For context this is my first time ever growing tabacoo and I plan on making some cigars. I grew 5 plants of Criollo 98 and now I'm at the fermentation stage. It was very intimidating as people online say it's hard to do at home and people lose their leaves to mold or other problems. Personally, I think my fermentation is going well and it has been surprisingly easy which is making me nervous. I'm trying out sous-vide fermentation btw. 

In my last post I mentioned that I was concerned about the fact that I can't smell any "tobacco smell" coming from the leaves. After more research, I heard that some varieties only start smelling after fermentation during aging. 

I have around 60-70 leaves (stored at 75-80RH previously after color curing) that I have stacked up and placed in a sous-vide bag that I soft vacuum until the bag just starts to wrap around the leaves. When it's placed in the hot water, some of the air inside expands and prevents excessive anaerobic fermentation. Additionally, if the bag is vacuumed too tight, all the leaves will stick together and be very hard separate (learned the hard way). The bag is then placed inside a large 15L water jug I bought from Walmart whose top I cut off with a knife. A steel bar is placed inside to keep the bag down as it floats. This is my fermentation chamber. In the past few weeks, I have varied the temp from 117 F / 47C to 125 F / 52 C. Ultimately I settled at 51C to be the best temp. I take the leaves out once a week for 40 mins and separate them all to air out before stacking them up again and putting them back in. This has been going on for roughly 5 weeks.

The leaves have darkened in color over time and smell like sweet raisins (actually a very pleasant aroma) with no indication of ammonia or any other bad smell or mold. Around a dozen leaves are golden and somewhat on the drier side and refuse to change color but the rest are leathery and flexible. Some of them are almost see-through while others are dark (almost black) and opaque. 

*My question is: when do I know that I'm done and what do I do after that?* 

Otherwise, what do the experts think of my setup and any other thoughts on what I could improve?

Fermentation update (when am I done?)