Growing cigar leaf in central Italy: @UmbriaFarmer

[UmbriaFarmer]

If your too worried with the higher temps you can always lower the temp to between 110f- 118f but you will also have to lower the RH to be around 62-67% to significantly reduce mold risk. Thats how i have done it this year. It is just an experiment but its working. Also the lower temp and Rh dont darken the leave as much as higher temps and rh

I'm no longer worried. Bob provided clear impeccable citations of where his figures come from and now, with that worry gone, I am extremely happy with my setup. It needs to be practical and functional on a relatively large scale (96 plants, 1800 leaves) and not need full-time round the clock nursing. Now I open it up about every 3 days (I monitor the internal temp and rh from home with an app), pull out the 40-odd hands of 25, re mist them then replace them in a different order. Been 2.5 weeks now. I have the rh at about 92 which in practice is moist but nowhere near soggy. If it goes down to 80, 82 ish, the outer leaves start to verge on crispness...which I don't really like as I know both microbial and enzymes transformations generally are much quicker and more thorough when wet rather than dry. Anyway, my point is, it's so low maintenance I am super happy to let it carry on for 8 weeks. Also, it's not even half full yet and I reckon by about Sunday my 3rd priming will have finished curing and that'll be another 35 hands to put in!

 

[FarmingMachinery]

Great update, @UmbriaFarmer! Your low-maintenance approach is really impressive — monitoring temp/rh with an app and only opening every 3 days is very practical for that scale.

You're absolutely right about the humidity. At 92% RH, the microbial and enzyme transformations are indeed more active and thorough — that's why bulk fermentation works so well. The key is keeping it moist but not soggy, which you've nailed.

As your scale continues to grow (1800 leaves and not even half full — that's great!), you might eventually hit a point where manually re-misting 40+ hands every 3 days becomes time-consuming. I've seen small commercial fermentation chambers that handle humidity automatically — built-in misting systems, programmable temp/rh cycles, and even remote monitoring built in. They're essentially the same principle as your setup, just automated. But for now, your DIY approach is clearly working great.

How's the fermentation progressing otherwise? Any ammonia release yet, and how's the color developing on the wrapper leaves vs the ligero?

 

[UmbriaFarmer]

Great update, @UmbriaFarmer! Your low-maintenance approach is really impressive — monitoring temp/rh with an app and only opening every 3 days is very practical for that scale.

You're absolutely right about the humidity. At 92% RH, the microbial and enzyme transformations are indeed more active and thorough — that's why bulk fermentation works so well. The key is keeping it moist but not soggy, which you've nailed.

As your scale continues to grow (1800 leaves and not even half full — that's great!), you might eventually hit a point where manually re-misting 40+ hands every 3 days becomes time-consuming. I've seen small commercial fermentation chambers that handle humidity automatically — built-in misting systems, programmable temp/rh cycles, and even remote monitoring built in. They're essentially the same principle as your setup, just automated. But for now, your DIY approach is clearly working great.

How's the fermentation progressing otherwise? Any ammonia release yet, and how's the color developing on the wrapper leaves vs the ligero?

Yes, ammonia started after a week. It was interedting because the smell of ammonia didn't start to be noticeable until the hands had been out of the barrel for a few minutes. I was airing them out and rearranging them when I suddenly thought I could smell the urinals in a mens washroom. Really stinky! Then of course I realised it was coming from the hands. I can't say about colour difference between wrapper and ligero as the ligero hasn't finished curing yet - it takes much much longer for 2 reasons, I believe. One is obviously the leaves are much thicker, like a lot thicker, the other is that we are moving into autumn here now so afternoon temps are down from about 38 to about 32°C and night time humidity up from about 65% to 85%, so understandably the ligero cures more slowly. Nonetheless it is still curing beautifully, I am observing the rate at which the midribs are dtying out and I predict the viso/first ligero priming will be ready on Sunday, maybe monday. So that will be a busy morning for me as it amounts to about 35 hands. I will get up before sunrise, that way the leaf will be just soft enough from the night time humidity for je to take it down without doing any damage. Then I mist it, leave it for an hour, mist it again and place it in big plastic bags, leave it for a couple of hours, then open the bags up, tie it into hands, weigh and record everything then load it into the piss-stinking fermentation barrel!

 

[UmbriaFarmer]

So, for anybody who's interested, yesterday I added a further 12 hands to my kiln from the second priming, so mostly viso, which yesterday had finished curing. It amounted to about 40% of the second priming, the remaining 60% or so needs another week to finish. So I opened up the kiln and again the first thing I noticed was a clear acidic note to the vapour that slightly caught in the back of my throat. Apart from that, very rich dried, candied fruits like a rich fruitcake really. The oldest hands in there have been fermenting for almost 3 weeks. Very little ammonia, which surprised me. I also noticed the oldest hands are now considerably darker than the new ones. Overall things are proceeding better than I dared hope for.