Wrappers Blends and Tobacco
Big Dan
Posts: 69 ✭
ok so im uncertain to the different types of wrappers and how they affect and change and shape a cigar about the different tobaccos that go into a cigar for example a dom. rep. cigar and a nicuraguan cigar or sumthing. does these taste different smoke different etc. and can anybody give me a over view of all this or post a link to a place where all this is listed
1
Comments
Tobaccos will drastically change the taste as well... The DR has completely different soil and weather than Nicaragua... To the same end, you can have various tobaccos from the same place that have drastically different flavors as well... You can have one place in a country that has rich thick black soil and relatively sunny weather while another place in that same country may have loose sandy soil and almost always under cloud cover... These two tobaccos will taste completely different... In fact, the latter would most likely make excellent wrappers...
This is how cigars are "blended"... The master blender will choose various tobaccos based on their flavors and blend them together in different proportions to get the flavor he's looking for...
Last but not least I'll also mention binders... A binder is put between the wrapper and tobacco... It's what kinda holds everything together... Binder tobacco leaves are generally very thick and usually ugly as hell... If you ever have a wrapper come off and are left with only the binder you'll see exactly what I mean.
blending 101
this should help a bit
edit: link stands out more now.
wrapper to filler ratio.
the perfecto is the most complex size because the wrapper to filler ratio is always changing. ... now that i think of it, its also constantly changinf in a Pyramid shaped cigar. Many of teh modern blenders will actually compensate for this change in flavor depending on shape so that all of the cigars in a line will taste the same.
if the blenders are traditional they wont. old school cubans will differ from shape to shape. and so will may higher end noncubans. dont ask what ones will. I dont have that info.
sorry.
...i didnt want it to come down to this, but it has to.
math
wrapper to filler ratio is basicly how much tobacco is made up filler vs. how much is filler.
first we have to make a few minor asumptions:
1) the part of the cigar that is burning and the part that is just about to be burned is infinatley thin. so at one instant its not burning and immediatly after, it is --making it two dimentional.
2) the wrapper has a width of 1/64 of an inch.
we have to make these assumtions so that we have:
a) a surface area calculation only
b)a relativly easy set of numbers to work with.
Cigar "A" has a ring guage of 50. Cigar "B" has a ring guage of 40. if we look at the foot of each of these cigars we will be looking at two circles within circles. (the inner circle represents the filler of each cigar). Cigar "A" has a diameter of 50/64 and that means a radius of 25/64ths. since Area = Pi times radius squared we can figure out the surface area of the foot of the cigar. so:
3.14 x (25/64 x 25/64 ) = 0.4791 (ish) inches squared.
that is the entire surface area of the foot of the cigar. we need the wrapper's surface area only. we get that by subtracting out the surface area of the filler. this is where assumption number two comes in. if the wrapper is 1/64th of an inch thick then the filler diameter must be 48/64ths of an inch or a radius of 24/64ths therefore the surface area of the filler alone is:
3.14 x (24/64 x 24/64) = 0.4415 (ish)
now we must subtract out the filler surface area from the entire area to get the surface area of the wrapper alone.
wrapper surface area = 0.4791 - 0.4415 = .0376
to get the wrapper to filler ratio you devide the wrapper surface area by the filler surface area:
0.0376/0.4415 = .08516(ish)
ok ... now for the cigar with a ring guage of 40...
total surface area = 3.14 x (20/64 x 20/64) = 0.3066ish
filler surface area = 3.14 x (19/64 x 19/64) = 0.2767 ish
wrapper surface alone = 0.3066 - 0.2767 = .0299
Wrapper to filler ratio = 0.0299/0.2767 = 0.1080
on the smaller cigar (cigar "B") the ratio produced a larger number than on the larger cigar (cigar "A") 0.8516 is less than 0.1080
therefore smaller ring guage cigars have a higher wrapper to filler ratio and therefore have a different flavor than the same cigar rolled with the same tobacco and rolled larger. any questions?
this is why the lancero size is becomming popular.
dont make me do math this early in the morning on my day off again.
the perfecto and pyramid shape have a constantly changing wrapper to filler ratio therefore it is more complex.
i guess it should be noted that a cigar gets 40%- 60% of its taste from the wrapper. thats why the ratio is so important.
1: These things are rolled by hand... As close as they try, it's not like every one is going to be exactly the same and exactly perfect... Not to mention the figurados change for every cross section...
2: Why does it matter? Do you care about the ratio of paint to flake in your car? No, all you care about is rather you like the color or not... Why worry about the exact ratio of wrapper to filler (nevermind binder) in a cigar??? All that matters is rather you like it or not...
If you just mean so you'd know which ones have more wrapper versus filler, etc... That's pretty self explanitory... The smaller diameter the cigar, the more wrapper to filler you'll have...
I guess what I'm trying to get across is that there are SO many factors that completely change the taste of a cigar... The only thing you can really do is get some idea of the profiles you like and try them... If you like them, great... If not, great...
Relax... Smoke a cigar... Like it or don't like it...
If math is involved I'm not interested!