Finding information on how to make chewing tobacco is really tough.
When I wrote my little booklet The Survival Gardener’s Guide to Growing Tobacco, I did quite a bit of research into tobacco curing and processing. In the past I’ve rolled cigars, cured tobacco for cigarettes, make my own faux latakia pipe tobacco and even chewed green tobacco leaves to see how they tasted.
It’s a hard life, doing science.
Want to know how to make chewing tobacco? It starts with good homegrown!
Tobacco is one of the best barter crops you can have if things get ugly. I tell a story in my booklet about a man who did quite well for himself via trading cigarettes. Even if you aren’t a smoker, being able to supply smokers with their nicotine during a crash or even just an ongoing Depression like the one we’re in now… that’s valuable.
Chewing tobacco grosses my wife out but I have made it anyway. I just posted a video on how you do it:
How To Make Chewing Tobacco – The VIDEO!
Learn to grow tobacco and you’ll be set. It can be used for insecticide even if you don’t consume it. It’s also a pretty plant that attracts hummingbirds and just looks cool in the garden.
I sent out the above video on making chewing tobacco in my last newsletter. I need to do one on making pipe tobacco before too long, but life has been busy.
Get the booklet if you even have a little interest in tobacco growing. You’ll at least find it entertaining… plus you help fund this weird little horticultural corner of the internet.
(By the way – be sure you listen to the music over the closing credits of the video – it will make you laugh.)
Catch you tomorrow!
You can have greener thumbs by this weekend!
12 comments
As someone with great interest in growing tobacco (esp. the making of chewing tobacco)… is there any chance that the booklet will be in print??? Thanks David
I may bundle it with a series of other booklets that are in the works, then print them together.
For now, you can buy and print it pretty easily. The free program Calibre will convert Amazon ebooks to any format. I don’t copyright protect my books with DRM so folks can print as they wish.
I grew tobacco this past summer, dried some of it, some a leaf at a time, and some other
I hung the entire stalk. So it has dried now for about 4 and a half months. Is it safe or good
to chew. Reply appreciated. Thank You!
It will be safe. The flavor may be a little grassy, but it’s worth trying.
Ok, I have tried it. I even fixed some up with molasses, salt and things. When I chewed
some it was a little bitter and left an aftertaste and my mouth very dry. I don’t remember copenhagen doing that. Especially the dry part. So, how do I make it better
as in not bitter. What I grew was burly. Which, I thought made good chewing . If
you wouldn’t’ mind let me know what you think. Thanks much!!!
The aged tobacco I used tasted much better. My guess is there’s a processing step that brings the sugars out more. I let it happen through aging, though.
Would have been nice to describe the flavor and show a better method of saturating the chew so it wasn’t so crunchy. Or even showing a batch done in whole leaf instead of the fine pieces you made it into. I can imagine soaking it in apple juice would prove better prior to the stove top stage. But I wouldn’t know. I’ve never made tobacco. Was just throwing out an idea? I’m about to start making my own tobacco just for the whole leaf chew. I’m thinking the leaf will hold together better if it’s soaked prior to cooking it up.
I agree. I need to keep working on it.
Just some fyi, commercial chewing tobacco doesn’t have fiberglass in it, what is present is silica sand from the soil it was grown in. When tested using a Mass spectrometer has a similar mass to fiberglass as it is the core component for making glass. Also the amount of cancer causing agents are reflective of the environment and methods used for growing and processing the tobacco. In short the more organically grown results in fewer compounds or agents. There are some exceptions as to smoking tobacco, due to the inherent nature of combustion and the change in the chemical composition of the tobacco in gas form. Again in short, what ever the plant absorbs during or after the growing stages, is either released and/or chemically altered when burned.
Do you have to heat shredded pipe tobacco? Or can you put it in a bowl add water and flavorings and vwalla!
My un le used to take the freshly picked dead leaves from the bottom of a maturing plant, cut out the “wood”,wash and dry them, soak them in a mixture of molasses, honey, salt and just a taste of moonshine then make twists. He wouldn’t let me have any but the look on his face was pure enjoyment.
That is really cool – thank you for sharing how he did it.
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