Heat maceration taste test
C1 series 50/50 pg/vg , 8 pipe blends , 2 ryo's and one blend of captain black with a generic black cavendish at a 50/50 ratio of concentrate.
I ran 7 flavors for taste tests among some friends and decided to call it in.
3 bottles of each flavor mixed at 20%, the first bottle was concentrate pulled immediately after the heat maceration (no extra time) , one bottle was made of concentrate that had been allowed to sit at room temperature for one week after the initial heating, final bottle 2 weeks.
the captain black / black cavendish had 4/5 of volunteers choose the 2 week hands down. One volunteer couldn't decide between the 2 and 1 week.
Imported whiskey - (imported + domestic tobaccos and scottish whiskey) 4 chose the 2 week maceration and one person prefferd the concentrate that had been pulled immediately after heating.
baja blend - (burley and virginia with green river black cavendish) - completely inverted! , some extra folks walked into the b&m and took part, 5 participants chose the baja that had not been left any longer than the initial 24 hour heating. 2 chose the 2 week, no one prefferd the 1 week.
captain black - one preferred no time, one preferred one week and 3 chose the 2 week.
Prescott valley vanilla- (burley and virginia with black cavendish) , 5/5 chose the 2 week.
Ryo1 - 2 chose 1 week, 3 chose 2 week.
ryo2 - another outlier, 3 chose the 1 week, one chose 2 week, one chose no extra time (heat only)
I had freshly ground coffee in a jar for the volunteers to sniff in between tasting, testing was done with participants blind to the age of what they tasted, using mech mods running duel coils at .3 ohm with japanese cotton.
I ended the tests at this point as it had become apparent that other than the baja blend the 2 week post heating maceration was what could be called "bare minimum" for real good flavor. I wanted to see if it was even distinguishable, well, on some of the blends they didn't even believe it was the same stuff.
You should do cigars next! although thing with those is since a majority of the flavor comes from the wrapper and binder, rather than the filler, you might have to macerate separately and then mix at different ratios in order to attain the same effects, meaning you'd have to disassemble the cigars
Im hearing from the other NET diy'ers that cigars are a challenege. 2 types have flavor shine through and dozens (including pricey ass cubans) cant be told apart.
An option here following your suggestion would be to buy whole cigar wrapper leaf , already dried and cured and macerate with that alone.
well there's the wrapper, binder, and filler and the flavor comes from all three together with the wrapper having the strongest effect, then the binder, then the filler.
They sell ground up wrapper only in places where they sell pipe tobacco, not all of them, but some, because there are people that like to take ground up bits of the wrapper leaf and mix that with their pipe tobacco, so i don't know if that's something you'd want to try.
but i was thinking just like any other juice recipe, maybe if you don't macerate the whole cigar together, but do the 3 parts separate, and then when they're ready mix them in different ratios like you would different flavorings, to try and hit that sweet spot.
Did you toast the tobacco at all before the infusion? I tried with a couple different types and I get a raw tobacco flavor, even with toasting it in the oven.
Thanks for this! My more modest experiments move along as well. Any follow-up on the frozen tobacco? Mine is steeping.
Awesome write up and well done test.
I'd be curious to see the same test done now on 2 week versus 4 week.
Obviously don't expect you to do it just cause I think it'd be cool though ;-)
Edit: Just as a reminder with the results here, what did you do for the heat maceration again?
ahh sorry,
1.Prescott valley vanilla- burley and virginia with black cavendish
2.Imported whiskey - import + domestic +scottish whiskey
3.black cavendish - steam sweetend and fire cured burleys with a hint of chocolate and
4.baja blend - burley and virginia with green river black
5.Tucson blend - sweet blackened leaf with lemon virginias and creamy vanilla, malt dressing and a subtle and sweet rum note
6.mellow- mellow
7.black and gold - black and gold
8.captain black - captain black
9.Amsterdam blend - roll your own cigarette tobacco
10."Netherlands" blend - roll your own cigarette tobacco
below I will refer to the pipe blends by the lettering of the names and the cigarette tobacco as simply RYO 1 and 2
All jars are 8 oz canning jars and each contains one ounce of tobacco to begin. The tobaccos were kept in a freezer before use for many days.
c1 series - 50/50 pg vg including 2 ryo , 24 hour slow cooker. Series Includes all tobaccos including RYO , purchased a slow cooker but having trouble lowering temperature below 180f. I left the jars , lids closed in the water for the amount of time noted, I put kitchen utensils at the bottom to keep the bottom of the jars from overheating
UPDATE: My cheap non mercury thermometer broke when checking temperatures 12 hours in, the cheap crock pot is scalding hot, I terminated maceration on the blends contained within it, both RYO1 AND RYO2 as well as the BB and IW. The IW has some kind of foam forming on it. The newer slow cooker I purchased at sears has bathtub warm water, I can place my hand in it no scalding. I'm placing the 4 terminated 12 hour heat extracted jars with the A1 and B2 series to cool.
so
ryo1 +2 and the import whiskey and baja ended up being 12 hour scalding cooks. The others straight 24 hours. my new series alluded to in OP I did straight 12 vs 6 hours heating then a cool and 6 hours heating to see if that effe4cts anything.
Odd thing is the baja stood out as 5 people out of 7 preffered the taste of the mix from the concentrate i'd pulled directly after the scalding 12 hours. Only 2 chose the 2 week post heating room temperature maceration.
However with the whiskey blend (which was also assaulted by the same heat) 4 chose the 2 week maceration and one person preferred the concentrate that had been pulled immediately after heating.
the ryo 1 assaulted by heat played out just like the normal 24 hour blends and the other ryo was a hodgepodge
I feel like theirs more to be explored with exact temperature, from my reading up on it everyone seems to have settled at about 150 degrees farenheit but no one can answer why. Sugar wont caramelize until you get to 338 farenheit so thats not the trick / problem.