Cigar weight

[Jimmy_jack]

I’ve seen a lot of reference to stick weight. Some references to “official” weight of a cigar. Where are we getting an official weight? Is it averaging out a box and factoring over time?
 

I get it, there are underfilled, overfilled and each can cause issues. Just curious.

[dominattorney]

I, too, am curious about this. 

[djrey]

https://www.friendsofhabanos.com/forum/forum/111-cuban-cigar-weight-guide/

[Jimmy_jack]

Well look at that. An entire anthology. Thanks! 

[Corylax18]

1 hour ago, Jimmy_jack said:

I’ve seen a lot of reference to stick weight. Some references to “official” weight of a cigar. Where are we getting an official weight? Is it averaging out a box and factoring over time?
 

I get it, there are underfilled, overfilled and each can cause issues. Just curious.

Like a lot of the "observables" we use to judge cigars before we smoke them, this one has limited use in my opinion. 

Does a "heavy" cigar have a better chance of being plugged than a "Light" one? Theoretically, sure, I guess. But a quick comparison of a typical NC against a typical CC blows this out of the water pretty quickly. 

But, of all the plugged cigars I've encountered its usually a construction issue, not just too much tobacco. 

90% of my plugged cigars seem to have a "knot" right around the band. Either a twist in the bunch or a spot where they've simply put too much tobacco in one area. 

I've had grossly underfilled cigars with tight, "spongey" draws and rock solid "over filled" cigars that draw like a dream.

I think we're deep into Over Analyzing territory at this point. 

[NSXCIGAR]

I don't use the table for anything other than size comparison and sometimes price analysis. 

Just because a cigar is over/under the official weight doesn't mean it's unsmokeable. Use of the table for practical analysis is pointless IMO.

[cigaraholic]

A plugged cigar is a plugged cigar, no matter what it weighs, usually from a knot or twist when rolled. A problem I almost never encounter, it took 25 years before I had my first plugged cigar. I think the published weights are for tax purposes....think. I like my cigars well filled, at or heavier than the published weight, as long as they draw I’ll happy. I find a big drop off in flavor from cigars missing 20% or more of their tobacco, the more missing the worst the smoke. 

[djrey]

51 minutes ago, cigaraholic said:

I like my cigars well filled, at or heavier than the published weight, as long as they draw I’ll happy. I find a big drop off in flavor from cigars missing 20% or more of their tobacco, the more missing the worst the smoke.

I'm with you. When a new box arrives I always get excited when it has some heft to it. Also means longer smoke time! 

[Bijan]

There's definitely a correlation but it's more of a probability distribution. That said a cigar 20% underweight and one being 30% overweight are very likely going to be different. I'd bet money that the first one would have a looser draw than the second. Those are pretty much the extremes though. At more typical weight the draw would appear much more random. At that point you're probably better off looking at the bunching at the foot and feeling the head for tightness.

 

[cigaraholic]

I wish 20% underweight was the extreme.....that’s child’s play....I just vacuumed a 3.5g Partagas Short to see if it’s worth smoking.....that’s over 50% short....pun intended👻

[Bijan]

24 minutes ago, cigaraholic said:

I wish 20% underweight was the extreme.....that’s child’s play....I just vacuumed a 3.5g Partagas Short to see if it’s worth smoking.....that’s over 50% short....pun intended👻

Wow, it's weird how the probability curve can be so skewed between different people buying the same cigars, some getting wind tunnels, others getting plugged cigars. I've definitely never gotten a minuto under 5g. I can't remember the last one I had under 6g. On the other hand I've gotten heavier ones.

But yes in this case 3.5g weight tells you something about what to expect. As would 11 or 12g.

[La_Tigre]

I think this metric is more of a “value” for the “value” cigars such as Coronations, Palmas, Romeos, Shorts, Habaneros, etc...where the variability is wildly variant. It was eye opening to dissect two boxes of tubod Coronations to see the extreme variance in cut, sheen, wrappers, fill (by squeeze test). Will be interesting to do a weigh-in once they are fully rested and acclimated to see that variance as well. 

[El Presidente]

4 hours ago, NSXCIGAR said:

I don't use the table for anything other than size comparison and sometimes price analysis. 

 

The intended use of the  table is for the importation of Habanos cigars by distributors. 

That's it in a nutshell 

[ATGroom]

If you click through on the names of cigars on CCW you get a more detailed page that includes either the official weight (courtesy of the table above - thanks Rob) or an estimated weight (mostly for discontinued or exotic sizes where the official weight is not known).

The thing about the 30% variation in weights up or down, is that the "official weight" is not the "ideal weight" or the "perfect weight" or "average weight" or anything like that. I think they just picked a random example, weighed it, and wrote it down as the official weight. So the 30% variation applies within the official weights themselves. Two near identical sized cigars might have a large variation in their official weights. For some vitolas, real examples might trend consistently below or above their official weight if the one used to set the official was at the high or low end of the range.

I guess there is probably some logic to a very anal retentive smoker weighing all their cigars and figuring out that "for monte 2, I find that they smoke best at 13.95g"... official weights won't help you with this.

For the CCW estimated weights I take an average of the official weight per mm for cigars of the same ring gage and then multiply it out.

Also have this tax calculator here that is useful for Aussies or anyone else with a weight based tax system. Tax Calculator | Cuban Cigar Website

[mprach024]

Number of times I’ve weighed a cigar.....same as many times I’ve weighed my television, who cares. 
Don’t get the point personally, smoke the darn thing, some are going to be better than others, please find something more productive to do, like pour a drink.   

[Bijan]

3 hours ago, ATGroom said:

The thing about the 30% variation in weights up or down, is that the "official weight" is not the "ideal weight" or the "perfect weight" or "average weight" or anything like that. I think they just picked a random example, weighed it, and wrote it down as the official weight. So the 30% variation applies within the official weights themselves. Two near identical sized cigars might have a large variation in their official weights. For some vitolas, real examples might trend consistently below or above their official weight if the one used to set the official was at the high or low end of the range.

In my experience this is not entirely the case (of it being random). And cigars actually do vary around the official weight, though the official weight is usually lower than the average weight. Culebras and half coronas are the least dense by official weight, and they do tend to have lighter draws, be less densely packed (culebras due to the fact that they need to be loose to be twisted). Minutos are the densest and they do tend to be denser in general. I think in general the official weight is somewhat to the left of bell curve for each cigar, so below the real average.

[mprach024]

6 minutes ago, Bijan said:

In my experience this is not entirely the case (of it being random). And cigars actually do vary around the official weight, though the official weight is usually lower than the average weight. Culebras and half coronas are the least dense by official weight, and they do tend to have lighter draws, be less densely packed (culebras due to the fact that they need to be loose to be twisted). Minutos are the densest and they do tend to be denser in general. I think in general the official weight is somewhat to the left of bell curve for each cigar, so below the real average.

@Bijan you are the one exception, I could see you taking great joy in weighing cigars first and having a spreadsheet with data plots.  Lol.  You crack me up brother, you remind me so much of one of my best friends.  Loves data, loves gathering, love analyzing for anything he does.  I call him Johnny 5.

[Bijan]

1 minute ago, mprach024 said:

@Bijan you are the one exception, I could see you taking great joy in weighing cigars first and having a spreadsheet with data plots.  Lol.  You crack me up brother, you remind me so much of one of my best friends.  Loves data, loves gathering, love analyzing for anything he does.  I call him Johnny 5.

Lol! Exactly. A normal person would read this thread and go, yeah weighing is pointless. I'm reading thinking I need to be tracking weights in a spreadsheet 😂

[mprach024]

2 minutes ago, Bijan said:

Lol! Exactly. A normal person would read this thread and go, yeah weighing is pointless. I'm reading thinking I need to be tracking weights in a spreadsheet 😂

Who wants to be normal anyways 

[La_Tigre]

6 minutes ago, mprach024 said:

Who wants to be normal anyways 

Think it goes with the cigar utility vs collectibility by some folks. There is fun in analyzing vs just acceptance for simple utility. Have we ever weighed a cigar? Not yet... 😆 but it’s happening to those 50 Punch Coronation Tubos. It ain’t happening to the other 99% of the collection.

Cigars with poor draw may see threat of a Fat Bastid “fat shaming” weigh-in, though. You hear us big boy?? You’re on notice!!

[Bijan]

As has been said the real purpose of the official weights table is to calculate taxation by weight, in that case logically HSA has every incentive to give a lower official weight, given fixed taxation rates (it would be dumb on their end to choose a random cigar and risk having 30% higher taxes or more on that vitola). On the taxation side it's like property taxes they don't care about the absolute error in the weights (generally the appraised value is lower than the market value for most properties in many places, but all that matters is that all properties are below market value by about the same ratio), just the relative error between different vitolas (otherwise people will start buying the cigars with the lowest relative official weights), they can always raise the taxation rate per gram (it would be odd for them to accept HSA's numbers no questions asked if some of the vitolas were way under in official weight from typical weight).

Anyways I think the above hand waving argument, explains why most official weights tend to be below the average weight for the vitola, and also the reason there is some relationship between official weight and typical weight for each vitola.

The outliers in terms of official weight vs density are almost always lower density than average. So far I haven't seen a vitola that is way over the median, but there are few that are considerably under (caprichos and culebras).