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Many moons ago the proprietor of a large cigar distributor advised myself and a group of friends that the cheaper cigars of the day would end up being very nice smokes if we were patient enough to put some hibernation time on them. Some believe this and others are skeptical. I for one believe it is so. Now I am not saying it will turn a dog turd into a Fuente Hemingway but I have found that stronger cigars mellow and lose most or all of their bite with enough time. I bring this up now because I still have a few cigars in my humidor that have more than 15 years on them. Back during the boom a certain company came out with a low cost stick called RIATA. I had one of those that was tissue wrapped in my humidor until this evening. I have to tell you that cigar smoked wonderfully, tasted fine and was smooth as could be. I still have a Montecristo Cigar de arts that is the last of a box of ten I won at a herf in the late 90s/early 2000s era that will bite the dust when we in PA finally get some sit outside and soak up the sun weather. I really believe that stronger cigars need 1-3 months or more on them to mature into their greatest potential. I just sat up about forty different Alec Bradley cigars to see what they grow up to be once summer nears. Based on input from other cigar smokers I have also started to experiment with dry boxing cigars at least a day before smoking. Time will tell if I see an improvement in taste and burn characteristics.

I would love to age some good smokes but I dont keep enough to do such also, I tend to smoke em when the mood hits. I do keep my humidor in the low 60s with the exception of my KFC's. I just tend to like them a little on the more moist side of 69 to 72. Just a personal preference there as with that smoked flavor I like the moist smoke, texture or whatever it's called.

I can def say that this is not true for all cheap cigars, lol. I got some cheap La Vieja and Por Larranaga about 10 years ago and had them recently. Blech...they were horrid.

Some good info in this thread from some of the pros...

70/70 is the ideal for aging ... lower rh/temp for short term storage prior to smoking ...

Phi, there are those who swear by both means (70% or low 60s). I'm a fan of the low 60s, but others will argue that I am wrong. You just have to decide what you prefer and go with that.

David

IMHO No.......hell no.You're right on the edge if not in the mold zone.I keep my sticks at 58-63% with zero mold issues,aged to perfection and smokable anytime I want one.

I'm smoking thru a box of 3.5yo Padron 3000 Maduros.
They're not PAMS, but they ARE very much better than ROTT, or close to ROTT.
At the rate I'm smoking them, I'll have some left at 5 years........who knows, maybe mine will turn out like Stingers!

I do plan on extended rest for 2 boxes of 2000 maddies, as I've read/heard that vitola responds well, and quickly to a long nap, and is a very fine smoke at 2 or 3 years.

Well I do have a box of Delicias maddies coming up on 2 years soon, so I will check one of those out at 2 years, and I'll be in touch.........a slightly smaller rg, and a bit shorter than the 2000....... But pretty much the same cigar.

Be sure to check with me first, got a new job, I'm in Bandon and Port Orford a lot these days.

Sharpie MM/YY of acquisition on the boxes or bundles (for example, you get a box today, mark it 3/18), and when you remove a single from a box or bundle and aren't going to smoke it immediately, just use a Sharpie and copy the box or bundle's date onto the cigar's individual cello. That way if you don't smoke the single and put it back, you'll still know its age.

I've done that since day one, and although I have thousands of cigars now, at a glace I instantly know the month and year I got each box, bundle or single, without need to refer to any records.

Beautifully simple, easy and effective.

Also, if you gift cigars to friends, they too automatically and instantly know, at a glance, how long you've aged them.
.

There's another advantage to keeping our cigars in the lower ranges that you and I seem to prefer. If you are unlucky enough to get a cigar contaminated with beetle eggs, at the humidity levels we keep ours at, there is virtually zero chance of those eggs ever hatching.

David

Hi David, been a long time since seeing you around here. Hope all is well.

IIRC the humidity thing was disproven a number of years back by a research group out of Japan. They were getting reliable hatching down into the 30-40 RH range so long as the temperatures were within the tolerated range for the eggs. They were even getting limited hatchings in the high 50F area.

I'll see if I can find a link to the study. It's been years since I looked at it.

^^^nice^^^

I'm going to chalk it up to the latter. LOL.


The mature beetles were under the cello, you say? A couple things come to mind as possibilities. I believe they have to fly to mate, and if they were stuck under the cello (they only eat in the larval stage, I'm not even sure they have "mouths" in the adult stage - they certainly can't chew though cello at that point) this could have prevented it. Another is that they never developed wings, below a certain temperature they won't develop wings during pupation, which brings us back to the must fly to mate. Other possibilities include they are not asexual, you could have had two beetles of the same sex hatch. Or they just died before they had a chance to mate. Again, this is all speculative and there are probably a few other possibilities, these are just the ones that come to mind first.

Or you just got lucky.

Well, being PDRs, I'm not so sure about that, but they died.

And there you have it, true genius.

If Ron can figure it out, then the rest of you have no excuse.

I have to agree with SteveS, higher temp and higher humidity for aging.

I've read this said before here and have actually done some research on it, but alas all I really have is anecdotal evidence because I've never attempted to age cigars.

Padron Family Reserve are a fine, strong, full bodied smoke and are aged at the factory, and I have to assume at more humid / hotter conditions.

But I've had quite a few cigars that were stored at lower temp / lower rh that people sent me that simply dull and lost all their bite (obvious this is not true across the board for all such smokes).

With that said, taste is subjective, but I tend to prefer the well aged cigars that come from the factory than cigars that were stored at 60/65 for 10 years.

TG you know you can be a real tool most of the time.............the rest of the time you're just annoying,like a good case of hemorrhoids.