Why would anyone pay a visit 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 even though instructed me in to select many leaves to grasp by their stems while then wrapping another by the top to produce help of tobacco. My father, being from upstate New york where propane was used many purposes, owned a propane gas company and very 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 of the curing barns.
Maybe from that being exposed I was exposed for 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 dehydrating. Back then chewing tobacco was sometimes similar twist or a plug, not the subtle stuff of today’s highly cased bags.
Years later, when I was grown, I was already familiar with many of the “store bought” cigarettes that rarely had filters. Lucky Strikes, Home Run, Camels, Chesterfield, Phillip Morris and some other. Eventually, the American taste turned to filtered cigarettes and professional compensation of intense toasted flavors and Turkish blends. However, as cigarette tobaccos were more and more enhanced with additives better transportation and communications led to the growth of international blends in pipe tobaccos where Balkan, Turkish, and English blends led to a wide variety of pipe shops even a rapid growth in new blends, cuts, and ways.
Maybe it is an individual recollection as many with the older ways seem better, but it seems that in now having so many options among cigarettes today, much of the flavor and aroma has left. With the hundreds of additives now the standard, are we smoking cigarettes or some lesser grade tobacco and myriad additives and preservatives?
When I first thought of Roll Your Own cigarettes my thoughts were of the old men I which are used to see who fascinated me with their dexterity as 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 inevitably leave you by 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 online market place I soon found presently there were indeed alternatives. After reading in RYO Magazine so 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 has got since experienced. Now, our home no longer has that foul reek of inferior tobaccos, in fact, the actual 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 no longer 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 light-weight blend, but sometimes put on pounds . the enjoyment of a superb Turkish blend or a good 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 likelihood to enjoy the finest 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, we both looked at one another with a grin. No taste, no flavor, a terrible bitter residual, and that all of the too familiar stench over the cargo box. As though an interesting spin on an old commercial, we are now smoking far less, but enjoying it so much more!
Smokey Johns Tobacco Company
424 Elmwood Rd, Lansing, MI 48917
(517) 703-8170