Shag (tobacco)
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Shag, also known as rolling tobacco and loose tobacco is fine-cut tobacco used to make self-made cigarettes by hand rolling the tobacco into rolling paper or injecting it into filter tubes. It got its name from the finely cut strands appearing like 'shag' and was originally considered poor quality. Various types of cut are used; most shag blends use a simple mixture of cutting styles, consisting mostly of loose cut but also krumble kake, ribbon cut and flake may be used. Some shag blends use cuts reminiscent of pipe tobacco.
A cigarette made with shag tobacco may be called a rollie, a roll-up or hand-rolled. The flat bags in which shag is typically packaged for commercial sale are often called tobacco pouches. Oppositely, pre-processed and packaged cigarettes may be referred to colloquially as tailor-mades or straights.
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[edit] Shag styles
There are several shag blends or tobacco styles using different tobaccos, curing techniques and cutting types. Sometimes additives like sugar, glycerol and fruit flavors are added.
- American shag is typically a mixture of domestic and/or imported tobacco and air cured Burley.
- Virginia or Light blends are mainly made up of Virginia tobacco.
- Smooth adds Georgia tobaccos to a Light blend.
- Halfzware, meaning "half heavy" in Dutch, is a combination of Light and Zware shag, nowadays called Stevige.
- Turkish is a blend that mainly consists of Turkish Tobaccos like Yenidje, Samsun, Bafra etc.
- Zware, meaning "heavy" in Dutch, consists mainly of fire cured Kentucky, Latakia and air cured Paraguay.
[edit] Cultural References
Sherlock Holmes frequently solved crimes by smoking as much as an ounce of shag tobacco, as in The Man with the Twisted Lip.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- William Andrew Chatto, Hablot Knight Browne (1839). A paper:--of tobacco. Chapman & Hall. p. 120. http://books.google.ca/books?id=WOYWAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA2-PA120.
- Frederick William Fairholt (1876). Tobacco: Its History and Associations. Chatto and Windus. p. 309. http://books.google.ca/books?id=TJ0UAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA309.
- "Pipe Tobacco". Pipes2smoke.com. http://www.pipes2smoke.com/pipe_tobacco.htm.
