYO snuff to a snuff I made out of a cigar, just dropped it in the wrong jar! Snuffing this stuff was far more pleasant, but it’s still rather burny and sneezy, even though I made it very much on the moist side. Any suggestions about what to order from leafonly.com? Snuffster, I’m not sure about the Rustica idea, from what I’ve read Rustica sounds a little hardcore for my first home made snuff experiment! From what I gather, the old timers used to use flue cured Virginia- am I on the right track?

As I noticed from the whole leaf web site the snuff toby is the same selection as the pipe toby. Depending on your current taste of snuff I would choose my favorite.personally I like fire cure backy like latakia.I had grind some samual gawith black XX ;this is pure diesel fuel. if you can get your hand on S.G. cob plug that also has a great kick. I enjoy stuffing my nose with great snuff while puffing away the hour with a strong pipe full of backy it doesn’t get any better then this. As I read many reviews on snuff and pipe toby I notice some love it an some hate it so I look for reviewers that have similar taste as mine. Blending makes for an interesting experience. Dark backy no more than 30% with the lighter backy will more than likely will produce a more balanced blend of earthy goodness. Best of luck with your master piece.

It seems to be that flue cured Virginia is the way to go. As you said, the fire cured stuff would be great for blending, but not as a base. I emailed the guy about the Virginia scraps, the description says that they have cosmetic faults. As long as the taste is unaffected, the cosmetic qualities are unimportant, since they’re going to be pulverized anyway. I hope it’s only cosmetic, because the scraps are only $9.99/lb, which will make experimenting very inexpensive.

Try some Flue cured Burley too! Good for snuff blending. Virginia would be great for flavor, but mild in the Nic department. The Virginia taste in the Gold Label snuff is top notch. I have both Burley and Virginia currently aging as snuff, unflavored as of yet.

Yes, I was thinking of blending in some burley too. Can I ask you a little more about ageing? I really like the idea of doing this. At this low price, I could buy enough for a couple of years, and keep some for use and some forr ageing. I was thinking about putting it in mason jars (pulverized but unflavored) in a cool dark place, but I’m all ears if you have other suggestions. How long is too long for ageing? Will it continue to improve for years, or is there an upper limit?

Different strains of tobacco respond differently to aging. As a general rule, Burley undergoes the least amount of change over time, and Virginia the most. Perique, being a derivative of Burley, won’t change much in terms of the flavor itself, but it will mellow significantly with time. As for Orientals, your guess is as good as mine. As long as the airtight seal is intact, you can age tobacco indefinitely. In practical terms, very few have the patience to age a batch for more than ten years, although I’ve heard of a few very patient pipe smokers opening a 40-year-old tin and raving about how good it was. If you vacuum seal your storage containers, don’t bleed all of the air out. It’s the interaction between the air and the tobacco that allows for proper aging.

Yup, it’s Virginia I intend to age. I’m thinking of buying several pounds a year, some to use, some to age. I will be able to build it up so that I have ten year old stuff regularly eventually. Does the aging process lead to the buildup of nitrosamines, or does that process halt once the air is used up?

anyone know what brand of american cigarettes are made from virginia tobacco ?

I really can’t speak to the nitrosamine question, but it wouldn’t surprise me if aging increases them. By how much, I can’t say. Maybe someone else will have more information. @jpsks: Most American cigarettes will have a small amount of Virginia leaf, but they are mostly Burley. Some brands from Canada, the UK, and elsewhere are primarily Virginia, but I couldn’t tell you which ones.

American Spirits (judging by taste) contain a fair amount of virginia tobacco, although I don’t think they are 100% virginia tobacco.

Well I know that fermenting tobacco increases the nitrosamine content, but fermentation is not the same thing as ageing. Hmm. Well it’s probably best not to worry about these things too much. Setting the tobacco on fire is what really gets the nitrosamines going. I bet there are more nitrosamines in the smoke from one cigarette than there would be in a pound of aged virginia snuff…

Just got a reply to the email I sent to leafonly.com about their Virginia scraps. They are described as being in poor cosmetic condition, so I explained that cosmetics don’t matter as I will be turning it into powder anyway, but asked if flavor would be affected. Here’s the reply: Hi James, Sorry it took a while to get back to you. The Virginia scraps are in pretty good condition for scrap leaf - the flavor shouldn’t be affected. Looks like it’s ok for snuff then! The best part is that the scraps are only $9.99/lb, which means It will be cheap to experiment with. I can’t order for a week or two, so guys please don’t buy it all… :o)

I can’t afford the shipping to Hawaii.

How much is it? The shipping to NY is pretty steep if you only want a pound, $11 and change, but it doesn’t go up much if you buy more.

@doctorbeat - I use rustica for Abraxas - its not ‘hardcore’ - its what you do with it that makes it so. My snuff is very mild. I could also turn it into something like Dholakia White.

The shipping for one pound to 96753 is $48.93.

@Snuffster: well I’ve heard amazing things about Abraxas, so it’s obvious that very pleasant snuff can be made from rustica. Without giving away your trade secrets, could you tell me why my burley snuff burns so much, and what, if anything, I could do to mellow it down a little? I have made snuff from two different burleys, and it feels like cayenne pepper no matter how moist. @Juxtaposer: wow! That’s rather expensive! I tried putting increasing numbers of pounds in my shopping cart and checking how much this increased shipping costs. I found that each additional pound only added a buck or so to the shipping, so maybe you could try a similar experiment. You might find ordering a larger amount proves to be more economical in the long run. I have no association with the company, and I haven’t bought anything from them yet, but the guy seems very pleasant and helpful via email. Why don’t you try emailing him and asking if there’s anything he could do about the high shipping cost? From browsing the website, I get the impression that they often supply bulk tobacco, so this may have skewed the shipping prices a little. Often, these websites use an automatic system to estimate shipping costs, and if you speak to a human being, they might be able to give you a better quote. If he’s really nice, he may even pop a pound into a flat rate box for you or something. Might get you nowhere, but it never hurts to ask…

Fortunately I am not that interested in obtaining pounds of unprocessed tobacco. I have enough rustica, thuoc lao, mapacho, perique, turkish etc. for experimenting. I also plan to grow some plants this year so I should really concentrate my efforts there. I did look at getting the price down by upping the poundage but the result is just too way much tobacco for toying around.

@doctorbeat - it is impossible to say why your burley snuff burns because there are so many variables and subjective issues - I might take a pinch as a seasoned snuffer and detect no burn at all, or it may be additives that you are unaware of in the source tobacco. The only way to tone it down is to dilute it with other snuff. I recommend that you use the stuff you have made as a blending flour with commercial snuff - you can experiment with the flavours you like and end up with a hybrid that spins out your commercial snuff. If your home made is too strong just add it to some medium strength commercial snuff; Toque or WoS snuffs would be good. Toque also do a very nice neutral, mid nicotine snuff called Natural which would probably work well. The options are endless. There are plenty of posts about this and some stuff on the FAQ that should help. I would read as much as you can and then start from scratch again, rather than keep trying to modify something that has not worked out.

Yes, that seems like sound advice, it’s probably casings or additives in the tobacco. I’m just going to forget it and buy some unprocessed leaf.

Remember, rustica is an entirely different species of tobacco, not just a variety.

Ok, well with a little (ok, a LOT) of help from @Whalen and @Snuffmiller, I managed to make snuff out of this stuff! Turns out the problem wasn’t the tobacco, it was the fact that I was just pulverizing it and calling it snuff. To make even the most basic snuff, the tobacco must be processed a lot more than just grinding the stuff into a powder. The snuff is nothing to write home about, but it is pleasant tasting and has the proper nicotine ‘lift’. I’m pretty excited about this, because if I can make good snuff from mediocre tobacco using a rushed process, imagine what can be done with good tobacco and proper fermenting times :oD

You can also play around with lower temperature toasting, say 160 f for 2 hours, cooking radically changes the flavor. You will of course have to rehydrate after. My Spanish Folly was a toasted Rustica. @doctorbeat - Where are you located? I have a source for some heavenly whole leaf Virginia in the US. Glad your homemade snuff is turning out!

I’d like to try toasting. Well, what I should say is that I’d like to successfully try toasting. I tried once, but I actually toasted the tobacco as in partially carbonized it. I’ll try your suggested time and temperature and report back. I’m in NY, and I am definitely interested in getting hold of some Virginia.

Well, NY is doable. I will send you a PM. Toasting has to be done low and slow, my raw tobacco takes anywhere from 2 to 4 hours at about 160 degrees. Don’t go any higher, what you are trying to accomplish is converting the tobacco, driving out moisture, converting starches and sugars. I call it toasting, I guess slow baking is more like it. Be aware that copious amounts of noxious fumes will ensue. All that Raw “stuff” being cooked out. if you do this, please be careful not to get a lung full of the fumes, nasty!

Yeah, I already know not to breathe the fumes! Toasting is a bit of a misnomer really isn’t it? I guess it’s more like fractional distillation, getting rid of the more volatile components.