If you're going to test out a blend. Tony, you won't want to wait months before sparking your test. So smoke it right off the table. Yes, you can smoke it right then & there, even if the wrapper is still damp. If you wait for several days, it may have gone rank, so you don't get a true gauge what it will turn out like, three days later. Your fresh roll ROTT will have some rough edges, but you can at least hazard a guess how it will taste, tho only time will tell you how well it will improve. The first sweet spot comes around six weeks down the road. The sweeter spot at six months. Longer than that I'm not the one to say.
Welcome to the rollers lounge, Tone, but someone here has to lay down the law, so it might as well be me:
WE LIKE PICS ... We want to see yours. Post up, dude.
Here, for instance, is a quickie I rolled this afternoon out of new filler I received today, as soon as I returned from the office, then toted directly to the smoking porch to test it out:
Three leaves of WLT's new Dominican seco, bound with WLT's Dominican binder, wrapped in FXSS CT shade. Wanted to rate that new seco, so wasn't about to age the stick. I gotta say this stuff the titz. Mild, smooth, the least white pepper, just enough bitter to act as hops, smells light and wholesome, altogether like that tobacco barn in August, as I said above... and with a nice burn even damp off the table. I think this would blend well with corojo ligero to taste core for cedar, spice, and strength, or with a criollo ligero core for richness. I'm gonna experiment with flavors on the outside, as well, using Mata wrapper for sweetness & Honduran habano for fruit & Nicaraguan for a dash of pepper. But I do love a mild & smooth gar, so I'll most likely come back to a creamy CT shade outer wrap. Nice clean finish this way. I was looking for my nubber when R2knee2 came to the door cause her bbq ribes were ready... otherwise, I woulda gone all the way with this one.
I think I made a mistake committing to my fifty quickies project, by the way, guys. Too easy to achieve. Look at this quickie example above. Hardly even trying at this point. It would require a whole lot more rolling the bunch on a hard surface to make the outer leaf lay down super smooth. A damper wrapper would make that CT cling tighter. But the essential goal of trying to make the sides parallel & even ... turned out too easy to do. Didn't take even twenty bunches to achieve that.
So I am re-evaluating the purpose of a mold. I'm thinking now that, once you have achieved the trick of making the sides parallel, which is so easy to learn, it literally takes only five or ten minutes in a mold to make the surface smooth; whereas you'll be rolling the stick back and forth back and forth on your board to bury the veins in that bunch so that the wrapper can lay tame. Therefore, number one mold purpose is making that smooth surface more quickly. Number two is rounding the head. Doesn't want to come out so neatly rounded without. Number three is making that stick firm. There seems to be a limit how dense you can get that gar without. That's okay. I don't need to make a lignum vitae nightstick. Specially this studgy damp air, where a looser stick burns better. Good strong ninder like the Dominican, you're good to go.
That's where I'm at now.
