Need a hand: Thinking back “what do you wish you knew when you were first getting into cigars?”

[El Presidente]

We(I) plan to film a little professional series come April  to help newcomers to the cigar world. CC and NC. 

You can lend me a hand for topics/areas to cover through the series. 

So to the question:

Thinking back “what do you wish you knew when you were first getting into cigars?” 

I appreciate the help 

 

[Havanaaddict]

#1 Buy as large as a cabinet as you can because you’ll always fill it!

#2 Buy one box of every Cuban brand to start, then stock up on the ones you love!

 

[loose_axle]

Ah the cigar tossers challenge to cigar masters! 

For me I wish I’d known the importance of humidity and letting cigars rest a bit after purchase. 

[Chibearsv]

You don’t have to like a cigar simply because others do. Sample, sample, sample, and stock up on the cigars you enjoy.  I’ve purchased boxes and boxes of cigars based on other’s great reviews that are just ok for me. I wish I had spent that coin on others that I knew I liked.

[Allroz]

3 hours ago, loose_axle said:

Ah the cigar tossers challenge to cigar masters! 

For me I wish I’d known the importance of humidity and letting cigars rest a bit after purchase. 

I’d second the letting them rest after purchase - I remember buying NC smoking them ROTT and wondering why they tasted terrible 😂

For mine I’d add don’t torch the s**t out of the cigar and learn how to retrohale. 

[yuppie]

I'd wish I had known that temperature was just as important as humidity. You need to control both and keep them both on the lower end (62ºF/62%). An electric humidor with ammonia removal is worthwhile if you intend to hold boxes.

[riderpride]

Be patient!

- don't blast through a good box unless you have another to age to see how it develops. It'll likely get better.

- if a box doesn't taste good, give it time to develop

- I know some people that bought 'filler' or less expensive sticks just to make the humi look full. This will fill on its own. 

- stack only if you know it's to your palate. 

- your palate will develop. I never thought I'd like Hoyo, now it's my #2.

Cheers!

[AshMe Nothing]

Proper storage and the results of resting and long term aging.

[WestCoastSmokin]

Buy singles to smoke and see what you like, then go buy those boxes.

Buy as much as you can because prices are gonna keep increasing/ inventory will go down.

Buy an electric humidor sooner. Key to keep temp and humidity stable. 

[griller]

2 hours ago, WestCoastSmokin said:

Buy an electric humidor sooner. Key to keep temp and humidity stable. 

AMEN! I lost close to 2 boxes in 2015 due to beetles hatching, which I blame on my A/C going out while I was out of town & my house hitting nearly 90 degrees inside for at least 4-5 days. I didn't check the humidor for another couple of weeks, and when I did the damage had been done... Electric humidor should have mitigated this event.

Also, learning how to retrohale will take your enjoyment to another level. 

[WestCoastSmokin]

2 hours ago, griller said:

AMEN! I lost close to 2 boxes in 2015 due to beetles hatching, which I blame on my A/C going out while I was out of town & my house hitting nearly 90 degrees inside for at least 4-5 days. I didn't check the humidor for another couple of weeks, and when I did the damage had been done... Electric humidor should have mitigated this event.

Also, learning how to retrohale will take your enjoyment to another level

I luckily didn’t lose any boxes, but my humidity and temp were bouncing around in a tuppedor. Too much up and down so I pulled the trigger on an electric humidor. Still learning it and tweaking things on it but much more happy as of right now with the temp and humidity. Yes! That’s a great one, retrohaling is amazing! 

[Fuzz AI]

Lesson learned? I have both spent way too much and way too little on this hobby.

[HailState]

Letting cigars rest after delivery and temp/humidity are great ones. Everything I read getting into the hobby said 70/70, I prefer closer 65/65 - humidity down to 62 even. 

Also, I feel like everything in the States, cigar-wise, is heavily marketed towards making you believe a bigger fatter cigar is better. After I did some experimenting, I quickly found out the majority of my favorite cigars are sub-50 ring gauge.

Understand your preferred flavor profile, and if you’re going to buy boxes of cigars you haven’t tried before, do the research and make sure the profile aligns with your preferences. 
 

[zacca]

I knew this but I’ve heard from plenty of my friends and strangers who didn’t…but the humidor isn’t a magic box. Just because you put some sticks in last night, it doesn’t mean that today they’re now at equilibrium. Depending on how wet or dry they were to begin with, the TEMP AND RH in the box, and humidor stability (and a few other things I won’t get into), they can take anywhere from a few weeks to several months to acclimate. It doesn’t happen in a matter of hours. 

So yeah, the concept of resting and acclimating is a big one I think a lot of people can use help with. 

Also, I think a lot of draw issues with Cubans are storage related. Or should I say, I think poor construction / QA is real, but it’s also become a boogeyman and improper storage just slides by as an afterthought. 

[NYGuido]

When I think back to the single best lesson I’ve learned, it’s that the phrases “good cigar” and “bad cigar” both usually should be followed by “for me.” Sure, there are the table stakes of proper construction and using unadulterated tobacco, but everything else is personal preference and there is no right or wrong. 

I love Davidoff; many don’t. I dislike the D4; many think that makes me insane. Neither party is wrong in either scenario. 

The other thing is that, almost always, a good cigar shared with a friend will taste better than a great cigar smoked alone. 

[BlueWS]

I never knew smoking too fast can change the flavor. How important the wrapper is to the overall flavor of the cigar and why an even burn is important. How a cigar is 98% tobacco and all this s**t we talk about is the other 2%. "Cream, toast, wood, spice, baking spice, pepper spice, etc etc etc". If you're talking Cubans you have to talk about quality control and what a reasonable expectations would be for how many consistent cigars you may get in a box vs how many duds and what makes a dud a dud.

[JohnS]

I feel that it has been said, thus far, and therefore I don't have much to add that hasn't been already reiterated. Perhaps like @riderpride hinted, one's palate changes over time and thus it's important not to 'write off' a cigar, a vitola or a marca you don't like at the beginning of your cigar journey or presently. You may just change your mind later!

[Li Bai]

Not much to add here. I'd say be aware that sometimes a name is just a name when it comes to cigars.

Different years, different factories, different leaves and let's say two D4s are gonna be widely different cigars so don't just write off any cigar for good.

[dageshi]

Honestly...

Humidors are nice pieces of furniture, if all you want to do is store your cigars, a tupperdor with bovedas are leagues ahead. They're cheap, they're easy to expand and if you go off the hobby you've still got some useful tupperware.

Expensive cigars don't necessarily mean better for you. Personally there is something about the flavour profile of Hoyo de Monterrey that just puts it in an entire different league vs practically everything else I've smoked. Price says Cohiba is the best, but to me it's Hoyo all day long. 

The best way I've determined to really understand what you like cigar wise is to get a bunch of different cigars and smoke one a day when the weather is nice. I've found the palate becomes much more accustomed to the flavours in cigars when the memory of what you smoked yesterday is somewhat fresh. It really lets you narrow down what you like vs don't like compared to smoking occasionally.

Finally, perhaps most importantly, always have an emergency full fat Coca Cola on hand. Nicotine sickness is pretty miserable and a Coke has fixed it the few times I had it.

 

 

[Mike Mecklenburg]

2 hours ago, dageshi said:

Expensive cigars don't necessarily mean better for you. Personally there is something about the flavour profile of Hoyo de Monterrey that just puts it in an entire different league vs practically everything else I've smoked. Price says Cohiba is the best, but to me it's Hoyo all day long. 

Well said, there is a great flavor profile to Hoyo.

[Sudzdaddy]

Make friends.  Split boxes/cabs, smoke as much variety as possible.  Take good notes, and compare your findings.  Understand at the end of the day, it truly IS a man-made product, dried leaves bunched and rolled.  There will be duds, mitigate when possible.  Enjoy every chance you get, and in the end, they're just cigars.  

[joeypots]

 

12 hours ago, El Presidente said:

Thinking back “what do you wish you knew when you were first getting into cigars?”

I wish I knew how long it could take to acclimate cigars to a good RH. In a humid area it can take months to get a box ready to smoke. Young, harsh, bitter cigars are often too moist. Know your vendor. 

[Ciscojohansson]

Forget fancy boxes and double banded releases. Regular production is what you should look into. And buy different sizes, sometimes you need a small stick and I hate to leave half a stick in the ashtray because I ran out of time.

[Lucas Buck]

V-Cut. I find it far superior and didn’t even know it existed for the first 15 years or so smoking cigars.
 

Also, don’t smoke nicotine bombs on an empty stomach 😀

[gormag38]

A few good things that I wish I knew: 

1) Bovedas are going to run a couple rh% higher than their stated rh% when using tuppers. This ties in to the 'importance of temp and humidity' that others have mentioned above. But I struggled for a good year I'd say with getting things 'dialed' in to my liking. The higher rH is almost always the cause of a 'bitter' or 'plugged' cigar that many newbies talk about. 

2) Having a great big humidor/tupper/cabinet that isn't more than half full will make it harder for your rh% to stabilize. Boxes, Spanish cedar sheets, etc can help fill the voids if needed until your stock fills it up. 

3) Reiterating others: Patience! Your cigars need to acclimatize to your cabinet/humi/tuppers. This happens over many weeks-months. When you receive cigars from vendors/private sales. Always plan on leaving them in your storage conditions for 90+ days before sampling. 

4) Whatever storage system you're going to use; buy a bigger one than you initially plan. You WILL run out of room. Tale as old as time.