Do you find yourself transitioning cigars in different seasons?

[El Presidente]

Do you find yourself transitioning cigars in different seasons?

I mean, do you have a core set of cigars that are in essence a "summer squad" and "winter squad"?

We had our first "cool" morning of the year.  Don't feel too sorry, it was 10C or 50F 

Still....my mind went to stocking up the home desktop with RASCC, PLPC, D4, D5, Boli PC, BBF, Nude 3, Shorts, RASS, Mag 46.  Out go the San Christobal, Sancho P, Rafael G, Hoyo (most) until September. 

[Bijan]

Definitely the case for me due to smoking outside in Canada (though the tropical part of Canada, so no complaints 😂).

PCs and below with the occasional long skinny during the winter, and a handful of Robustos, torpedos and coronas gordas. Churchills, double coronas, and any fatties longer than a Robusto for the warmer months.

[Kevin48438]

Yes, because of golf.   There are some NCs I like for the golf course, that I don’t otherwise smoke.  Plus smoking outside more, I smoke a lot less 46 ring gauge and below.   I prefer them inside out of the wind.

[Chris P. Bacon]

Definitely! As the weather warms up and I'm able to smoke outside, there are certain CCs and NCs I gravitate to. Fonseca No. 1, Illusion Epernay, and RyJ Churchills seem to taste better in the outdoor air.

[Habana Mike]

Nope, time of year or weather rarely if ever impact the pick of size, vitola or marca for me.

I'll smoke the cigar I want to smoke when I choose to smoke it regardless of any factor other than the time I have to smoke and which ones I have on hand.

[Tdm_86]

In my case, not really. I have the option of smoking indoors. 

[gojira]

I smoke indoors so not really. But when I'm at my girlfriends I have to open the widow a bit so I'm not to keen on smoking a DC when it's winter at her place. Other than that I just light up what I feel like.

[Paso]

I smoke at  home and in my office, so season doesn't really matter. I think pandemic influences more than season. More time for DC and bigger cigars than before pandemic.

[Mickey D]

Definitely smaller ring gauges when cold outside to limit my exposure.

 

[Enduin]

Not really, my cigar choices are mostly linked to what flavors I'm in the mood for. But I don't have to deal with cold weather in FL so there's that. 

[smbauerllc]

Yes, as I have to smoke outside here, so in the winter I smoke a lot more PC's so I'm not out in the cold as long.
In the summer i go back to my preferred size range for the most part.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[Tstew75]

Not at all.

[Bijan]

I think this is basically asking:

Do you smoke outdoors?

Do you live somewhere cold?

There was a recent thread about hibernating smokers in the winter, I feel there is some overlap between this and that.

[Enduin]

It really does boil down to that for the most part...

[Joeyjojo]

I may be in a minority, but as I smoke indoors all year round I find myself gravitating to smaller cigars in the summer as I find it can be a bit too much smoking a large cigar in the high humidity of the UK summer.  

[Bijan]

38 minutes ago, Joeyjojo said:

I may be in a minority, but as I smoke indoors all year round I find myself gravitating to smaller cigars in the summer as I find it can be a bit too much smoking a large cigar in the high humidity of the UK summer.  

I think that may be a feature of the UK and the uncommon-ness of AC. Even in Canada AC is very common so I don't have high humidity inside even though it's super humid outdoors.

[Lycosa]

3 hours ago, Bijan said:

I think this is basically asking:

Do you smoke outdoors?

Do you live somewhere cold?

There was a recent thread about hibernating smokers in the winter, I feel there is some overlap between this and that.

Yeah, El Pres himself actually started that hibernation thread. Just like he made this one.

I also thought of another angle. Not only "shorter smokes for cold weather and longer for warm weather". It's "strong cigars for cold weather, mild cigars for warm weather" or something like that. Seems to me like the cigar brands he said he's leaving out are milder. I could be wrong but I have that impression.

 

Yep. AC is sort of a luxury here in Europe. Not that common.

[Bijan]

4 minutes ago, Lycosa said:

Yep. AC is sort of a luxury here in Europe. Not that common.

Definitely makes a lot of sense, at least before the recent global warming.

I set my AC to 26C during the day and 23C at night, and I probably wouldn't invest in AC if daytime highs were low 20s like they used to be in Northern Europe.

[gojira]

7 minutes ago, Bijan said:

Definitely makes a lot of sense, at least before the recent global warming.

I set my AC to 26C during the day and 23C at night, and I probably wouldn't invest in AC if daytime highs were low 20s like they used to be in Northern Europe.

Summers have been hell here in Paris as well. No AC in our flats so we move a Dyson fan with us from room to room.

[Mrcpt]

15 minutes ago, Lycosa said:

Yeah, El Pres himself actually started that hibernation thread. Just like he made this one.

I also thought of another angle. Not only "shorter smokes for cold weather and longer for warm weather". It's "strong cigars for cold weather, mild cigars for warm weather" or something like that. Seems to me like the cigar brands he said he's leaving out are milder. I could be wrong but I have that impression.

 

Yep. AC is sort of a luxury here in Europe. Not that common.

That’s interesting. I can see how stronger cigar may be better in the colder weather and milder better in the heat, from a flavor perspective. I actually had a go at pipe smoking this past winter (when it got below 5 Celsius consistently) because I was having loads of burn and splitting issues with the cold temps even when I tried acclimating the cigar. 

[Bijan]

20 minutes ago, Mrcpt said:

I actually had a go at pipe smoking this past winter (when it got below 5 Celsius consistently) because I was having loads of burn and splitting issues with the cold temps even when I tried acclimating the cigar. 

I have a very unorthodox storage setup but it has worked well for me so far. I store my cigars in coolers in my cold storage room with 65% bovedas. Temperature varies slowly with the seasons, but humidity is very stable. Temperature hit a low of around 3C this winter and now sitting at around 10C.

I generally go straight from cooler to smoking outside. Even at near 100% humidity and cold temperatures in the winter I had no burn or splitting issues (and the same at lower humidities as well).

[Mrcpt]

16 minutes ago, Bijan said:

I have a very unorthodox storage setup but it has worked well for me so far. I store my cigars in coolers in my cold storage room with 65% bovedas. Temperature varies slowly with the seasons, but humidity is very stable. Temperature hit a low of around 3C this winter and now sitting at around 10C.

Are those the avg temps inside your cooler or the ambient in the room? I keep my coolers in my basement, and the insides can drop to around 14c at the coldest points of winter. I use 62 and 65 bovedas for my Cuban and new world coolers respectively. The more I think about it, I probably wasn’t resting the cigars that gave me problems enough. They were new world cigars that probably arrived either too wet or too dry and didn’t have enough rest time. Oh well.. by now my stash has grown enough that I can let things sit for some time before diving in haha. 

[Bijan]

6 minutes ago, Mrcpt said:

Are those the avg temps inside your cooler or the ambient in the room?

That's the temp in the cooler, but due to the slow swing in temperature, the cooler is generally only 0.5 or 1 degree warmer than the room.

I only see a large delta vs ambient in the rare case where I have to move the coolers elsewhere, then the coolers rise slowly in temperature.

6 minutes ago, Mrcpt said:

I keep my coolers in my basement, and the insides can drop to around 14c at the coldest points of winter.

That's not too bad. It might be lack of acclimatization as you said.

One thing I wouldn't do is cool them down rapidly to acclimate them (especially at the same %RH) as the amount of moisture the cigars will hold at a given RH in equilibrium depends on the temperature. So if you do cool them down you want them cool for 30-60 days so they reach equilibrium again.

Edit: Dropping temperature and maintaining RH constant is essentially wet-boxing (the opposite of dry boxing).

[Mrcpt]

5 minutes ago, Bijan said:

That's the temp in the cooler, but due to the slow swing in temperature, the cooler is generally only 0.5 or 1 degree warmer than the room.

And I was worried about 14 degrees being too cold haha. Thanks for the tips. I’ve read through the RH guides & threads here from PigFish and others and was trying to make sense of where I fall at 16° 62% (too wet or too dry). Either way I’m impressed so far with the burn performance and flavour I get at those numbers, and my bovedas seem to last forever to boot!

Thanks for the help. 

[Bijan]

8 minutes ago, Mrcpt said:

And I was worried about 14 degrees being too cold haha.

I was a little worried at first, based on those same threads.

But my main fear was long term damage and the fact that cigars are frozen in Cuba, and then maybe again by distributors (I have no way of knowing), and then many people will freeze them on receipt, and then freeze again if they have a beetle scare, so 3-4 freezings in total, and expect no ill effects or effects on flavour at all, makes me think that my slow temperature swings will only affect aging and not physically destroy the cigars.

There's a video that keeps getting posted with James Suckling visiting the London Davidoff shop where they store at 12.5C at no more than 65% for long term.