Took this picture when I was in Cuba; freshly-rolled cigars!
Do cigars get better if you age them?
Is the Dalai Lama Buddhist?
All cigars are smokeable.
But freshly-rolled cigars tend to smoke better if laid aside for about a year.
Some continue to become nicer even after many years of being stored. (Under the right conditions of course.)
Someone told me that only Cuban cigars should be aged, not the non-Cuban ones.
My reply is that unfortunately stupidity is not lethal.
All cigars, Cuban or non-Cuban can be aged.
That being said, how should cigars be aged?
An acquaintance whom I shall name “Mr Schizo” once asked if deep-freezing them or storing them in the refrigerator will do the trick. Sigh, some idiots will swallow any bullshit fed to them, hook, line and sinker. Then they behave like know-it-alls and spread the wrong info to everyone.
When I heard the question about refrigerating cigars, I said to myself “Indeed, the reason why this retard is still alive is because stupidity is not lethal.” Stupidity doesn’t make people keel over and die instantaneously. How unfortunate.
First, let’s be clear about something, and that is: You’ve got to start with a good cigar to begin with.
You cannot expect to pay five cents for a shitty cigar, throw it in Kim Kardashian’s underwear drawer for five years, and expect it to smoke like a Partagas Lusitania five years later.
Aging does not transform a bad cigar into a good cigar. As with humans, a moron remains a moron whether he or she is 20 or 50.
The keys to aging are:
- Start with a good cigar. Forget the cheap shit, the supermarket crap, the machine made, or those manufactureed with homogenized tobacco leaves, which is a fancy term meaning “excrement.” Seriously, homogenized tobacco leaf is a mixture of chopped scrap tobacco and a cellulose adhesive, which is extruded into a sheet that can be cut in any size. You might as well roll up yesterday’s Straits Times and smoke it. So, if you smoke a cigar that is so superlative you would want to smoke more of, quickly buy a few boxes of the same to age. Don’t ever believe some hustler who will sell you a box of utter trash that will cost you an arm and a leg and telling you “Wait five years, these will smoke superbly then.” By then, he’ll be holidaying in the Bahamas with a drink that has a tiny umbrella in it, and you’ll be cursing yourself for believing his sales patter.
- If you are really serious, place your cigars sans aluminum tubes or cellophane wrappers in a good airtight humidor that is cedar-lined. Do not mix various cigars into one humidor if you can. This means you don’t use the same humidor to store your Arturo Fuentes with your Cohibas. If you can afford to, one humidor for one type of cigar. You see, you don’t want the different flavors to intermingle. Costly you say? Well, this is a fucking expensive hobby anyway and did anyone put a gun to your head and forced you to smoke cigars? If you think this is costing too much, stick to beedies or cigarettes!
- Remember the 70-70 rule – it is recommended that cigars should be kept at 70° Fahrenheit and 70° humidity. Do not move your humidor from one room to another especially when the temperature in the rooms are not the same. Do not subject your humidors to variations in temperatures. If your air-conditioning is off when you are out in the day but on when you get home after work, your cigars are going to get fucked royally. (They contract and expand and then crack. The only cracks that are acceptable are those between the legs of sexy women.) Cigar merchants will sell you a whole bunch of gizmos to help you maintain that 70° humidity in your humidor; they include silica gel beads, moisture packs, sponges soaked with distilled water, etc. Well, with luck, some of these can be useful but are you able to attain a room temperature of 70° Fahrenheit? And do you have time to take the trouble to keep on replacing those stuff? Life is too short to become burdened with such terribly tedious tasks. The last thing you want is to become a slave to your cigars. You don’t want the cigars you own to own you, do you?
- So, what’s the best solution? Find a trusted cigar merchant who will be in business for the long haul, not some loony hawking cigars from the back of a bicycle. Purchase your cigars from a tobacconist who is knowledgeable, ie a cigar merchant who knows his products and arrange to have your cigars kept inside his premises. Any cigar store worth its salt would have temperature and humidity controlled walk-in humidors operating 27 by 7 and lockers for regular customers. This way if your cigars get fucked, you fuck the merchant. Simple. This is what I do. I have tens of thousands of sticks of cigars in just about every legit cigar store in Singapore and throughout Asia, and a bunch of cigar merchants standing by to be fucked.
- And talking about purchasing cigars, I never buy my cigars online. Too many fraudsters around and even if the online seller is honest, will the cigars survive the journey here? In a brick and mortar store, I can view the cigars I am interested in, ask for each box to be opened for me to examine at leisure and then make my purchases only when I am 100% happy. Notice I said “view” because it is impolite to touch the cigars that are being shown to you and a completely idiotic behavior to pick one up, sniff it and squeeze it to hear its crackle by putting it near one of your ears. Sure, do that with a hooker you’re planning to copulate with, but not with cigars. These behaviors are just affectations and they contribute nothing to help you select your cigars. Your eyes are all you need, my friend. If a cigar looks like a piece of dried up moldy dog turd, sniffing it doesn’t make it better! If I own a cigar store and you do that to my cigars, I’ll physically throw you out, without batting an eyelid.My friend, Didier Houvenaghel, who is an agricultural engineer, trained in Cuba, advises smokers to exercise the visual, tactile, olfactory, and auditory approach in choosing a cigar but I have not found it necessary other than deploying the visual approach. I don’t give a flying fuck what others think of my method. It works for me. I also avoid snooty bastards working in cigar stores who think they know more than me, because, truth be told I’ve smoked more cigars than some of these clowns have eaten bowls of rice. I also do not do business with the rip-off artists who masquerade as cigar merchants. Yes, sir, there are certain cigar stores I will never walk into, including those whose managers don’t respond to my WhatsApp messages – cretins who do not respond to my communications get moved right up to the top of my shit list – and those staffed with bimbos in miniskirts who know nothing about cigars but who are more interested in selling you crappy whiskies at inflated prices. The cons who operate these outfits will never make a single cent from me. Buying online doesn’t allow you the luxury of seeing your cigars before you buy them. Buying cigars online is like getting married by sending for a mail-order bride. What looks good on the website can be a far cry from what you’ll receive. And you are a fool if you trust so-called online “reviews.” Any unemployed, jobless nutcase or scammer can set up a webstore and sell cigars and write their own reviews; yet, many stupid people still buy online. But, it’s cheaper to buy online, you say. Fuck cheap. How clueless can you be? As I’ve said, this is an expensive hobby and if you can’t afford this indulgence, perhaps you should just stick to beedies or cigarettes.
Finally, please don’t ever mention the word “refrigerator” to me again. Stay schizo and behave like a know-it-all by all means, it’s your birthright after all, and last time I checked, this is still a free country, so spread all the wrong info all you want (the rest of us are discerning, thank goodness) but don’t ever mention the word “refrigerator” to me again.