Va red leaf dominant blend

[SmokesAhoy]

Are there any va red heavy blends out there that don't include exotic ingredients? I don't have Latakia but I do have fire cured Kentucky goodness. I don't have Turkish but I do have all kinds of first priming and second priming cigar types (I noticed the pipe seems to intensify flavors so I wouldn't want to use viso or higher). Other than that I also have burley and dark air.

So with the fixings I have, what would you blend to make a good straight tobacco blend? I enjoyed dunhill Elizabethan mixture which is va bright for what must be a huge %, then perique and dark air which must be a tiny %. It's also cased with something, care to guess what it could be? I wouldn't mind using this recipe as a foundation. It's good. I paid over 10 bucks for 50 grams, I have 10 pounds of red fc incoming from WLT for about the same price per pound. I feel silly paying that much for the dunhill when the Don is such a smarter buy.

I figure I can just shred the components and start mixing small amounts but maybe someone can help and speed up the process.

Thanks

 

[Matty]

When I make pipe tobacco I usually only use 3-4 varieties and no "sauce", just a little H2O. My technique is to bring the un-shredded tobacco to medium case then roll and bind to make a "carotte" which I just leave hanging in the open for a week or two. The moisture and compression changes the tobacco in a big way. For you, red leaf and 10-30% fire cured alone would make a decent smoke with my technique. It would be a good starting point anyway.

 

[SmokesAhoy]

Awesome, I'll do exactly that to start, thanks

 

[Matty]

One of my current batches is mostly VA red (hand and machine harvested), some VA bright, Prilep and Latakia (very little for both, maybe 10% each). I used two halves of a firecured leaf to wrap the whole thing up. Nothing but some water to case and a tight wrap in a carotte.

The plain red and firecured blend will bite (I manage by babying the bowl a bit) so don't go hog wild with it before trying it first. A little aircured will help lots, no more than 30%. Try the firecured and red first though, it is a good base to work with.

 

[Planter]

How alkaline is your Kentucky?

I found 25-30% of Toscano cigar filler (which is fire-cured Kentucky thoroughly fermented) works well with flue-cure types and entirely removes the bite + slows the smoke.

You could stove the Va red a bit as well.

I recently made a blend like that with dark-stoved, flue-cured Prilep wrapped around a Toscano. Cased it with Lagavulin (a very peaty malt whisky) and pressed it flat into a cake for several days. It looked, smelled and smoked quite like Latakia.

 

[SmokesAhoy]

So I mixed some light fired with first generation red Virginia just a bowl worth, about 10%
Very pleasant, smells great and tastes even better. As far as a simple foundation to start with, this is exactly what I was looking for, thank you. The KY is taming the VA bite very well. Also this is straight from the bag without the carrot process happening yet and already very very nice.

So thank you, I'm sure I would have started my tests with more leaves and higher ratios of them if you hadn't posted that and am sure I would have missed this altogether, and for being such a simple blend I'm surprised at how good it is. Although I probably shouldn't be, the ingredients are top shelf.

Anyway, I just wanted to pop in and say thanks, enjoying the hell out of this pipe.