Great question. I have started aging them at least a month or two before I even try them anymore. Like you said, I have tried some the day I got them and they were great. Others I have probably ruined my opinion on them smoking them early.
Experience with a brand and doing a dry draw can give you a heads up on the cigar.
So, you'll cut a cigar and if it draws too tight or if the flavor is??? you'll drop it back in the humi?
I don't mean to butt in and answer for cigary but,.........I think he means the flavor he gets from the "dry draw" combined with his prior experience will tell him whether the stick seems good enough to light up. Some guys have enough experience to tell. Not me. But I think I got lucky and I had an experience like this myself just last night. I normally won't even try one until it's had at least a couple of weeks rest but I was inspecting a new box of cigars that I have had for only a few days and I took one out of the cello and it smelled great so I fired it up. (I only smelled the wrapper and the foot. I didn't cut it and try the draw as I normally toast before the cut anyway.) I was well pleased with the flavors and I'm hoping they will even get better. (It was a Cusano 59 Rare Cameroon in case anyone's wondering.) Perhaps this box was well rested at the warehouse before shipment and had no major temp or humidity fluctuations in transit but that's just my guess. These distributor's warehouses are humidity controlled so I'm guessing the main problem with ROTT sticks being yucky is the temperature and humidity fluctuations in transit. Summer heat would be the worst. Right? As far as B&Ms go, they are all different so you gotta look around for their hygrometers. See if they are reading within the range that you would keep your own stash.
Thanks everyone! Great comments, very helpful.
I like trying out different smokes and if I like a cigar I'll try one of their other lines or sizes if it comes up for sale at a decent price. I'd love to better my odds at getting good smokes.
I received a free San Lotano sampler last summer that was awesome Rott… I smoked the Habano Toro on the day of arrival and was blown away. I guess my takeaway should be: Buy more San Lotano Habano Toro cigars.
Yes! Buy more of 'em for sure. But the oval shape was a weird feeling for me. I might enjoy getting used to it though as those are some good sticks. LOL
Bob....you're scaring me! Exactly what my brain was saying when I wrote that answer. I have too many cigar tools to ever let a plugged cigar scare me and I can open even the worst cigars out there that are unsmokable by others standards. There will by times when I can tell by a dry draw that there could be trouble ahead...then I get my tool out and then open it up and smoke it. I keep every humidor at it's custom RH for what I have in there and rarely ever have a bad cigars.
I have to admit to poking into a cigar with a variety of thin, sharp objects… the frustration of it always leaves me wishing I'd just started over. Plugged cigars never bring me joy, but they are part of the deal with a handmade so I accept it for what it is. There are a few cigar brands that I've loved but abandoned after having too many problems with draw. That said, I've found that 6 months or more in the humi seems to work out many of those issues so I'll let 'em sleep a bit if they seem prone to this problem.
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