Natural Tobaccos - Part Deux
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There are also FDA approved versions of these from what I've read... They seal the "fabric" ( but not the pores ) on one side so the loose particles from the filter don't get into whatever you are filtering... I never tried to source either so I can't tell you more than it's what I read about.
i know i'm gonna get ..... but honestly I can't read thousands of pages to figure this out. I am a fan of n-e-t.com's juices but obviously am in a holding pattern from them like everyone else. I also love riverbottom fog sauce, particularly porch rocker. but rbfs is just too pricey.
So what do I do? I ordered 3 of gej's juices (analog, organic, and apple cured). I expected the apple to have some flavorings added. but the others clearly had some artificial sweeteners added. maybe I am naive and the two aforementioned products also have added ingredients, but they damned sure don't taste like it.
I want REAL straight up tobacco extracts at a reasonable price (less than $20/30ml, the lower the better). I would like for them to be similar to n-e-t or rfbs. i don't want added sweeteners or other fake flavors. just the real thing. frankly i'm a little p$#@%d that even with a supposed organic tobacco with "nothing else in the way" from gej i'm tasting fake ingredients.
please help me out.
So what do I do? I ordered 3 of gej's juices (analog, organic, and apple cured). I expected the apple to have some flavorings added. but the others clearly had some artificial sweeteners added. maybe I am naive and the two aforementioned products also have added ingredients, but they damned sure don't taste like it.
I want REAL straight up tobacco extracts at a reasonable price (less than $20/30ml, the lower the better). I would like for them to be similar to n-e-t or rfbs. i don't want added sweeteners or other fake flavors. just the real thing. frankly i'm a little p$#@%d that even with a supposed organic tobacco with "nothing else in the way" from gej i'm tasting fake ingredients.
please help me out.
Don't hold your breath. For my order placed on 4/7, it shows on the NETcom website that the order was shipped on 6/25. However, when I check the tracking number on USPS.com, it shows that just the label was entered on 6/25 and no further status. More fun and games from NETcom. At least the label got entered two weeks ago. I guess that's some progress.
It's pretty sad that when I want to check my order status on NETcom's website, when I click on the dropdown for orders placed in the last three months, my order doesn't even appear anymore and I have to select orders placed in the last six months. Now that's customer service.
Thank you NETcom for motivating me to start doing home extractions. For that, and that alone, I will forever be grateful.
Try GeJ's Acadian Gold, Wild Turkey, and Wrangler Light. Wrangler Light is a touch sweet, but I think it's just the tobacco casing pre-extraction. Some of QNJ and EtherVapes juices (without flavorings) might also be what you're looking for.
I kind of disagree with this. I think you want the plunger to push all the way down and press out "the good stuff", just intuition but I like using my big stainless steel turkey injector. And really unless you are supplying a small amish community you don't need something the size of a French press
When extracting my liquid, I don't squeeze the Medium (Tobacco, Clove or Coffee) at all. I empty the liquid into my Doubled Coffee Filter and let it drain, squeezing lightly for the last bit in the filter and doing it twice. For my last extractions, I've added the 5 micron filter, without the French Press, to further purify the finished extract.
I also filter before and after I heat-assist reduce/ concentrate my extracts. I doubt my non-squeezed extracts any noticeable flavor loss, and hopefully were just a bit cleaner on the coils.
Bill, do you reduce/ concentrate your PGA extracts or just filter and mix to vape?
I always adjust my setting by taste, but usually wind up in the 8-12Watt range depending on the juice and coil resistance, 1.4- 4 ohms.
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i'm hesitant to give any more money to gej just yet. i guess after having n-e-t and river bottom i just didn't expect other companies to be putting things like sweeteners in their net's but it's understandable if they're popular that way.
ethervapes looks promising. and i'll check out some others. but im still interested in whether they are similar to what I'm trying to replace. I dont want to spend money and days waiting for a bottle of something with weird flavorings added.
ethervapes looks promising. and i'll check out some others. but im still interested in whether they are similar to what I'm trying to replace. I dont want to spend money and days waiting for a bottle of something with weird flavorings added.
L A Poche cures, processes and sells St. James Parish Perique and Accadian Perique. St James is the "traditional", unaduterated Perique descended from the Indians of the area. It is used in tobacco blends at 5 to 15 percent of the blend and when smoked straight, most call it an unpleasant experience. While pure St. James Parish Perique is available, it is nearly impossible to access at the consumer level.
Acadian Perique is a blend of St James Parish Perique and Green River Burley processed by the Perique method. In our lifetime, most of the Perique available has been this blend but the percentage of St. James Parish used to make Acadian is proprietary. I never smoked straight St. James or Acadian but many respected tobacco blenders have and most say they actually prefer the Acadian straight up. My Blending Perique which I'm sure is Acadian has plenty of flavor for me.
Others have tried growing the same seeds in other areas and processing in the Perique method but by most accounts these efforts were dismal failures. No respectable blender will buy from the Perique wanabes.
Percy Martin was the one time lone Perique grower often referred to in articles. He's the one that found a market with Santa Fe Tobacco, manufacturer of the American Spirit line of cigarettes. He broke away from Poche in 1999 in an argument over the value of his crop that year and he was the source of Jewel of St. James, the last straight St. James available to consumers and it was marketed by Nichols.
Percy Martin died in 2012 and his son Ray runs the farm today. I can't find conclusive evidence but think that Ray now grows for Poche. Anyway, Mark Ryan, owner of Poche and the guys at Santa Fe seem to be tight now. Doesn't make any difference really as Santa Fe tied up Martin's entire supply previously anyway.
So if a consumer can't access straight St. James Parish Perique and it is only included in blends at a very small percentage, what is the difference? If you blend with Acadian, you have to use a little more, that's it. I'm done hunting unicorns.
Acadian Perique is a blend of St James Parish Perique and Green River Burley processed by the Perique method. In our lifetime, most of the Perique available has been this blend but the percentage of St. James Parish used to make Acadian is proprietary. I never smoked straight St. James or Acadian but many respected tobacco blenders have and most say they actually prefer the Acadian straight up. My Blending Perique which I'm sure is Acadian has plenty of flavor for me.
Others have tried growing the same seeds in other areas and processing in the Perique method but by most accounts these efforts were dismal failures. No respectable blender will buy from the Perique wanabes.
Percy Martin was the one time lone Perique grower often referred to in articles. He's the one that found a market with Santa Fe Tobacco, manufacturer of the American Spirit line of cigarettes. He broke away from Poche in 1999 in an argument over the value of his crop that year and he was the source of Jewel of St. James, the last straight St. James available to consumers and it was marketed by Nichols.
Percy Martin died in 2012 and his son Ray runs the farm today. I can't find conclusive evidence but think that Ray now grows for Poche. Anyway, Mark Ryan, owner of Poche and the guys at Santa Fe seem to be tight now. Doesn't make any difference really as Santa Fe tied up Martin's entire supply previously anyway.
So if a consumer can't access straight St. James Parish Perique and it is only included in blends at a very small percentage, what is the difference? If you blend with Acadian, you have to use a little more, that's it. I'm done hunting unicorns.
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kevin,
Let me offer a sort of sideways response: Since I started vaping nearly four years ago and, more pointedly, since I began doing my own home-based natural tobacco extractions 16 months ago, I've learned more about tobacco than I did over the entire 40 years that I was addicted to smoking cigarettes. A very significant part of what I've learned is that almost all tobacco that is grown/cured/processed for retail sale contains added sweeteners. Sugar reduces harshness and heat when tobacco is burned and inhaled, so---over the past century---the practice of "casing" has become nearly universal. Casing is a process of spraying a water-based sugar solution on the tobacco leaves that is then absorbed into the cell structures. Casings may be applied at any time---on the living plants in the fields during growing, on whole leaves after harvest or during curing, and---most typically---on cut/chopped leaves during processing that follows curing. I don't know for sure what types of sweeteners are used: sucrose, corn syrup, molasses, etc. I do know that the dilution of the sweetener varies, and that other flavorings---some natural but often synthetic---may be sprayed on as well as part of the casing.
In addition to casing, there is also "toppings." These are alcohol-based solutions of sweeteners or flavorings that are sprayed onto the leaves in the last stages of processing. Being alcohol-based, toppings are not absorbed into the leaf cells. Instead, the alcohol evaporates quickly, leaving the sweeteners and/or flavorings as a coating on the surface of the leaf. Many if not most "aromatic" tobaccos are topped. Beyond that, NET vendors using real tobacco extracts often add even more flavorings during mixing of their NET eliquids, depending on the flavor they're trying to achieve with each particular juice. That's a common practice among the A-List NET vendors we discuss in this thread. As an exception, River Bottom Fog Sauce specifically states that their natural tobacco eliquids contain "no flavor additives of any kind," but that does not imply that the tobaccos used to create the extracts weren't cased or topped. They almost certainly were.
I'd imagine that some uncased/untopped tobacco is probably available, but even so-called "organically-grown" tobacco can be cased, since sugar is considered a "natural" substance. I don't know where one goes to purchase such unadulterated tobacco, but I presume that sources do exist. As I wrote at the beginning, however, if you buy retail tobacco blends or even "varietals" for blending---as many retail NET producers and home extractors do---then it's nearly certain that the tobacco has been cased with sweetener, and perhaps even topped with additional flavorings.
This is just a head's up, really. Finding an NET natural tobacco eliquid completely devoid of added sweeteners and synthetic flavorings may be more challenging than one might assume.
My interpretation of your post is that your concern is not purity, per se, but rather taste. You want your brain to register the flavor of your tobacco eliquid as natural, right? Meaning natural as opposed to synthetic. That moves the discussion into more individual and idiosyncratic territory.
For the record, I share your disdain for the ridiculously elevated prices charged by certain retail NET eliquid vendors, especially some of the newer "boutique" vendors. That's one of the reasons I started making my own natural tobacco extracts and juices.
Since you love Porch Rocker, you may also like Southern Gentleman from MountainOakVapors. It's a similar style multi leaf blend with the light dose of Latakia. If you enjoy stronger Latakia blends, their Apache is a pretty great NET. One nice thing about MOV is their descriptions are very detailed, and they have separate pages for their NETs and synthetic tobaccos.
Want2Vape has a selection of very authentic, unadultered NETs. They are fairly potent, but also fairly gunky on coils. In the other direction, there's MyVapeJuice which has a huge line of straight-up cigar and pipe tobaccos which are much cleaner than W2V, but also much subtler in tobacco flavor.
Ahlusion has two straight-up, in your face NETs; Blue Grass Burley and Devil Dog. Devil Dog is similar to Apache from MOV, an English style blend with a big dose of smoky Latakia.
I haven't done any testing to determine if the regular solvent liquid tastes different from solvent squeezed from the macerated tobacco mass, nor whether the former is cleaner performing than the latter. As a result, I can't say with certainty that the absorbed liquid is "the good stuff." Heck, maybe it's "the bad stuff." At any rate, not squeezing out absorbed liquid is a choice rather than a good or bad practice. I say, do what pleases you and/or makes sense to your way of thinking.
I did my first two PGA-based cold macerations last week, so everything is experimental thus far. I used 50ml of Everclear as the maceration solvent. After five days, I filtered the solvent with my French Press 5-micron method, then gently heated the liquid in a pan to evaporate all but 10ml, which was thicker and darker. To this evaporated "concentrate" I added 40ml of PG, stirred until uniform, then re-filtered through a single paper coffee filter in Melitta cone to remove nasty oil globules. (I'm not enthused about vaping grain alcohol.)
Both juices I mixed from the two PGA/PG extracts are very light in color. I'll bet they're clean performers, but I haven't vaped either of them long enough to know yet.
Compared to heat-assisted PG/VG macerations using the same amount of tobacco (1/2 ounce), the PGA/PG method is significantly less efficient, both in yield (50ml of extract versus 150ml) and percentage of extract used to mix NET juice (25-30% versus 15-20% for regular heat-assisted PG/VG extract). In other words, my PGA-based extracts make only about 160-200ml of finished juice, while heat-assisted PG/VG extracts make 750-900ml. That's a BIG difference. So far, however, I'm knocked out by the open, expansive, and wonderfully subtle flavor of the PGA-based extracts. Wow. Really delicious. It might be worth the extra work (evaporation, two filterings) and higher cost (Everclear ain't cheap). Time will tell on that, though.
Next, I'll try two Rocky Patel cigars with the PGA method. Extracting cigars is altogether different from pipe or RYO tobacco blends, so I'm curious to see how PGA does with cigars.
Wow Bill, you're venturing into what looks like much more complex extractions. What tobaccos did you use for the PGA soaks?
I see you read Kevin Godbee's and Russ Ouellette's articles on perique.
Sorry I got your shorts all up in a bunch.
I'm still interested in any DIYer's perique tobacco source (St. James, Acadian or faux, I'm just interested in the end result) that gives a macerated juice closer to the GeJ N.P. end of the taste spectrum vs the NET.com end. I'm hoping there a DIYer who has experience with both NET.com and GeJ N.P. for comparison.
Thanks.
Sorry I got your shorts all up in a bunch.
I'm still interested in any DIYer's perique tobacco source (St. James, Acadian or faux, I'm just interested in the end result) that gives a macerated juice closer to the GeJ N.P. end of the taste spectrum vs the NET.com end. I'm hoping there a DIYer who has experience with both NET.com and GeJ N.P. for comparison.
Thanks.
Just ordered Ether's new Nets; Midnite Lite, El Dorado and Red Dawn. I haven't had an unvapeable NET from Vash so I'm pretty damn excited to say the least.
I'll post my thoughts on fresh out of the box and after a week or so steep.
I'll post my thoughts on fresh out of the box and after a week or so steep.
Just ordered Ether's new Nets; Midnite Lite, El Dorado and Red Dawn. I haven't had an unvapeable NET from Vash so I'm pretty damn excited to say the least.
I'll post my thoughts on fresh out of the box and after a week or so steep.
Sup Shat, have you dipped into The Godfather yet?
Midnite Lite and Red Dawn are on my list to order, look forward to what you think of them.
I started picking the Perique out of American Spirit Black. It's very time consuming, only got through three cigarettes worth so far. Them little black ribbons are squirmy little suckers. I'll report back at the end of the year on my progress.
I used two English pipe tobacco blends I've already extracted before---Hearth & Home Magnum Opus and Milan Sultan's Blend. Both are complex blends that are aromatic (meaning that they are cased/topped with other flavorings. I bought one ounce of each last fall, used half an ounce for the PG/VG heat-assisted macerations in November 2013, then last week I used the remaining half-ounce (that has been in sealed baggies) for the PGA-based cold macerations. That way, I could compare the results of different extraction methods that used exactly the same tobacco. Not merely the same brand or kind of tobacco, but literally the tobacco from the same order.
The only flies in that experimental ointment are the respective ages of the tobacco and the juice made from the extracts---new and fresh versus nine months old. How much that might invalidate comparative conclusions about the two extraction methods is uncertain. Some probably.
In both sets, the older liquid has flavor that is, comparatively speaking, more blunt and compressed, with bass notes emphasized. The new liquid made using the PGA-based extract has a flavor that I'd describe as open, expansive, and more subtle. The actual flavors are identical, but the experience of the flavor delivery is markedly different. So far (after two days), I really like the PGA-based extract flavor.
With PG/VG macerated extracts, the tobacco flavor gains strength and presence over time, gradually taking center-stage over any non-tobacco flavors the longer it steeps. I don't yet know how PGA-based extracts will age.
Lol, hope it's worth the work.
I can't imagine why the PGA extracts wouldn't age the same. Then again, I have no idea why tobacco flavor gains strength over time in any macerated NET. I'll still make an uneducated guess that the alcohol ones will increase in flavor while it ages.
Lol. I actually considered doing that, for about 2 seconds. I've checked every tobacco shop within 30 miles and only tow carried blending periques. One shop's was a medium brown color w/o any defining aroma. The other was a dark brown with very little aroma, so I bought it. As I said maceration was very disappointing at best. I'd buy online but I hate to be spreading my credit info all over on a unicorn chase. I'd rather narrow down the likely suspects first.
So you'll have your maceration before the first of the year?
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