Prepping Various Boxes For Aging

[RickHendeson]

Hello, after quite a bit of searching I haven't found anything on this, maybe my search technique is bad, but . . .

How do you prep the various boxes for aging? Like, on a cab, do you crack the lid? Remove the lid entirely? Remove any wax paper? Remove any cedar insert?

Same with DBs . . . Do you remove any inserts? Remove the paper overlay? Remove the top cedar or the cedar divider?

Anything else?

Appreciate the tips.

[Rye]

I open them up, sniff all the Cuban air out, close them back up, and toss (er...Tetris) them into the cabinet.

[bbguardsp]

Best to leave top on and closed with cabs. Wax paper is there to protect the cigars from the cedar box itself. Some people like the cedar flavor cigars take on with long term aging. I dont, especially if they are kept without a barrier between the wood and the cigars. The wax paper will keep direct contact with the wood at bay and they will age fine just like the manufacturer intended. The thin cedar sleeve in DBs is personal preference. Depends on how much you like cedar flavors especially if it's for long term.

[LordAnubis]

I normally remove everything from the inside of a cab or dress box, and just leave the cigars in the box. That's as far as my preparation goes. Other than that, I find it best practise just to let the OLH hold on to your boxes for you. That's the best ageing technique

[polarbear]

I open the box to make sure there are cigars in it, then I close the box again and put it in my humidor

...its a complex system, I know

[garbandz]

I move my cigars from dress boxes into cabs,and age them.

some of my cabs are 25 years old,so the cedar is subdued.

I leave the waxed paper in the newer cabs,removing it after a few years.

[Puros Y Vino]

I leave all cedar sheets and wax inside the boxes intact and double wrap them with Saran Wrap. Then I toss them into the coolidors and hope magic happens over the years.

[bradbrennan]

I like to open them up and invert with my hand underneath, far enough to inspect for any problems such as too wet. And I like to revisit them occasionally. But of course I actually try one periodically to see how they're doing. My approach is more like buy way more than I can smoke so the aging happens by accident I suppose.

[Lotusguy]

I don't to anything. I tend not to overthink things too much

[madmarvcr]

I remove all paper from Cabs. Dress boxes, I will remove any paper and and extra cedar inserts. I save all my inserts and reuse on new purchases. I like the cedar flavors, so it is a personal preference

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[mrsgucia]

I leave all cedar sheets and wax inside the boxes intact and double wrap them with Saran Wrap. Then I toss them into the coolidors and hope magic happens over the years.

What's the reason for Saran Wrap ? Does it help with aging?

[Puros Y Vino]

What's the reason for Saran Wrap ? Does it help with aging?

It helps slow down the process. The wrap still allows for some outgassing and for the humidors' ambient RH to penetrate. This is NO quantitative data to support it. Just anecdotal evidence from other smokers who say it works for them. It's just a preference. The main idea behind it is that if you reduce the external environments' affects on the box you allow the cigars inside to "to do their thing".

[rtrimbath]

I've been putting my boxes and cabs in my coolidor exactly as they were when they arrived. This is my first attempt at aging cigars for 3 years or more though, so I've just been winging it.

[LGC]

1) open box

2) inspect all cigars

3) close box

4) open cooler

5) place box in cooler

6) close cooler

FYI... all stated practices and storage procedures are merely opinions (even coming from "experts" in the industry). Nothing is ever tested and supported with empirical data. You need to experiment and decide what is important to you. Otherwise, you can do as many do... which is to do whatever sounds "logical" based on your education and knowledge, or just adopt the practices based on the theories that sound best to you.

[CigarAsh]

My aging technique is to to throw boxes randomly in my humidors and hopefully forget which boxes are where. Then when I periodically play with all my stock, I find all these hidden little treasures. Take a handful of cigars from each treasure box, reshuffle them and repeat the process again in 6 months. Of course, buying more than you smoke is the real key to this system.

[Ginseng]

FYI... all stated practices and storage procedures are merely opinions (even coming from "experts" in the industry). Nothing is ever tested and supported with empirical data. You need to experiment and decide what is important to you. Otherwise, you can do as many do... which is to do whatever sounds "logical" based on your education and knowledge, or just adopt the practices based on the theories that sound best to you.

Oh let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. This is perhaps a perspective too conservative. I read your setting off in quotes of "logical" to mean naive, uninformed, or uncritical reasoning.

If opinion is defined as "not demonstrated via gold standard double blind controlled experimentation," then yes, everything that is known about cigars must then be classed as opinion. In this case, we would all be relegated to a realm populated by nothing more than hearsay, innuendo, and idiosyncratic experience.

The situation is that we, as thoughtful, reflective cigar smokers, can be citizen researchers for this hobby. From that perspective, the separation between mere opinion and useful, practical knowledge is manageable.

• smoke just for the fun of it with no further thought, then personal experience and nothing more: the world of aesthetes
• smoke while being open to observation, patterns, and yes, even a little experimentation, and you can extract information that, when pooled with others, can become knowledge: the richer world where science and art exist together and in harmony

That said, we can all serve as critics of the information brought in. We can and should ask questions about what was done, how it was done, and the conditions and circumstances of the test (smoke).

"The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" not a bad goal to abide.

There seems to be a distaste for the term "expert" in the world of cigars. I'm not sure I understand why but I suspect that it may be due to bad history with self-proclaimed experts. This is clearly and truly a different thing from being knowledgeable and being acknowledged as such.

And, with respect to the material properties of the films and papers used in various approaches to long term preservation and storage, these are not arguable. They are the stuff of fact and data...for example the much lower oxygen transmission rate of PVDC (Saran) as compared to PE (Glad). To attempt to argue against this would be akin to saying the sun actually doesn't rise in the east.

No, what can be successfully argued is whether this difference translates to a difference that matters.

WIlkey

[reffy]

From my very limited knowledge on aging, conditions which help the microbial community inside the cigars should be the goal of aging. I believe that the Pseudomonas genus is the main contributor to cigar aging. Studies have shown that the some genus members degrade nicotine, but improves leaf quality over time. Which seems to support anecdotal evidence that as cigars age longer, the relative strength of the cigar decreases. However, I do not know if this is the case after the cigar is made or during fermentation in bales, the studies I've read did not test tobacco in the final product, only individual leaves. Beyond this I cannot comment on how to store cigars, this is only what I've found during my research on the topic and what I believe the goals of aging are.

[tjohn7]

Oh let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. This is perhaps a perspective too conservative. I read your setting off in quotes of "logical" to mean naive, uninformed, or uncritical reasoning.

If opinion is defined as "not demonstrated via gold standard double blind controlled experimentation," then yes, everything that is known about cigars must then be classed as opinion. In this case, we would all be relegated to a realm populated by nothing more than hearsay, innuendo, and idiosyncratic experience.

The situation is that we, as thoughtful, reflective cigar smokers, can be citizen researchers for this hobby. From that perspective, the separation between mere opinion and useful, practical knowledge is manageable.

• smoke just for the fun of it with no further thought, then personal experience and nothing more: the world of aesthetes
• smoke while being open to observation, patterns, and yes, even a little experimentation, and you can extract information that, when pooled with others, can become knowledge: the richer world where science and art exist together and in harmony

That said, we can all serve as critics of the information brought in. We can and should ask questions about what was done, how it was done, and the conditions and circumstances of the test (smoke).

"The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" not a bad goal to abide.

There seems to be a distaste for the term "expert" in the world of cigars. I'm not sure I understand why but I suspect that it may be due to bad history with self-proclaimed experts. This is clearly and truly a different thing from being knowledgeable and being acknowledged as such.

And, with respect to the material properties of the films and papers used in various approaches to long term preservation and storage, these are not arguable. They are the stuff of fact and data...for example the much lower oxygen transmission rate of PVDC (Saran) as compared to PE (Glad). To attempt to argue against this would be akin to saying the sun actually doesn't rise in the east.

No, what can be successfully argued is whether this difference translates to a difference that matters.

WIlkey

Preach, brother, preach!

[pbibby]

Not to thread jack (I think it is related), but for boxes that I put in my winecooler, would they benefit from being in cling wrap to potentially guard against the effects of opening the cooler maybe once every 2 weeks? What I mean is, would it perhaps keep the boxes more stable during the opening and closing?

[Geaux]

• the richer world where science and art exist together and in harmony

WIlkey

Wow - I never thought I'd run into an epistemological argument on a cigar message board!

While the whole post is worth reading, this one point from Wilkey is worth reading several times.

[PapaDisco]

Some guys like to vacuum pack/shrink wrap their boxes. I notice that the "aged" boxes from Habanos come with all the papers inside and stuff so they're just taking them straight from production to the aging warehouse as is; dress box and all.

I slip my cabs and dress boxes (papers and all) into individual ziplock bags and then into the tuperdore. I fall into the camp that believes the less air the better.

[fookite]

In this case, we would all be relegated to a realm populated by nothing more than hearsay, innuendo, and idiosyncratic experience.

Frankly, I see nothing to indicate that this isn't exactly the realm we inhabit.

[stunod]

Prep.. no prep. I just need to hide the little buggers, because I have no frickin will power. If I look at them just sitting there saying, don't smoke me until 2019, you know what will happen..... I'll smoke every last frickin one.

[Ginseng]

Frankly, I see nothing to indicate that this isn't exactly the realm we inhabit.

I do not disagree.

However, planting an acre starts with tilling the spot at your feet.

Wilkey

[kyee]

I've been experimenting with vacuum sealing for the past 6 years.