yhomas

US to Romania through Germany and Switzerland. No real problems, but there are random long lines checking Covid documents either at check in, or at gate, or some random point between; so get to airport early (assume 1 hour extra Covid line somewhere) and get all the way to gate and ask if you are OK to board flight. Different countries have different mask rules. The rules may change; after a week in Romania they started asking for Vaccination proof to enter restaurants or hotels.

My father in law will generally lick most of the wrapper of his cigar (keep in mind his humidor did not have anything to raise the humidity) prior to lighting. Now I understand why.

For CC, one of my top recommendations would be the Upmann Half Corona. That was my first Cuban and it was a memorable experience. For NC, 5Vegas Classic can be a very good value--along with Punch Punch London Club. Not necessarily as special as some of the better Cubans, but still very good.

I am OK with larger ring gauges much more so with tapered ends, but I don't personally see a lot of point going above ~48 RG in general. Is a Churchill not good enough? For CC, where we mostly pay for the weight of tobacco, the smaller gauges seem to generally bring more bang for the buck (hours smoke per dollar). What makes the most sense IMO is more corona and CG--though I am pretty happy with PC in general. All I ask for is a Upmann Half Corona in a 4.5" (or dare I ask 5") length. "Half Corona Plus"? (Maybe I am biased by a couple of exceptional boxes of half coronas.)

I have a coolidor that averages ~75F. It was up to ~64% for a while, and the cigars were underperforming, so I deliberately dried it out to ~61% and things got distinctly better. Tried a fee cigars at ~55% (sitting in AC) and that seemed no good (bitter).

Since relative humidity is relative to temperature, but cigar moisture (a more absolute quantity) is what most of us are interested in, it makes more sense to talk about pairs of humidity and temperature rather than a single humidity number. For example, 65F and 65% relative humidity is a common pair. My coolidor is closer to ~60% and 75F at the moment. When it was ~64% and ~75F I had the impression that some cigars were over-humidified.

The studies need to count cigars per week rather than cigars per day as (per recent threads), a large fraction (if not a majority) of cigar smokers consume less than one cigar per day.

~2 per week (~1CC, ~1NC).

It depends on what one does with the smoke exactly. If I take a puff and hold it in the mouth for a while before blowing it out, and do that every puff, a nicotine buzz will happen fairly quickly for any cigar--immediately puffing out the smoke will reduce the nicotine dose. Retrohaling is similar--more retrohale will deliver more nicotine. Similarly, I believe spitting periodically is prone to reduce nicotine consumption relative to regularly swallowing saliva which will naturally have absorbed nicotine. Etc. Etc.

For a good low cost NC, consider the (Honduran) Punch Punch "London Club (Corona) (5.0"x40)". I am no expert, but IMO, these would fit in plausibly well with more full bodied CC. Some people may have never smoked a cigar, so they might want something smaller and cheaper (so they don't feel guilty about wasting it). A box of something like these could substantially reduce the amortized cost per cigar, thus allowing a CC selection of something more expensive (perhaps larger) for those who might better appreciate it.

Bolivar Coronas Junior. Not a bad way to start, but at this point, I think SC El Principe is a better value.

Intuitively, heat rises, so a single fan at the bottom blowing up may not be getting air to circulate. It may be more useful to think about this in terms of simply trying to balance the temperature with air circulation. Placing one fan at the top blowing down may do better, but getting air going in a circle is more easily done with two fans. On the other hand, having two different conditions in the humidor may be a useful thing to experiment with. Blind testing opportunity?

I have used the WS-10 for the last ~6 months. Good price/performance.

Congrats! Enjoyed reading the WRC reviews! Do these get moved to the reviews section for posterity?

Thanks everyone. I was a bit surprised at the 66 minute duration, for such a small cigar. I feel like I probably get less time out of most of the PC sized offerings I have tried (but admittedly I don't usually record the smoke time). I was going pretty leisurely--pausing to record review notes--but I didn't feel like I was really trying to stretch it out (maybe I was doing so subconsciously though).