I love beer so I brew my own, I love coffee so I roast my own, I love cigars and after seeing what @HIM* could roll at home and sampling some of his creations I decided I too would try to roll my own. I watched countless hours of videos on how to roll online before even placing an order for leaves. I wanted to keep my costs low in case I didn't like rolling or what I could make. I ordered a kit from wholeleaftobacco.com that they said included enough leaf to roll approximately 20 robustos which included Corojo wrapper leaf, Dominican binder, Corojo Seco, and Criollo Ligero. I added a pound of PA Oscuro binder that turns out to be mostly wrapper grade to play around with the blend a little, you can't see in the pictures but this leaf has a ton of mineral sparkle. Total cost including shipping for everything was a little over $60. I went out to Walmart and bought a metal baking sheet for a rolling surface, some kitchen shears for trimming the ends of the sticks, and a pizza cutter to cut the leaf. I also bought fruit pectin (no sugar added) to mix with distilled water to make cigar glue. I am far from an expert as my pictures will show but it has been fun so far. A thread like this is pointless without pictures so here we go
The order after it arrived:
Placing the leaves in bags and spraying with distilled water to get up to case:
The work station:
Prepping filler to wrap in binder:
Rolled up in newspaper after wrapped in the binder to "mold" the cigar since I was too cheap to buy molds at this point:
Unwrapped from the newspaper and ready to apply the wrapper leaf. I roll the veins down on the wrapper with a beer bottle to try and make it as flat as possible:
All wrapped and ready to dry out for a week or two before smoking:
I rolled this one on Friday night and smoked it last night. It was soft from not being rolled tight enough and smoked pretty wet but I was pleasantly surprised that it had a decent burn and a nice flavor. It was sweet and creamy with some nuts and spice.
Thanks for looking!!
The order after it arrived:
Placing the leaves in bags and spraying with distilled water to get up to case:
The work station:
Prepping filler to wrap in binder:
Rolled up in newspaper after wrapped in the binder to "mold" the cigar since I was too cheap to buy molds at this point:
Unwrapped from the newspaper and ready to apply the wrapper leaf. I roll the veins down on the wrapper with a beer bottle to try and make it as flat as possible:
All wrapped and ready to dry out for a week or two before smoking:
I rolled this one on Friday night and smoked it last night. It was soft from not being rolled tight enough and smoked pretty wet but I was pleasantly surprised that it had a decent burn and a nice flavor. It was sweet and creamy with some nuts and spice.
Thanks for looking!!
