GaryR wrote:I just did the same thing. I smoked a Man o War Damnation a week ago and as I was smoking I was thinking, "Damn, this is the absolute BEST cigar I have ever had." I remember thinking how I enjoyed it even more than Padron 1926.....
Got home that night and ordered a box. Then I smoked a couple more from the first 5er......
I'm going to go crazy trying to duplicate that first experience. :(
Upon initial testing/evaluation, the Damnations struck me as a cigar that would benefit from lots of age. This is based on their performance, flavor and my total past experience and intuition with cigars so it may not be correct, but I really suspect it is.
So I bought a lot of them, buried them in one of my Sterilite containers and forgot about them. Gonna keep forgetting about them for quite a few years to come.
Then you hope they're great. It's like playing a slot machine where it takes years to pull the arm each time.
If you want to smoke them now, I would suggest maybe 48 hours of dryboxing.
You can also try running the cigar under tap water for a few seconds (pre-cut, head facing up, foot ALWAYS facing down so no water gets in it), then rolling it on a paper towel to remove all excess water, let sit maybe 2-3 minutes, then light. Wrappers are basically waterproof so the binder/filler won't get wet, but the wrapper will become slightly more moist, which believe it or not doesn't inhibit burning, but significantly changes the flavors, usually for the better. It's a technique not commonly known or talked about today, but it used to be very common, and it works... with some cigars, anyway.
You can even do both. Sometimes I drybox 48 hours, then wet the wrapper, then smoke.
When to do which? Hard to say. Experiment!
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