Cigar Rolling Odyssey 2012 - Part 1

[molecularstudent]

I live in France, and our TV is all in French, I know, shocker. I have only been here since October last year and my French is still sh*t. Not good enough yet to watch TV as unfortunately I am unable to ask the actors to speak slowly! I am learning and progressing everyday, however my work is in English, and I speak English at home (which I need to change, but once you meet someone in one language it is very hard to swap to another!). Suffice it to say, in the evening I am very bored while my French fiance watches TV (mostly, from what I can understand, a French version of Geordie Shore and Big Brother!?!?!). So...to give myself something to do I've decided that I'd like to join the crowd and attempt rolling my own cigars and thought I would chronicle my progress here

For the past week I have been busy rounding up everything I will need. The most important acquisition is the tobacco as a cigar is just thin air without it and I get enough of that! So I have placed an order for no less than 5lbs of tobacco broken up as follows:

1LB - Aged Nicaraguan Seco Long Filler
1LB - Aged Dominican Ligero Cigar Filler
1LB - Connecticut Binder
1LB - Maduro Wrapper
1LB - Connecticut Wrapper

I can't wait to get this package! It is very exciting! I have read a bit about rolling and I estimate I should be able to roll 100-150 cigars with this, perhaps more!
I have also bought a cigar mold which I hope will arrive this coming week. It produces cigars which are just a slightly larger gauge than a a standard corona and are about 12cm long. I will post some pictures once it comes

I have also purchased a few other things which I will need. Four clamps to press the mold, a couple of little copper plumbing fixtures to cut the cap, and a couple of files to make these sharp. As my humidor and tupperdor are full I got a new, larger tupperdor (11L) to store all my rolled goodness! Unfortunately, without progressing to a coolerdor I was unable to get a large tupperware which seals perfectly, it has a good seal but its not ideal. I figure that the cigars will be relatively wet to begin with so this may just aid the drying process. Also I am going to give the cat litter beads a try and I will let everyone know how these go. I got a couple of offcuts of wood to place on either side of the cigar mold so that the clamps don't damage the mold. I still need a wooden chopping board and a decent knife. I'm not sure yet whether I will get a proper cigar knife but will probably just grab a couple of scalpels from work which should do the trick.

20120623_171529.jpg20120623_171501.jpg

I have placed about 100g of beads in a small container inside the tupperdor as well as digital hygrometer. Nothing else is in there yet but the hygrometer is reading 68% after 4 hours.

So, watch out for updates! I will post periodically as my stuff arrives and as I progress. I will also run a couple of little competitions once I have a few rolled so that a few of you can sample my potentially feeble attempts at cigars!

[Vortigan]

Very exciting stuff!! I wish you every success my friend and I'm really looking forward to following your progess

[pedro]

The things you get up to when you dont have a TV or in your case understand it though even if you did by the sound of whats on your better off not watching. I will be looking forward to seeing how you get along with this.

[bfg84]

Cool post! Look forward to following your progress. Good luck...

[molecularstudent]

The things you get up to when you dont have a TV or in your case understand it though even if you did by the sound of whats on your better off not watching. I will be looking forward to seeing how you get along with this.

Haha yeah! I imagine before TV was around people got up to all sorts of fun stuff!!

[Simon Bolivar]

Hi MS, I know what you mean about meeting someone in one language & getting stuck with it. I met my wife 21yrs ago in Antwerp & we spoke English as I didn't know Flemish (Dutch). When I went to live there I tried to learn but after working all day she was too tired to try & communicate ina language I didn't understand. It really is harder than some more linguistically skilled people make it seem. As your over there full time, I would highly recommend going to night classes twice a week. These are cheap & you'll be mixing with others at your level. Once you get the basic level & making simple sentances then your GF will have to try & speak French to you. I would suggest during the day as once your both tired it gets ridiculas.
Try hard during the first yr or two & hopefully you'll sound as good as the English policeman in 'allo, allo'!
Great idea about the cigar rolling. My only tip would be, once rolled don't put your cigars in a the tuperware, let them dry naturaly for a week so so at least or the mositure will be too high & you'll find them covered in mould.

[Wardjrz]

Brilliant Chris.
Can't wait to see how you get on. I'd love to try it too.
Maybe I'll watch and see how you get on, then have a go myself.

Good luck with it.

[JamesA]

Nice, will be watching with interest. Do quite fancy a go at rolling myself, and will be interested in how the kitty litter works out!

Sent from my mind with the help of HTC

[Eddie]

From what I can gather if I ordered that much leaf I'd only need a 10 stick humidor for the finished articles worth smoking, as most would be crap.

[molecularstudent]

Hi MS, I know what you mean about meeting someone in one language & getting stuck with it. I met my wife 21yrs ago in Antwerp & we spoke English as I didn't know Flemish (Dutch). When I went to live there I tried to learn but after working all day she was too tired to try & communicate ina language I didn't understand. It really is harder than some more linguistically skilled people make it seem. As your over there full time, I would highly recommend going to night classes twice a week. These are cheap & you'll be mixing with others at your level. Once you get the basic level & making simple sentances then your GF will have to try & speak French to you. I would suggest during the day as once your both tired it gets ridiculas.
Try hard during the first yr or two & hopefully you'll sound as good as the English policeman in 'allo, allo'!
Great idea about the cigar rolling. My only tip would be, once rolled don't put your cigars in a the tuperware, let them dry naturaly for a week so so at least or the mositure will be too high & you'll find them covered in mould.

Hi Simon,
Thanks for your message. Are you able to speak Flemish now? I think Flemish would be a lot harder to learn than French! Are you still living there? I've never learnt a language before, so its been interesting. I've been doing online lessons and I have some software which has been very good (Rosetta Stone software, would recommend it to everyone wanting to learn a language!). I guess I'm a little bit like your wife with regards to getting home and being too tired to speak anything other than an easy language haha I leave the house at 6:30am and get home at 7:30pm.....so I'm shattered by the time I get home. I travel by bus to Switzerland so this is when I do my lessons Unfortunately the only night classes type thing I could find in Annecy was just one on one tutoring.....which was not really what I was after.
I'm going to start speaking Frenglish at home, as I can form sentences etc. But just don't have the vocabulary to be able to say everything, so I'll substitute those words for english, until I learn them Anyways, of course I wish I was better, but I'm getting there.....if I go out by myself I can get what I want, if I order a sandwich....or just general stuff....so no worries
Yeah I think you are right about the drying process.....my plan was to put lots and lots of beads in with them with no water and let the moisture be drawn out slowly.....we'll see how we go, but a stint outside might be the best idea

[molecularstudent]

From what I can gather if I ordered that much leaf I'd only need a 10 stick humidor for the finished articles worth smoking, as most would be crap.

Haha I'll let you know how easy or hard it is! What I'm most worried about it putting too much tobacco in and it being mentally tight! I'll have to build a draw testing machine!

[Andy W]

This should be an interesting project, I look forward to hearing how you get on.

[Simon Bolivar]

Just remembered a good drying tip from my visit to the Robina Farm, during our Cuban Hols. They wrapped my freshly rolled stick in newspaper & advised me to wait a day or two but a week would be better. I smoked it at home after a fortnight & it was fine so I recommend trying newspaper with a few & see how it compares with just using dry beads.


On the language front: yes I still live in Antwerp, 21yrs now. Shamefully I still not hold a conversation in Dutch. I made my wedding speech in Dutch (a Dutchman on the rig kindly translated into Dutch for me & read me through it a few times). In the speech I promised to learn Dutch. Well I did try but night school didn't work for me as I missed half of the lessons whilst away on the rig. Whilst I was away, the other students had 4 lessons & were using & practising during that time. I just couldn't keep up. I can ask for things in shops & when it comes to France, I always say if you want to buy something they'll make the effort to understand you, if you wan tot ask something of them, then that's another story.

It is hard when you have never thought in another language before to start late in life but should you & your good lady end up in a perm relationship & have children, the trick is for you to always speak English to your children. If you speak English & their mother speaks only French, they absorb both without difficulty. Learning two from birth means they have a great head start when they start other languages at school, my daughter did 6 at high school & got prizes in 5. So I like to say I sacrificed my Dutch to ensure Grace would learn English (so she could communicate with my family).

[molecularstudent]

Thanks for the advice, I'll give that a try and as you say I'll probably leave them out for a week or so to make sure they will be fine in the humidor.

I'm getting married next month and I'm going to do the same thing as you and say my wedding speech in French I can see how the night classes wouldn't have worked with you being away often! A shame, but as you say, you sacrificed for Grace....this is what we plan to do as well, me English, her French. Actually this is how my fiance learnt english, when she was 1 her family moved to the united states for 8 years and her parents would speak french at home, and of course school was in english. I hope we can do the same Amazing that your daughter does so well with so many languages! You must be very proud

[Simon Bolivar]

Yep, she's at Uni now & I have the bills to prove it Good luck with the wedding