Why would anyone pay a visit to the effort to make their own cigarettes? While i can only answer for myself the reasons are a large number of. 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 after they instructed me in precisely how to choose many leaves to grasp by their stems while then wrapping another round top to produce a hand of tobacco. My father, being from upstate Nyc where propane was useful for many purposes, owned a propane gas company and very quickly afterwards invented the system that inaugurated the move from wood to propane in flue curing bright tobacco. Those many aromas and the bustle in the auction season still lingers with me as I think back on the many sensory delights of fine tobacco just out of your curing barns.
Maybe from that getting exposed I was exposed to an appreciation of what tobaccos SHOULD smell like. In fact, I even remember watching once as Applied to be given a lecture inside the differences between our fine Carolina brights versus those “other” tobaccos that were left in the virtual farmland. the burleys of the up-country. To even further educate me, I was once given a demonstration of how burley was soaked in a solution of sugar, salt and water, wrung out, shaken, and then changed to a twist for drying out. Back then chewing tobacco was sometimes a similar twist or a plug, not the subtle stuff of today’s highly cased bags.
Years later, when I was grown, I was subjected to many of the “store bought” cigarettes that rarely had filters. Lucky Strikes, Home Run, Camels, Chesterfield, Phillip Morris and some others. 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 range of pipe shops even a rapid growth in new blends, cuts, and likes.
Maybe it is a personal recollection as many of 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 gone. With the hundreds of additives now the standard, are we smoking cigarettes or some lesser grade tobacco and myriad coloring?
When I first thought of Roll Your Own cigarettes my thoughts were in the old men I accustomed to see who fascinated me with their dexterity whenever they hand rolled a smoke from one of the numerous over the counter varieties found in many groceries and pharmacies. For myself, this meant something made use of inevitably leave you using a mouth full of bitter shreds and a smoke that was dry, harsh, and packed the subtlety of a mule conquer.
However, after a moment of exploration on the online world I soon found right now there were indeed alternatives. Reading in RYO Magazine and a quick call to D&R in Smithfield, North Carolina, I was soon eagerly awaiting a shipment a good 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 have since experienced. Now, the house 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, right now both rediscovered the overwhelmingly pleasant taste and aroma of great tobaccos. However one totally unanticipated side benefit is that but today smoke far fewer cigarettes as the wonderful D&R and other blends are infinitely more satisfying. Even more, there is a lot more that coughing and congestion that used to accompany each morning’s waking.
Today, we have come a long way, once we now experiment with this blending and have studied the many varietals, variations, and characteristics. For general smoking there is the light blend, but sometimes there is the enjoyment of a wonderful Turkish blend or a dessert blend with just slightly of Latakia. Sometimes a sweet smoke and for enhancing times more of an English blend. The fun part is that our own own custom made cigarettes we now have the opportunity 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 it sounds too familiar stench up. 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