Cigar Tunneling... Anybody ever had this?

[Cohiba Stevie]

I was smoking a siglo i tonight and the middle of the cigar was burning much quicker and deeper than the wrapper, as if the wrapper was behind in the actual burn...

Can anybody share some light on why this may happen? Coincidentally there is an article about it in the xikar newsletter this month and it states that its caused by uneven lighting of the cigar, frankly i dont see how this would majorly contribute to it, my hunch is that i may be puffing too hard or too quickly and it pulls the ember deeper into the cigar. It does not however affect the taste of the cigar at all, the siglo i was very pleasant as usual.

Im stumped!

What are your thoughts folks?

Many thanks.

[Diamondog]

It is somewhat common...this occurs when the tunneling part of the tobbacco burns faster then the surrounding tobbacco and wrapper and can often cause you not to be able to get any or much smoke on the draw although the draw is good...I had this happen last tues night on a Cohiba Sublime of all cigars

[cigcars]

I just take a drip of liquid and drop it into the tunnel area to halt it some. Have so-so success with evening it up.

[pjansen]

My experience with tunneling occurs with dry cigars where the wrapper is the only part that has somewhat humidity and the inside is dry so it burns quicker

[iGrizz]

I have this problem with an entire box of Casa Magnas. I have had success with toasting the foot and edge of the wrapper a bit longer that I normally would. It is very depressing when a cigar does that.

[ramon_cojones]

Outside is moist, inside is dry and/or underfilled perhaps.

[gigabyte056]

Had this happen, on occasion.

Two things I have noticed, it happens when my cigars were a bit dry and a other times it happened when my lighter ran out of gas mid light and I had to refill it causing an uneven burn.

It happened with all types of cigars, Cubans and NC.

Thankfully in the last couple of years I smoke only Cubans and have a proper storage system and methodology so less occurrence of this or other issues, also the quality of Cuban cigars has increased ten folds.

[maverickdrinker]

Ironically, I had my worst tunneling episode ever last night with my favorite cigar of all time, a Cohiba Siglo VI. Damn near smoked only 1 half of the cigar while the other half seemed to have a flame retardant wrapper. LOL

[baragh]

I find dryboxing for a couple days helps tunnelling a lot. I'd take a wild guess and say maybe the wrapper dries out first in the dry box so the filler burns more slowly.

[isa]

A bit of tunneling happens every now and then in my experience - nothing i cant handle

[canadianbeaver]

One time Matthew smoked a NC, an OX maybe?, had a tunnel went straight up through the middle like a bullseye.

No taste. It was gross. We chalked it up to maybe bugs from a previous owner... Blech.

[edlye]

Just have a cutter handy and lob off the offending section and re-light if you don't want the hassle of nursing it back to a proper burn.

In my experience, uneven lighting methods can cause tunneling as will uneven draw techniques/frequency. I usually alleviate or reduce that risk by lighting the edges first ala the Kel Method (Youtube channel SmokeRingsPipeDreams), using that method I can usually maintain a nice cone down to the nub. I touch up the edges as needed after ashing to maintain the cone.

[semery74]

My thought is that this happens to cigars that are subjected to humidity on the up swing and have not the chance to equalize. I would that think at least 24 hours is necessary for the wrapper and binder to become unbalanced with the the filler. You can rinse a cigar with water and it wont cause a cigar to tunnel. That is why dryness must also inhibit the binder in this situation. Cigars need to be subjected to consistent atmospheric humidity for 3-5 days before they balance.

The best corrective measure is to recognize it early and take immediate action by relighting the foot.

[Ken Gargett]

I was smoking a siglo i tonight and the middle of the cigar was burning much quicker and deeper than the wrapper, as if the wrapper was behind in the actual burn...

Can anybody share some light on why this may happen? Coincidentally there is an article about it in the xikar newsletter this month and it states that its caused by uneven lighting of the cigar, frankly i dont see how this would majorly contribute to it, my hunch is that i may be puffing too hard or too quickly and it pulls the ember deeper into the cigar. It does not however affect the taste of the cigar at all, the siglo i was very pleasant as usual.

Im stumped!

What are your thoughts folks?

Many thanks.

don't ask me how to find it but there is a post on this from the very early days of foh.

it started because i had, and i remember it well, one of the 2000 LE pyramides, which were/are fabulous smokes, where i suddenly realised that i had been smoking the cigar for a while and the entire circumference had budged about a millimetre. eventually, it came out about three inches down the the cigar. really bizarre. the wrapper was effectively untouched bar the sudden hole where the burn emerged. lot of people had suggestions back then.

[PigFish]

While humidity may play a part, you must remember that cigars can burn at an excess of 1000 DF at the point of combustion. I have noted cigars while smoking at over 900 DF at the embers myself with IR temp equipment.

What this means is the water in the tobacco has likely, largely gone and inside the smoke you taste, prior to the actual combustion process. Some people wet their cigars. If the wet tobacco in the wrapper remained wet, you would have a potential tunnel of a wrapper with the binder and filler smoked through. As you know, this does not happen.

I am not going to eliminate the possibility of water being the cause, but I highly doubt it. Cigars are constructed correctly when the slower burning ligero and seco leaves are bunched inside the central core of the cigar, near or at its centerline axis. What you have is a poorly built cigar. It is not your fault, nor the fault of storage. It is Tabacuba's fault!!!

You may note that these cigar often taste rather bad. This is because there is no high oil content tobacco at the core and you are burning rapidly though thinner, lower taste filler tobacco, leaving the slower burning tobacco, if there is any, behind.

Cigars are supposed to be made to a specification. When they do not burn correctly, evolve correctly, nor taste correctly... while humidity is an issue, construction is often the issue as well.

-Piggy

[maverickdrinker]

I think my cigar was just too tight on 1 side. I have my smoking humidor at 58 degrees. Nothing but stellar draws and burns until this one.

[kcheek]

Cigars are supposed to be made to a specification. When they do not burn correctly, evolve correctly, nor taste correctly... while humidity is an issue, construction is often the issue as well.

-Piggy

These are my feelings concerning this, I've always believed tunneling is a construction issue.

[semery74]

Another possibility is the age difference between the wrapper and the filler. I love quoting MRN, since it creates so much controversy everytime his name is brought up, but one thing he mentioned was this. The nature of aging havana cigars will bring this age difference in to balance after a few years.