Cigar Tips

Here are some tips that will improve your enjoyment of a good cigar and help you avoid the bad ones

  • Getting Acquainted: When you first unwrap you stogie - take a bit of time to admire (or critique) the art that went into making it. The roller put a lot of effort into making the cigar. Take some time to enjoy the view. Pay close attention to the wrapper, the cap construction and the foot. Roll the stogie in your fingers and feel for hard spots or spongy areas. What you find may go a long way to explain your experience once you fire it up.
  • Kiss the Tip: When you light your stogie, make sure that you hold the tip well above the flame of the match or lighter. I have seen herfers darken the first half inch of the wrapper. It takes a long time for a cigar that has been so abused to settle down.
  • Clearing Your Cigar: As your cigar rests between draws, all sorts of things build up inside it. Before you take the next puff try this - gently blow out to clear all those nasty things that might have built up. I guarantee that it will improve your next puff. Give it a try. This has become such a habit for me that I rarely thing about in now.
  • Sip Don’t Gulp: The strength of your draw has a number of effects on how the stogie tastes. The biggest one is that a strong draw will heat up things pretty fast and make the taste harsher. Try a long slow draw - sip the cigar - and you will get more of the tobacco taste and less of the harsh edge
  • Waft That Smoke: Here’s a tip that will tell you a lot about the stogie that you have just lit. About 1/4 of the way down let the cigar rest for a bit then waft some of the smoke from the hot end - draw it in through your nose. There are some aromas that will be easier to spot that way. For one thing, you will smell what others are smelling. You can also pick up faint hints of the bad stuff - like ammonia - that way - hints that might miss by just drawing in