Cigar Ash Composition

[Colt45]

I'm curious as to whether the cigar ash we see when we burn a cigar comes from filler only or also includes ash from the binder and wrapper. I also wonder why the striations are horizontal - across or around the cigar versus verticle - from head to foot.......

[Maplepie]

Main component of cigar ash is the same as regular ash from burnt stuff (logs, houses, matches, your attemps at cooking a steak, etc). This is just pyrolytic tars as well as pure carbon and mineral deposits.

Pyrolytic tars are hard to remove compounds that are long fatty carbon chained with some hydrogens that are products of incomplete combustion and oils. Carbon is just leftover from incomplete compustion (it's essentially charcoal).

Every organic material that burns will leave behind traces of this stuff - nothing burns perfectly. So yes - the wrapper and binder should be left on the ash material as well.

Striations are Horizontal due to the way the cigar burns. It burns like disks. Every puff lights a disk of the cigar on fire and burns it away. The disk has a very thing length and burns down the size of the ring gauge. If you look at the burning cigar, you'll also notice a partial scorching black part that separates the unburnt cigar from the cigar ash. This partial scortching is a major contributor of why there are horizontal rings on the cigar.

Hope that is clear enough, ross .

[dangolf18]

Each horizontal striation represents a puff on the cigar (or a series of puffs in quick succession). I think it has to due with the tobacco burning hotter when you puff it so the tobacco turns a different color.

[Ginseng]

Striations are Horizontal due to the way the cigar burns. It burns like disks. Every puff lights a disk of the cigar on fire and burns it away. The disk has a very thing length and burns down the size of the ring gauge. If you look at the burning cigar, you'll also notice a partial scorching black part that separates the unburnt cigar from the cigar ash. This partial scortching is a major contributor of why there are horizontal rings on the cigar.

Hope that is clear enough, ross .

Excellent explanation. Perhaps the most cogent explanation of the burn front I've read. Only a combustion engineer on another forum brought clearer insight.

So to paraphrase, because the cigar is a cylinder, the burn front, or the boundary between the burnt and unburnt material ought to be roughly disc shaped, like slices through the cigar. In fact, the ash-tobacco boundary you see on the outside surface of the cigar is the base of a cone-shaped burn front that is internal to the cigar. That is why when you tap off, you are left with an ember cone that is said to protrude gently in a properly smoked cigar.

Now the real brain buster is why is the internal front most commonly cone shaped pointing outward. Sometimes it's nearly a perfect disc and sometimes it's sunken at the center.

As to questions of color, the temperature of the burn is important in determining the combustion processes, completeness, and products that result. This is analogous to how burning wood in a low oxygen environment produces grilling charcoal as opposed to burning it to completion to dusty ash in the open air. Different conditions of temperature and oxygen create different conditions of combustion and thus (potentially) different colored ash regions.

The second brain buster is if combustion is so complex, can anything be gained from a general observation of the characteristics of the ash.

Thought experiment: If you hooked up a cigar to an air pump that pulled a consistent, gentle vacuum at the head, how consistent would the resulting ash be?

The final question is this: Aside from the initial lighting with flame, is the tobacco in a cigar actually "burning" in the chemical/physical sense?

Thanks for this intriguing question, Colt.

Wilkey

[Maplepie]

Each horizontal striation represents a puff on the cigar (or a series of puffs in quick succession). I think it has to due with the tobacco burning hotter when you puff it so the tobacco turns a different color.

Some cigars have a solid strip of white (gray) ash. This is because of the wrapper's nature towards perfect combustion.

Many cigars have the black strip (as mentioned above) that separates the unbunrt cigar from the ash of the cigar. This black strip leaves reminents on the ash occasionally (normally found in Cuban wrappers and lacking in non-cuban wrappers) which gives the black rings and marking on the ash.

Think of them as the bits of tobacco molecule that survived being incinerated.

[Maplepie]

The second brain buster is if combustion is so complex, can anything be gained from a general observation of the characteristics of the ash.

Thought experiment: If you hooked up a cigar to an air pump that pulled a consistent, gentle vacuum at the head, how consistent would the resulting ash be?

The final question is this: Aside from the initial lighting with flame, is the tobacco in a cigar actually "burning" in the chemical/physical sense?

IF you've ever tried lighting a tobacco pipe with loose tobacco, you'll easily see why complete combustion of tobacco is a terrible idea. It's harsh, it's bitter, and it's devoid of all oils - it tastes like vinegar.

I've always thought of it as part combustion, part vaporisation. Much like the partial vaping of an opium pipe. Cigars are built so that it doesn't provide much oxygen to all of the tobacco to burn. It definitely has much LESS combustion compared to a bonfire. I remember the very first tobacco pipes shaped like saxophones back in the early 1900s. They were just advancements on old, straight opium pipes.

It'd be interesting to see how one can smoke tobacco out of an opium pipe. Heavy aromatic tobacco might actually be pleasant this way.

Excellent explanation. Perhaps the most cogent explanation of the burn front I've read. Only a combustion engineer on another forum brought clearer insight.

Cheers Wilkey...

[JohnS]

Great information here. I had read that NC's tend to have white ash, whereas CC's have grey ash (because of different soil compositions) and I've found that this has been the case.

[Colt45]

Thanks guys. So now I have another question (in line with G's air pump experiment) - if the striations are draw related, would we not be able to manipulate striation depth via how we draw? That is, a long slow draw resulting in a wider striation?

As for the "cone", in a discussion some years beck, Chuck suggested that hotboxing (oversmoking) a cigar will always produce a cone, and that younger cigars are more likely to show a cone versus cigars which have had more time to mature.

Gino added that ligero, which is always rolled in the center of a (Cuban) cigar tends to have more oil (and other compounds) and tends to burn more slowly than the surrounding tobacco, producing a cone.

It makes sense (to me) that as ligero oils dissipate over time, that the ash might burn "flatter".

I'm another who feels that ash color is mainly related to combustion.

Thanks again.

[Maplepie]

Thanks guys. So now I have another question (in line with G's air pump experiment) - if the striations are draw related, would we not be able to manipulate striation depth via how we draw? That is, a long slow draw resulting in a wider striation?

As for the "cone", in a discussion some years beck, Chuck suggested that hotboxing (oversmoking) a cigar will always produce a cone, and that younger cigars are more likely to show a cone versus cigars which have had more time to mature.

Gino added that ligero, which is always rolled in the center of a (Cuban) cigar tends to have more oil (and other compounds) and tends to burn more slowly than the surrounding tobacco, producing a cone..

1st P:

Not always. Bear in mind cigars don't always burn evenly due to composition and blending that you illustrated with the Ligero comment that I'll address shortly.

That aside, taking rests between draws greatly affects said striations. A constant breeze will initiate a more 'perfect' burn - a burn that a cigar is not supposed to have.

Cigars aren't meant to be burnt perfectly.

3rd paragraph:

It is through my experience that I say : Ligero burns quicker than other leaves. Take an unburnt cigar and examine the foot. If the dark leaf is blended like shite and concentrated in one area, it was probably rolled by a terrible roller.

An example is the RyJ Reserva Churchill. The ligero was blended too closely to one side and caused a canoe along that side that bore into the cigar like an inlet south of New Brunswick.

2nd paragraph :

Yeah. Hotboxing a cigar produces a cone more easily. Air is drawn quickly through the side than in the middle so the wrapper/ binder burns before it reaches equilibrium in burn.

This I encounter with most of my 1999 Bolivar Lonsdales which are so good in the first third I can't but help hotbox the immaculate flavours.

Sent by the Enigma on BlackBerry Q10.