Mold inside cigar yuck!

[Cloud]

NOT from our host.  3 weeks in transit from Europe to US.  Box of 25 Upmann No 2 had several sticks with mold on the surface.  Easily brushed off the mold.  One stick had mold on the foot, clipped a half inch off and relieved to see no further mold.  Decided to sacrifice and dissect and here is what I found in the filler...This is a bit worrisome, I doubt the mold in the foot correlates to the mold in the center of the filler.  Moldy conditions are moldy conditions and the filler was packed tightly.

[Bagman]

I see so many people say "Just clip the foot"  Might have to point them to this post!

[Cloud]

Even surface mold for that matter.  If you see any mold then you know it was subjected to a moldy environment and the possibility of mold growing inside is likely.  We see more people wiping it off then opening it up to check, but that is costly so we shrug our shoulders and smoke on...Scary!

[cfc1016]

51 minutes ago, Cloud said:

Even surface mold for that matter.  If you see any mold then you know it was subjected to a moldy environment and the possibility of mold growing inside is likely.  We see more people wiping it off then opening it up to check, but that is costly so we shrug our shoulders and smoke on...Scary!

Meh. I've been smoking 20+ years, and I'm sensitive/allergic to mold. I generally just avoid smoking anything where I saw mold on the foot. Never flinched at a little bit of wrapper mold, as long as it'd wipe off. Never had any heavy mold-allergy-flaring events from any of them. Evennthe times that I *have* inadvertantly smoked a cigar with mold in the filler, it was more of a culinary unpleasantness, than an adverse respiratory reaction. Not saying it's *good* for you,  either way. Also don't think it's "scary", as you put it. I generally just treat it like "the angels' share", as I would with one or two dud sticks in a box. Just an inherent tradeoff that makes me better appreciate the instances when the experience is not perverted or adulterated.

[Colt45]

If I had to venture a guess, I'd imagine that smoking tobacco poses a greater health risk than smoking a bit of mold. I personally wouldn't give smoking that cigar a second thought. Off to have some unpasteurized blue cheese....

[Cloud]

Good points.   We tend to attribute mold, which is on everything, as unhealthy.  The question is cigar mold toxic or not?  If non-toxic, which is the likely case, then smoke on.

[DeskSmkr]

Acknowledging your preference to not have this in your cigar.

Nice photos.

Wondering if mold can add complexity in the right circumstances, as in wine with noble rot - the beneficial form of a grey fungus, Botrytis cinerea.

[avaldes]

IMO there is a good chance we smoke a lot more foreign matter than we would like. Having pulled strings out of cigars, I am 100% sure there is some amount of other stuff in our cigars that we would not like. With that said, I've disassembled a lot of cigars over the years and aside from disappointing construction, I've only found tobacco in factory cigars. Customs are another story, and I chalk that up to supply chain. YMMV

[cfc1016]

1 hour ago, DeskSmkr said:

Wondering if mold can add complexity in the right circumstances, as in wine with noble rot - the beneficial form of a grey fungus, Botrytis cinerea.

I posited something similar to this, during the big "mold or plume" thread.

Basically we have far too polarized a view of fungus [as bad], and shut our minds to the far more nuanced truths about an entire KINGDOM OF LIFE. Fungus is everywhere, man. Most of it is mycelium that's invisible to the human eye. The fruiting body (mushrooms) that we identity as "mold" are likely just a tiny component of the overall mycelium content.

I can't speak to any citable science, but I would feel a fool if I were to assume that fungi don't play a role in tobacco's curing and/or aging chemical processes. I would not be even slightly surprised to find that the stages of maturation we observe in the flavors of cigars, were a direct function of some fungus/fungi saprobically denaturing some compound, and synthesizing another, within the tobacco.

Fungus good. Narrow-mindedness bad. ?

[Habana Mike]

The correct amount of rot can improve many things though will destroy anything if left unchecked.

[cfc1016]

1 minute ago, Habana Mike said:

The correct amount of rot can improve many things though will destroy anything if left unchecked.

The right stage and amount, of all of the right kinds, in all the right proportions, at just the right time ?

Fungus is magic, baby.

[RedLantern]

I wonder how much hair ends up in cigars? Bugs? As with almost every product we consume, don't ask questions you don't want to know the answers to!