Father’s Day Gift Ideas for Cigar Smokers
Father’s day is a week away and you don’t know what to get dear ol’ dad. If he happens to be a cigar smoker I’m sure he would love to get something from this list:
- Xikar Cigar Scissors: Whether your dad is smoking cigars at his buddy’s house or at home he will absolutely love these scissors. The blades are sharp, he will get a clear view of the cigar as he’s cutting it and there are some extra tools attached for things like adjusting cigar lighters or opening a bottle. What is really special about these cigar scissors is that when you are done with them they fold up so they will take up less space and your dad won’t accidentally cut himself. I use these scissors along with many other cigar smokers I know.
- Blazer Cigar Lighter: This is another one of those necessities for the father on the go. The Blazer Little Buddy cigar lighter is a cigar lighting dream with it’s compact size, dependably robust flame, ease of adjustment and it’s also a breeze to refill. I recommend getting your pops the clear one so that he can see how much butane is left in the lighter – even though he won’t need to refill it all that often thanks to it’s large fuel reservoir.
- Cigars: If your father likes the best cigars then you need to head on over to Cigars Direct’s page featuring samplers for cigars like: Arturo Fuente Opus X, Padron 1964 Anniversary and Ashton. Or maybe you could sign the old man up for their Cigar of the Month Club. For every month you give your dad he will receive eight premium cigars and you will receive 10% all of your purchases at their site.
If your dad were to receive one or a combination of the above gifts I’m sure he would be ecstatic. So make it a special day for him and get him something nice!
ROTT in Hell
It’s like Christmas morning for a cigar smoker: the delivery truck guy drops off a box of cigars, you open up the box to find some delicious cigars and then you take one of those cigars out of their cellophane wrapper, cut the head off, light the foot and then… You get disappointed. The flavor is all wrong, the cigar doesn’t burn right, your expectations are not met and you are now bummed.
Smoking cigars Right Off The Truck (ROTT) is a bad idea for a number of very simple reasons. Here are some that I can think of right off the bat:
- Cigars are not properly humidified while they are in transit
- Cigars have been exposed to wild fluctuations in temperature while they were in transit
- Cigars may not have been properly cared for before they were even shipped
- In rare cases, the delivery company will damage the package – accidentally of course
- Maybe the cigars were properly cared for but are still just too young to be smoked
I know it might be hard to put away some cigars that you have been looking forward to trying for a while but that is what you should do; especially when you are ordering cigars from an online retailer. When you are ordering online you have no way of knowing how those cigars that you ordered were cared for either in the retailer’s humidor or in transit. Personally, I have not had a problem with the quality of the cigars I have received from any of the online retailers that I have used as long as I have let my cigars rest in my humidor. But rest is the key.
How long should you let your cigars rest? I have found no hard and fast rules here as some cigars have been very good ROTT while others didn’t start tasting good until more than a month after I received them. Generally speaking though, I will give whatever my value, go-to cigars at least two weeks of rest after I have received them and for the more special cigars I will let them rest for at least a couple of months. I have some cigars in my not-too big humidor collection that have been resting for over a year, but that is more for finding the right occasion to smoke those cigars as opposed to giving them extra rest. (To see a review that compares the same cigar with different periods of rest go here.)
There are times, however, when I don’t stick to those rules. For example, I recently got shipments of two different kinds of very good cigars. One was the Cro Magnon and the other was the Man O’ War Puro Authentico. I smoked the smallest vitola from the Cro Magnon line ROTT and it was pretty awesome. Tons of flavor and a good balance to the flavors even though it nearly knocked me on my ass power-wise. Likewise, I smoked a Man O’ War Puro Authentico ROTT and was severely disappointed. It was harsh and the flavors were pretty bad.
Since then I have let both lines of cigars rest. Both have gotten better and the Man O’ War Puro Authenticos have become pretty good cigars with lots of flavor and nuance. If only I had rested them all ROTT I would not have wasted a cigar due to my impatience.
Cigar Humidification Tip #1
The other night one of the gentlemen I was smoking cigars with asked me what he should do about this (Cuban) Cohiba he had. To my horror, the Cohiba has not been properly humidified in a couple of months. This, I told him, was a problem and it is a problem for many people who smoke cigars infrequently. Letting a cigar dry out leads to cracking of the leaves, the cigar smoking too quick, harsh flavors and an overall bad experience.
For his case, which is that he has this one cigar and it needs some TLC, I told him to:
- Get a plastic sandwich bag (i.e. Ziploc)
- Put the cigar in the bag
- Put a Boveda Humidification pack with 69% relative humidity (RH) in bag with cigar because it is foolproof – it keeps the environment at that humidity level for as long as it still has juice left
- Close bag and let rest for a month in a place that doesn’t have wild swings in temperature (like a desk drawer or in a closet – someplace safe) and it’s best to find a place that is around 70°F
- Every few days check to see if the Boveda pack is completely spent (if you touch it and it’s hard then it’s no longer providing any humidity) and if it is spent put a fresh pack in the plastic bag
- After a couple months of doing this the cigar should hopefully be ready to smoke again – feel the cigar to determine if it’s good to go; if it no longer feels dry to the touch and you cannot hear the tobacco leaves cracking when you roll the cigar with your fingers then it’s good to go
Is this the right advice? Should I have told him to start out with a Boveda pack that maintains a 65% humidity level and then go up to the one with the 69% humidity level as a way to ease the cigar back to health? Is there a better way to do this?
Obviously, my solution isn’t all that elegant but I think it should get the job done and the cigar will be saved.
Variety in Cigars
During my La Aurora trip in May I relearned something that is very important to anyone who is serious about cigars: variety matters.
The first full day there we all visited La Aurora’s factory and once we were all settled into one of their conference rooms Jose Blanco commenced our taste test of cigars. Each one of those cigars were created using only one specific kind of tobacco. I have already talked about this so there is no need to go on further about the process but there was one really important thing about that experience that I hope I can convey to you.
Unless you are willing to smoke a variety of cigars you will never understand what you really like in cigars. Take my experience as an example. When I first started out smoking cigars I was lucky enough to smoke some Fuentes. Solid cigars, medium strength, very good flavors, they are the epitome of what a dependable cigar is. But what if I just stuck to Fuentes? Even though Fuentes are great cigars, and I do recommend them highly, I would eventually have gotten bored with cigars and I seriously doubt I would still be smoking cigars with any regularity.
My first tentative steps away from the venerable Fuente brand were largely hit and miss. I think I took a road that many novice cigar smokers take: I got a lot of samplers along with a couple of sticks I had read about in Cigar Aficionado and on the cigar blogs. The samplers, which were largely comprised of crummy cigars (and by that I mean cheap) accounted for a lot of my “misses.” But that was good for me because I found out I don’t like most of the cheap cigars from Ghurka (there are some very good Ghurkas out there, which surprised me after my initial experiences with their cigars) and that just because the cigar’s brand name is the same as a Cuban brand it isn’t necessarily a good cigar (far from it).
Some of the samplers ended up working out and those successful forays into the unknown of the cigar ecosystem spurred me on to find out more about cigars and to be more adventuresome with my cigar selections. That is when I discovered some of the great boutique cigars like Tatuaje.
So go out and get some cigars that you haven’t tried before. Who knows, you might find some new cigars that you like.
Exploding Cigars – How to Cut a Dry Cigar (If you Have to)
As I write this I am smoking an excellent Arturo Fuente Chateau Fuente (natural) but last night there was this cigar that exploded when I cut it. No, it was not filled with TNT or Cemtex. It was just way too dry.
The cigar was part of an amazing dinner at The Cellar restaurant and, I can safely say, that cigar, a Torano The Brick, was the worst part of the dinner. (The rest of the tequila themed dinner was sublime and the company was just as good. The other cigar, a Torano 1916, was also very good). When I looked at The Brick I immediately noticed that the cap was splitting and that it was very dry. Even though I normally would not smoke a cigar like that I thought “What’s the worst that could happen?”
The worst was that, upon cutting The Brick, tobacco fragments sprayed every which way but the ash tray! I was mortified. Here I am, at this award winning French restaurant, and I was responsible for this long filler carnage on the white cloth table. To add insult to my malfeasance as the resident cigar expert at the table, the cigar was bad. Luckily, most of my table mates had not yet arrived and the ones who were there were understanding. Even John, who drove over an hour from Temecula and fell victim to the shrapnel, wasn’t annoyed.
After the dinner was over I realized there was a couple of ways I could have avoided this explosion. The best way to avoid exploding cigars is by not cutting them. Just put it in your humidor for a couple of months and then smoke it. But, if you really want to smoke a cigar that is a little too dry there may be a way to do so without letting tobacco rain.
If you gently press against the cap with your thumb while cutting it then there should be no pyrotechnics. I tried this tactic with the Fuente that I am currently smoking and, even though it was properly humidified and wouldn’t have exploded anyways, it works. The cap stayed on the cutter with the gentle application of pressure that I put on it.
While an exploding cigar is hardly something that most cigar connoisseurs will encounter with any regularity it does occasionally happen. In an effort to mitigate any more such explosions, I will continue to slightly press against every cap that I slice. It does not take any extra effort and is well worth it if it prevents any more explosions.
