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Posted

I purchased some custom rolls. I was confident that they had been frozen and made their way into the custom roll storage container but I couldn’t find them. Emptied that thing twice 

Then I went out to randomly check a garage freezer to see if I had left them there. Sure enough, sitting on shelf where I usually don’t put cigars. So that 2-3 days in the freezer became five weeks. Bugs are dead for sure - now how are the cigars?
Fingers crossed that the bag was fully sealed up and that I only need to let the leaves heal from a long deep freeze. No freezer burn or ice inside the bag, so I’ll take that as a good sign. 
beyond slowly bringing to temp and slowly exposing to humidification (my lowest is currently 62%),any suggestions  on how to rehabilitate?  

Who knows, these could still be perfect, but given the costs of cigars these days I’m all ears for suggestions (beyond not leaving my cigars in a freezer for five weeks😂). 
thanks

Posted

Will report back - but my only issue is that this was a small sample of ten custom rolls that I had yet to try - so no baseline. 
one anecdotal story though. My dad was from Toronto. We used to drive up from the states several times a year, often seeing his friends. We would often spend the winter holidays with his boyhood buddy (and family in at a winterized cabin on lake Simco). Why the background?  He used to keep a box of Cuban PC from Yitz’s in the freezer for long term storage. My first CC. It tasted great - but that was nearly 40 years ago and I was not a regular CC guy. It was also likely before bovedas were broadly available. But that box had been in the freezer for many months by the time I was offered a cigar on New Year’s Eve while playing poker. 
my gut is that the issue is more about having a good seal on the box/bag so the oils on the leaves are not evaporated than the temp - but that’s my operating theory based on scant evidence. 

Posted

Going back a decade, I found some Monte 1's at the back of the freezer. I worked out they had been there for around 3 years. I was single at the time ;)

They smoked fine but supremely uniform in flavour which I found very uncubanesque. I always suspected the extended freezing had something to do with it but this was hardly a clinical trial. 

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Posted

Reporting back. After slowly thawing the cigars, I put them in my active Coolidor which has a pound of heartfelt 65 beads in it and does a nice job of stabilizing fresher cigars. After a week, the cigars all showed 65 rh using my probe. Only one was tested at foot and head, but rh was consistent. 
for three days I have had one of the sticks in my upstairs humi, which typically runs around 60rh. I tend to like my CC on the lower end of rh, but don’t fully drybox before I smoke them. 
the only thing I noted was that about a cm of the wrapper edge had separated. Leaving my finger there solves that issue. Otherwise the stick smoked well with a crisp edge. 
this was the first of this type of custom for me, so I can’t yet comment on whether there was an adverse impact on taste. But it was a great cigar. Beautiful aroma, complex and evolving taste. I am ordering more. 
If those “new” and properly handled sticks taste differently I will report back. If I don’t like them, I can always freeze them for five weeks then 😂 but my money is that the five weeks in the freezer did not have an impact on them.  My faith is ziploc retaining a seal remains. 

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