Tobacco is both cool and fun and with a minor amount of effort it can become not only a life threatening habit but a enjoyable hobby as well. I'd like to discuss a few tricks I have learned for making pipe tobacco awesome and I will hopefully be growing my own crop next year so I'll probably blog about that too.
Periquing
Perique refers to both a type of pipe tobacco which has been fermented under pressure as well as a method of storing, aging and blending your tobacco where it is tightly tied into a bundle. For the purpose of this we will be speaking about the latter as this is an easy first step at getting some really good flavor and smoothness out of basic tobacco you can find anywhere.
What you need
-Two or more types of tobacco(can be done with a single type but works better if two flavors are being mixed)
-Food safe sheet of material(I use the side of a rice bag I cut out for this as it is both waterproof and flexible)
-Twine
Method
Mix the tobacco you intent to use together you want it to be evenly distributed before you roll it up. Place the tobacco on your sheet of material in a line at one end. Make sure the tobacco is piled together as it is essential for as much of it to be touching as possible. Think of it like rolling a cigarette or joint but way tighter you don't want any holes or loose areas.
Now you want to roll the material around the tobacco as tightly as humanly possible and fix it shut so it doesn't fly open on you(tape or rubber bands work well for this). Once you have it rolled and secured you will want to use a clove hitch to secure the twine to the very middle of your tobacco roll. Now tie the other end of the twine to something secure and while pulling it taught you want to roll the entire thing in the twine trying your best not to leave any gaps. once you have gone up and down the roll a couple of times and the twine is completely covering the material you just want to do a further knot to keep the twine tight and you are all set
Now comes the boring part. If you did this correctly the roll should be a fraction of its original size and the tobacco within should be all tightly compressed together. You will want to wait at least two weeks while storing the roll or Perique in a cool, dark, dry place. The pressure and low oxygen environment causes the tobacco to go into a low level of micro fermentation releasing more of the ammonia held in the tobacco and leading to a smoother smoke. If you used flavored tobacco the flavors will also meld together leading to many possible flavor combinations.
In my experiments I have found that a combination of Borkum Riff Cherry Cavendish and Amphora Original Blend work well as the Amphora is unflavored but has a slight smoky chocolately taste due to it's mix of burley and fire cured tobaccos. The other combo I really like is Lane 1-Q which is sweet honey/vanilla but without much depth and Erinmore Mixture which is also sweet but presents a much more natural tobacco taste. The mix of both leading to a wonderfully toasty and sweet taste.
Here's a video of it being done since it is hard to explain.
