Kretek (pronounced /ˈkriːtɛk/) are cigarettes made with a blend of tobacco, cloves and other flavors. The word "kretek" itself is an onomatopoetic term for the crackling sound of burning cloves. Haji Jamahri, a resident of Kudus, Java, created kreteks in the early 1880s as a means to deliver the eugenol of cloves to the lungs, as it was thought to help asthma. Jamahri believed the eugenol cured his chest pains and he started to market his invention to the village, but he died before he could mass market it. M. Nitisemito took his place and began to commercialize the new cigarettes. Today, kretek manufacturers directly employ over 180,000 people in Indonesia and an additional 10 million indirectly.[1]

Partly due to favorable taxation compared to "white" cigarettes,[2] kreteks are by far the most widely-smoked form of cigarettes in Indonesia, where about 90% of smokers usually smoke kreteks.[3] In Indonesia, there are hundreds of kretek manufacturers, including small local makers and major brands. Most of the widely-known international brands, including Bentoel, Djarum, Gudang Garam, Jakarta, Sampoerna, and Wismilak, originate from Indonesia. Nat Sherman of the United States produces cigarettes branded as "A Touch of Clove" but are arguably not kreteks since they contain clove flavoring in the filter rather than actual clove spice mixed with the tobacco.[4]


History

The origin of kretek cigarettes can be traced to the late 19th century. The creator of kretek was Haji Jamahri, a native of the town of Kudus in Indonesia's Central Java region. Suffering from chest pains, Jamahri attempted to reduce the pain by rubbing clove oil on his chest. Jamahri sought a means of achieving a deeper relief and smoked his hand-rolled cigarettes after adding dried clove buds and rubber tree sap. According to the story, his asthma and chest pains vanished immediately. Word of Jamahri’s discovery spread rapidly among his neighbors, and clove cigarettes soon became available in pharmacies under the name of rokok cengkeh – clove cigarettes. Although first discovered as a medicinal product, kreteks became widely popular outside this capacity.

In those years, the locals used to hand-roll kreteks to sell on order without any specific brand, packing or limits on ingredients used in production. A resident of Kudus named Nitisemito had the idea of starting serial production and selling kreteks under a proprietary brand name. Unlike other manufacturers, Nitisemito who first created the Bal Tiga brand in 1906 enjoyed great success by implementing unprecedented marketing techniques such as using threats, embossed packs or offering free-of-charge promotional materials. Commercial manufacture did not start in earnest until the 1930s.[5]

Furthermore, he also developed a production system which was called the abon system and which offered great opportunities for other entrepreneurs without enough capital. In this system, a person called as "abon" assumes the job of delivering finished products to the company which pays the price of piecework done whereas the company is liable to supply the necessary production materials to the “abons”. However, most manufacturers have since opted to have their workers working under the roof of their own factories, to maintain quality standards. Nowadays, only a few kretek manufacturers make use of the abon system.

During the period from 1960 until 1970, kreteks became a national symbol against “white cigarettes”. In mid 1980’s, the number of machine-produced cigarettes exceeded that of hand-rolled ones. One of the largest income sources of Indonesia, the kretek industry comprises 500 large and small manufacturers employing a total of around 10 million people.[6]

Since 2009, kreteks are not legal for sale in the United States. However a variation of the kretek is being sold: "cigars" that are similar in size and shape to the original kreteks, also with a filter and the original tobacco/clove blend, but in a tobacco-based paper.
[edit] Structure and ingredients

The quality and variety of tobacco play an important role in kretek production. One kretek brand can contain more than 30 types of tobacco.[7] Minced dried clove buds weighing about 1/3 of the tobacco blend are added. Sometimes, the last process which machine-made or hand-rolled kreteks go through is the spraying of sweetener at the butt end of the cigarette.


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I am a Kretek smoker for more than 20 years and i am as strong as an OX!
Only those original contraband fr Indonesia appealed to me....harum
my favourite is Dji Sam Soe Classic

This post has been edited by Fei Kei: Sep 17 2010, 11:33 PM

kelentik?

kretek here. 'sup

kelentit also

i wub tetek, who with me?!!!

k

Kerepek pun sedap gak

i wub kelentit

blame Sir Walter Raleigh

kelentik haiwan apakah?

Maaf, Saya bukan perokok

me

saya tidak merokok. jauhi rokok.

lol kelentit.

kretek long time no hear the sound. i nostalgia'ed.

Please don't smoke (or please quit smoking).

Average humans only have around 50-70 years of their lives.
Why must we shorten it by 10-20 years?

Why do people even smoke?
Cigarettes are getting more expensive, and it costs a lot more to treat that lung cancer that you going to develop later in life

say tak nak!

kretek is nice with a bottle of tiger beer, isham rais approved!

but i prefer my dunhill more.

i use to smoke gudang garam

not bad, kretek is good 4 u.

LA is the besttttttttttttttt

Gudang garam without the filter....