Why would anyone go to the effort to make their own cigarettes? While i can only answer personally the reasons are many. Coming from a low-country town in Carolina, I can still very well remember the sweet and pungent aromas of the tobacco auction season and the myriad sights and sounds that accompanied the auctioneer and buyers as they walked among the beautiful rows of golden leaves.
Due to my age, I can also recall sitting in the company of many others as they instructed me in just how many leaves to grasp by their stems while then wrapping another upon the top to produce a hand of tobacco. My father, being from upstate Miami where propane was used for many purposes, owned a propane gas company and shortly afterwards invented the system that inaugurated the move from wood to propane in flue curing bright tobacco. Those many aromas and the bustle belonging to the auction season still lingers with me as I’m sure back on the many sensory delights of fine tobacco just out for this curing barns.
Maybe from that getting exposed I was exposed with regard to an appreciation of what tobaccos SHOULD smell like. In fact, I even remember watching once as Applied to be given a lecture relating to the differences between our fine Carolina brights versus those “other” tobaccos that were left in the fields. the burleys of the up-country. To even further educate me, I was once given a demonstration of how burley was soaked in the solution of sugar, salt and water, wrung out, shaken, and then made into a twist for dehydrating. Back then chewing tobacco was either a similar twist or a plug, not the subtle stuff of today’s highly cased bags.
Years later, when We were grown, I was encountered with many of the “store bought” cigarettes that rarely had filters. Lucky Strikes, Home Run, Camels, Chesterfield, Phillip Morris and other ones. Eventually, the American taste turned to filtered cigarettes and the decline of intense toasted flavors and Turkish blends. However, as cigarette tobaccos were more and more enhanced with additives better transportation and communications led for the growth of international blends in pipe tobaccos where Balkan, Turkish, and English blends led to a huge selection of pipe shops which includes rapid growth in new blends, cuts, and different ways.
Maybe it is a personal recollection as many on the older ways seem better, but it seems that in now having a lot of options among cigarettes today, much of the flavor and aroma has died. With the hundreds of additives the standard, are we smoking tobacco or some lesser grade tobacco and myriad chemicals?
When I first imagined Roll Your Own cigarettes my thoughts were on the old men I did see who fascinated me with their dexterity though they hand rolled a smoke from one of numerous over the counter varieties found in many groceries and pharmacies. For myself, this meant something that can inevitably leave you using a mouth full of bitter shreds and a smoke that was dry, harsh, and packed the subtlety of a mule start.
However, after a moment of exploration on the net I soon found presently there were indeed alternatives. Seeing in RYO Magazine in addition a quick call to D&R in Smithfield, North Carolina, I was soon eagerly awaiting a shipment of an injector, some filter tubes and a wide selection of blends. Upon their arrival, my wife and I spent a few days sampling and experimenting.
I am now glad to say that we had been both thrilled with our purchases and what we’ve got since experienced. Now, our home no longer has that foul reek of inferior tobaccos, in fact, the new blends actually are more a fragrance than what previously was more that foul stench of stale cheap tobaccos. Too, has got both rediscovered the overwhelmingly pleasant taste and aroma of great tobaccos. However one totally unanticipated side benefit is that supermarket smoke far fewer cigarettes as the wonderful D&R and other blends are infinitely more satisfying. Even more, there is lengthier that coughing and congestion that used to accompany each morning’s waking.
Today, we have come a long way, as we now experiment with some of our blending and have studied the many varietals, variations, and characteristics. For general smoking there is a mild blend, but sometimes there is the enjoyment of a superb Turkish blend or a dessert blend with just slightly of Latakia. Sometimes a sweet smoke and tips times more of an English blend. The fun part is that with own custom made cigarettes we now have the ability to enjoy the highest quality in an incredible involving styles. Sometimes a thin, rolled smoke, other times a thicker injected smoke, with NO additives.
When we once tried the premium brand of pre-made commercial cigarettes, both of us looked at one another with a grin. No taste, no flavor, a terrible bitter residual, and that all too familiar stench in the air. As though an interesting spin on an old commercial, we are now smoking far less, but enjoying it so substantially more!
Smokey Johns Tobacco Company
424 Elmwood Rd, Lansing, MI 48917
(517) 703-8170