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Daven vinkit
Alla Ilipon Dave Sabotilta Floridasta saamia sikariharrastukseen liittyviä vinkkejä.
© Dave Sabot
http://www.CheapHumidors.com
5602 56th Commerce Park Blvd
Tampa, Fl 33610
TOP 10 CIGAR TIPS »
BEWARE THE CIGAR BEETLE »
CIGAR WRAPPER »
RESTORING DRY CIGARS »
How Long Will Cigars Last? »
Set up a Humidor »
Refill your lighter »
The 8 Basic Steps to Choose and Enjoy that Special Hand-Rolled Cigar »
TOP 10 CIGAR TIPS
1. To make sure your cigar cutter stays sharp and clean, keep the
wrapper on your cigar before cutting.
2. Placing your guillotine cutter flat on a table and placing the
cigar straight up and cutting will ensure a clean, even cut every
time.
3. When your cigars tastes too bitter, blow through it. You'll see
a bluish smoke come out the lit end. Wait a few seconds, and you
should get a nice, clean draw.
4. Lost your cutter and don't feel like biting the end off your $10 stick? If you're on the golf course, use the end of your tee to punch a small hole in your cigar. If you have a steel barrel pen, you can remove the top and use the bottom portion as a quick punch cutter.
5. To make sure your cigar is burning evenly, without canoeing,
rotate the cigar after every few puffs. You can also blow slightly
on the slow burning side to speed it up, and apply a little saliva
with your finger tip to the faster burning side to slow it down.
6. Having a hard time drawing from your cigar? You can take a
skewer or straight coat hanger and insert it into the cigar from
one end to the other. You can also roll the cigar around in your
fingers to loosen up the leaves.
7. Take your time when smoking. If you puff too quickly, your cigar will get too hot, and the taste will be altered. Try one puff every minute as a general rule of thumb.
8. Humidity in a humidor is not a science, despite what you hear.
Don't concentrate so much on the ideal level. Instead, try to keep
the level constant. Fluctuation can cause problems with leaves
swelling and shrinking. Most people prefer to keep their humidors
at the 65 percent range, which is a little drier.
9. Concerned that your humidor doesn't have a good seal? You can
try the drop test or the dollar bill test. In the drop test, you
drop the lid of your humidor from half open and listen. If it puffs when closing, you have a good seal. If it bangs, you're in trouble. You can also open the lid, insert a dollar bill half way in the humidor, and then close the lid. Tug slightly on the bill. If it gives resistance and is hard to remove, you have a good seal.
10. A cigar also needs to be judged by its wrapping. A perfect
cigar is one that has an intact, undamaged wrapper. (If the wrapper is damaged, don't buy it.) The wrapper should also be consistent in color, and it should have a nice scent to it. If the wrapper is heavily "veined," this is another reason to reject a cigar. While feeling it, the cigar should be wrapped nicely--not too tight (very difficult to draw in) or too lose (loss of flavor).
BEWARE THE CIGAR BEETLE
Just when you thought it was safe to open your humidor...
You see the dreaded cigar beetle has devastated your entire collection of smokes. As if maintaining humidity, choosing good cigars, and getting a good cutter aren't enough, now you have to worry about bugs in your stogies.
Cigar beetles can quickly devastate your entire collection if they aren't noticed and controlled quickly. Like termites to wood, cigar beetles will crawl through cigars, leaving holes all over--and they multiply like crazy.
The eggs of the beetle are smaller than the eye can see and are frequently in the cigars you smoke. Nothing happens to them unless the temperature in your humidor gets up to 72 F degrees, and then they can hatch.
The easiest way to prevent this from happening is to make sure your humidor is in a cool, dry place. Another option is to freeze your cigars for a few days, then let them thaw slowly, putting them your humidor. This will kill all the eggs before they can hatch.
If you find that you've been infected, remove all the bad cigars and toss them. Take the rest of your cigars out of your humidor, and ensure they are lower than 72 F degrees or freeze them. Some people will even freeze their humidor to make sure the eggs in the cedar are killed.
With a little know-how and a close eye, you can make sure you never get infested with the beetle.
CIGAR WRAPPER
Daily I get asked, "Should I remove the wrapper from my new cigars before I store them in my humidor?" The simple answer: It doesn't matter.
You may think that the plastic prevents the cigar from getting humidity, but they won't. The cellophane is used to prevent the cigars from being damaged, and it also deters against flavors mixing. But what many people don't know is that cellophane is actually a porous material, so it allows humidity to pass through it.
Want an example? Take a cigar in the wrapper and leave it outside your humidor for a week. You might as well throw it away, because it'll be ruined. The wrapper didn't hold in the humidity; it did nothing at all, really. So it isn't hard to see how the wrapper doesn't really affect the humidity of the cigar.
It comes down to personal preference. Some people like them on; some people like them off. The advantage of keeping them on is that your cigar flavors won't mingle as much, though you probably won't notice unless you're an expert. It also is great to cut your cigars with the wrappers on, as it keeps the blade clean and sharp much longer.
RESTORING DRY CIGARS
It has happened to all of us at one time or another. You simply forgot about that nice box of stogies you had in the trunk of your car for 3 months...well, hopefully not that long. I always get asked what you can do to restore dried cigars.
The most important thing to remember is that restoring a dried cigar takes time--lots of time and patience. Don't be in a hurry to get the job done.
Step 1:
Put your cigars in a non-humidified humidor. If this doesn't exist, then you can use a Ziploc bag with some holes poked in it. You want to bring the cigars to a steady humidity level that is much less than 70 percent. Let them sit in this environment for about 2-3 days.
Step 2:
Dampen a fresh, clean sponge with distilled water. Place it inside the Ziploc bag, and allow it to sit there, not touching any cigars, for at least one more week. This will slowly add humidity to the cigars at a rate that will prevent the wrappers from bursting.
Step 3:
After two weeks, your cigars should start to look a lot healthier. Put them in your charged, maintained humidor at this point. Don't smoke them yet. Let them rest for while. I would suggest a month or two, just to make sure things are back to normal. Then you can feel free to smoke to your hearts content.
How Long Will Cigars Last?
Sure you love cigars, and you might even be tempted to purchase a large quantity of them to take advantage of some remarkable deals, but how long can you actually store your stogies?
If properly maintained, there is no reason a good humidor shouldn't be capable of storing your cigars for the duration of your life. Heck, it can even store them for the duration of your childrens life, and their childrens, etc.
In fact, there have been reports of pre-embargo cigars "discovered" in walk-in humidors that were placed there 40 or 50 years ago and they were said to be out-of-this-world-delicious.
Set up a Humidor
Here is some information on how you setup a cigar humidor for the first time.
When most people get their new humidor home, they're anxious to fill it up with their collection of smokes. If you do this without first re-humidifying the wood, you may ruin your cigars. This is because the wood hasn't had a chance to reach its equilibrium. So when you put your cigars in, the wood will absorb their moisture,
and you'll be left with dry, useless cigars. Not exactly the reason you bought a humidor, huh? To solve this problem, all humidors should be humidified before their first use.
Re-humidifying your humidor is easy; just follow these simple steps:
1) Place a shallow container filled with distilled water in the humidor
2) Place a calibrated hygrometer inside the humidor. Instructions can be found here »
3) Charge your humidification device. Instructions can be found here »
4) Place the humidification device inside your new humidor.
You have to check the relative humidity every day. Depending on a number of factors, this can take from a few days to a few weeks. When you get in the 70 percent range, it's safe to store your smokes inside. As long as you constantly recharge your humidification device, you'll never have to wait to store your cigars in that humidor again.
Refill your lighter
One of the most common questions I receive relates to the proper way to refill a lighter. If done incorrectly, you can cause some serious problems. Not quite as bad as global warming, but bad enough to render your lighter useless.
Refueling your refillable, butane lighter is quite easy. Refill cans are available just about anywhere, from your local tobacco shop to gas stations. Brands are among the best and most popular. Using a cheap brand of fuel can damage the inlet valve and (even more common) clog the burner valve.
The most common mistake made in refilling a butane cigar lighter is not keeping the can and the lighter upside down. If you do not refill with the can in the upside down position, you will just inject air into the lighter, and it won't work properly until it is bled and refilled.
To refill:
First, read the warning labels and instructions on the can. Aim it away from your face, and stay away from any open flame or ignition source. (Seems like common sense, but you'd be surprised...)
Then:
Turn the adjustment screw to the (-) position. On some lighters, it's located in the same hole as the inlet valve, wrapped around the inlet valve, and requires a small standard screw driver. Other cigar lighters have a separate, easier-to-locate, adjustment screw. And some have a knob over the adjustment screw that can be turned with your fingers.
Hold the lighter and the refill can upside down. There will be a small hole at the bottom of your lighter. Inside the hole you'll see the inlet valve. Press the tip of the refill can over the inlet valve, and press down firmly for 4 to 5 seconds. Repeat once.
Adjust the flame to desired height. That's it.
The 8 Basic Steps to Choose and Enjoy that Special Hand-Rolled Cigar
1) Cigars are to be a pleasure. They should not be rushed. Find a relaxing and appropriately ventilated place, enough time to finish the cigar and a glass or two of your favorite accompanying beverage. And enjoy.
2) Buy only from a reputable retailer or online distributor who stores cigars properly and can intelligently answer questions you might have. Cut the very tip of the cigar with a sharp blade. Too little doesn't allow a smooth draw of the smoke, and too much makes the cigar unravel and leave lots of little tobacco pieces in your mouth.
3) Light the cigar slowly with a wooden match or butane lighter. Candles or smelly fluid lighters can foul your sense of smell. Hold the match slightly below the end of the cigar, and rotate the flame to char the end before you draw any flame into the cigar. This assures an even light with no irregular burning or runs.
4) Smoke slowly. Taste the smoke, but do not inhale.
5) Keep track of the brands you try and how you liked them. Ask your retailer for recommendations based on those you enjoyed.
6) Try different sizes. The larger the diameter or ring gauge, the cooler and richer the smoke. The longer the cigar, the more time it will take to smoke.
7) If you settle on a brand or become a regular smoker, buy larger quantities. Make sure you have a proper storage device, like a humidor. Cigars are very complex things, but they shouldn't be intimidating. Like anything involving taste, personal preferences will often determine what is the "best" cigar. Friends (and even professionals) freely give their well-intended advice. But the individual cigar smoker is his own best judge.
8) All cigars can be divided into two categories of manufacture: machine-made and hand-made.
Machine-made cigars usually consist of lesser quality tobacco, many times short scrap. Frequently, they contain a tobacco particle paper and a variety of chemicals to keep them from drying out. The best cigars use long leaf filler. This is essentially a folded, whole tobacco leaf with the stem and middle rib of the leaf removed.
Even if machine-made cigars use the highest quality leaves, they must be formed into a cigar in such a way that smoke is drawn through it correctly. In addition, the tobacco cannot be so loose that it will burn hot or fall apart during smoking. No one has yet invented a machine that can select the right leaves, fold, form, and use the simple tools to wrap cigars as well as the expert hands of the skilled cigar maker.
The cigar boom of the 1990s had the happy result of thousands of new and well-trained cigar makers all over the world. So hand-making cigars is not in danger of becoming a lost art.
Hand-made cigars are produced all over the world, but the majority of them originate in the countries of Central America, primarily because of tradition and tobacco supply.
Much of the best tobacco used for cigars is grown in Honduras, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba. Soil and climate conditions, combined with the development of specific tobacco varieties, make these countries the top producers of cigar tobacco. That said, we recognized that some excellent types also come from Asia, Africa, and even the United States.
Central America also has developed the best cigar-making centers to take advantage of the local tobacco supply and inexpensive labor.
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