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Even the most solicitous and devoted cigar aficionado occasionally runs into a little trouble. Taste spoliation; a cigar humidor dial gone wonky; an infestation of tobacco beetles; mold; even the occasionally badly-made cigar from a generally reliable premium cigar factory–any and all of these little mishaps can blight the cigar stashes of even very careful and attentive premium cigar smokers. In these situations, as in so much of life, information is key, and an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Let’s take some relatively common problems one at a time.

Uneven burn or poor construction. Of course, the best way to avoid these is to order premium cigars from a reliable source. But let’s assume you’re already doing that, and that your supply–not to mention your taste in smokes–is not what’s at issue. Even excellent cigars, carefully shipped, need tender loving care.

When new cigars arrive, take a good look at them. (If you order by the box, this is especially easy to do–just grab one out of the box.) Two things to look out for at this point: excessive dryness; excessive moistness. If a cigar seems a little parched, or, on the other hand, a little moist, the solution for both situations is the same: make sure your humidor is set to its proper sixty-nine-to-seventy-four-degrees-with-seventy-percent-relative-humidity default, and let your new cigars settle for a week in the cigar humidor. That’s their home, after all.

Another thing to keep in mind: if you’re keeping your cigars in the humidor over a long period, it makes a lot of sense to rotate them every few months. Moisture doesn’t diffuse itself perfectly, and every humidor will have places where the dryness is greater than normal. Make sure no one cigar has to bear being in one of these “dead zones” for too long. Also, avoid packing them in too tightly–they need air–and try not to allow any big fluctuations in the humidity level of your cigar humidor.

All of these practices will help to avoid problems setting in with the filler tobacco, which is where the taste comes from, and with the binders and wrappers, which keep the cigar together. An ideally-rolled cigar is firm with a bit of give, too moist to taste parched when you smoke it but too dry to develop mold, and ready to burn evenly. Cigars that are well-taken-care-of will stay this way.

Mold. You don’t hear a lot about cigar mold, but it does happen–and unlike uneven burn or weak construction, it’s something that can happen to any cigar no matter how brilliantly-made, because it has much more to do with the way the cigar is stored and kept than with the way it’s originally put together. Let’s say you’ve bought a great sampler of discount premium cigars: some Camachos, some Macanudos, a Montecristo, an Alec Bradley Maxx, even a Gurkha or two. You’ve given proper thought to the selection of the cigars you smoke–but for whatever reason you didn’t exercise the same care in selecting a humidor, and now, when you open it up to find a good evening’s smoke, your favorite Cohiba (the pick of the litter!) has little whitish spots. (Cigar mold, like most forms of common household mold, tends to vary between white, off-white, blue, green, or some combination thereof in terms of its color.)

Here’s the first thing you do: take that moldy cigar and take it out of the humidor. It’s a bad influence now. Mold spreads quickly. Now, after verifying that none of your other smokes are moldy, find out how humid your humidor is. (If your humidor doesn’t come with its own hygrometer, one of these can be bought separately.) Any reading over seventy-five percent relative humidity is too much, and you need to dry out the humidor by adding a half-and-half mixture of Propylene Glycol plus water to the sponge that keeps the box humidified. Toss the bad cigar, and stow the other ones when your humidor reaches seventy-four percent humidity or lower. (On the other hand, don’t let that figure dip underneath sixty-seven percent, either.)

But now here’s the good news. Premium cigars have also been known to secrete a grayish, granulated substance that some cigar aficionados take for mold, but which is actually known as plume, and is totally harmless. It’s given off by the oils in the tobacco leaves. If the cigars in your sampler of fine discount premium cigars are developing plume, it actually means they’re aging well, and will give off a fine, tasty plume of smoke whenever you get around to smoking them.

About the Author:

CigarFox
provides you the opportunity to build your own sampler of the finest
cigars
that include cigar brands like Montecristo, Romeo & Julieta, H Upmann, Macanudo, Cohiba, Partagas, Gurkha and many more. Choose from more than 1200 different cigars! Other cigar products include cigar humidors, cigar boxes, and cigar accessories like Zippo Lighters.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – What Do You Do With a Moldy Cigar

CigarFox Special Review of Tatuaje-Cabaigvan

Log Cabins And Lincoln Rear Ends: The Strange World Of Collectible Cigar Boxes

When cigar giant CAO announced a special, officially-licensed cigar commemorating the long-running TV show The Sopranos, the combination seemed to make sense. What’s less surprising than a cigar company saluting a universally-hailed TV show, whose “hero,” Tony Soprano, was so often seen chomping the end of a premium cigar?

But some buyers were a little disconcerted when the limited-edition cigar came packaged in a box that looked like the back end of Tony Soprano’s car.

However, the crazy CAO Sopranos box actually continues an honorable tradition: the novelty cigar box. From mug-shaped cigar boxes to gameboard boxes, the cigar makers of the world have shown great creativity in packaging their wares, and no period was more fertile for the cigar-box collector as that from 1878 to the early twentieth century. (All info here courtesy of the National Cigar Museum.)

The novelty cigar box began with a Federal decision in 1878, when postal codes were changed to allow packages of cigars (a heavily-regulated good, in the post-Civil War economy) to be mailed in any shape or size, as long as you could still put a stamp on ‘em. This legislative loosening just happened to come along at a moment when new tobaccos were being developed and demand, stimulated by a generation of Union soldiers who’d had to pass through tobacco country and acquired the smoking habit, was rising. New customers, new tobaccos, new products – companies were willing to try anything to distinguish themselves from the competition, and, not incidentally, to tempt smokers into buying not an individual cigar but the entire box. And so a sort of golden age resulted: the late-nineteenth century saw some of the goofiest, cleverest, and most memorable product design lavished on cigars.

For starters, there was the Immense Cigar box – a giant, two-foot-long cigar-shaped wood box holding within it 100 small cigars. (Children of the eighties, on reading about this bit of memorabilia, may remember those giant Darth Vader heads in which you could pack your Star Wars figures.) Made by the four-person Louis Simons cigar factory of New York City in 1878, this wonderfully literal-minded package (a cigar containing, well, cigars) was among the first to benefit from the Postal Service’s rule relaxation.

Then there’s 1877’s Piper Heidsieck champagne-bottle packages. They were hand-turned on a lathe, and only 25 were made; each is a masterpiece of American craftsmanship. They could be unscrewed at the middle, with the cigars standing loosely up from the bottom of the bottle.

And you can’t serve champagne without crackers and cheese, right? Cheese It cigars (not the most promising brand name ever) made a round cheesebox-shaped cigar package for its five-cent smokes during the year 1880. Now exceptionally rare, these elaborate cigar packages also include (on the inside of the top of the box) an illustration from a famous Central Park race walk held in 1878, with the nation’s top race walkers depicted therein (one of them being menaced by a wheels of cheese!). This box is so sublimely silly and complex that it just barely escapes the otherwise-inevitable designation “cheesy.”

And then, in a sort of act of meta-commentary, there was Foster, Hilson and Company’s mailbox-shaped cigar box. Exploiting the new openness in postal laws, this company released mailboxes in the shape of the receptacle into which mail-order cigars were to go. Released in 1881, this novelty item (from the then-giant New York firm) must have been hard to stack, given that curved top.

Then there are the practical boxes: for example, a box with its own thermometer and calendar. Quite possibly a give-away by a bank company (the three existing Frank Pchaski cigar boxes that match this calendar-and-thermometer profile all have different year calendars on them), these late-1880s boxes allowed you to have a smoke and, uh – tell the temperature at the same time. And know what date it was. Perhaps “practical” is in the eye of the beholder.

Cigar Fox provides the finest cigars that include brands like Cohiba, Montecristo, Gurkha, Macanudo, Rocky Patel, Romeo, Drew Estate, and many more. Other cigar products include cigar humidors, cigar boxes, and cigar accessories like Zippo Lighters. For more information, please visit www.cigarfox.com.

BF2 – Asshole song

Since so many artists, writers, and other creative folks have been cigar smokers, it’s perhaps no surprise that some wonderful – as well as not-so-wonderful – films and plays center on the world of cigars. Some of these works are already well-known, while others might require a little help reaching their audiences. A few of them may not even succeed with help. But for those who celebrate cigar smoking, these dramas (screen and stage) may be special treats.

Anna In the Tropics

The 2003 Pulitzer Prize winner for Drama, this play, set in 1929, gives viewers a rare opportunity to view the world through the eyes of those who make fine hand-rolled cigars. It concerns the daughters of a family of cigar workers, whose lives are forever marked when the factory’s new lector – the person hired to read to the workers’ reads Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina to them. The book becomes part of the factory’s life, inspiring love affairs, jealousies and fights. Hailed by critic Christine Dolen as “a passionate, explosive, tender play filled with poetic-evocative imagery, language that almost seems tactile,” the play managed to beat out new works by the far-more-established Edward Albee and Richard Greenberg for the Pulitzer in Drama. For cigar smokers, it provides a glimpse of the industry’s glory years before machine manufacture and the dominance of cigarettes, before Castro and the trade embargo.

The “lector,” by the way, was a real position. Cigar manufacture is a laborious process requiring constant care, and for many years, for that reason, handmade cigar factories hired a lector (reader) to keep the rollers alert and entertained by reading books to them. Audio books have partly eliminated the need for lectors (at least in some factory owners’ eyes), but other factories still use a lector – perhaps the best symbol of the mental attentiveness necessary to produce well-made premium cigars.

Smoke

This 1995 indie film rendered writer Paul Auster something like a household name – or as close to a household name as authors of existential detective stories get. It’s also a virtual paean to cigar smoking, with its sprawling plot set at the Brooklyn Cigar Company, where owner Auggie Wren ponders the varied types of humanity who turn up therein. (His theory is that everyone in the world eventually shops at the Brooklyn Cigar Factory.) Within this framework, the movie ponders the random yet meaningful connections among disparate individuals – one of the themes of Auster’s writing, and a theme of several important 1990s American art films, including Grand Canyon, Short Cuts and Magnolia. Auster’s selection of a smoke shop as his setting renders the film, which is based on one of his own short stories, especially meaningful for diehard cigar smokers.

Smokin’ Stogies

An entire movie about the search for some missing Cohibas? This 2002 low-budget crime film may not have won any awards, but with two of the stars of “The Sopranos” (whose swaggering, smoking mobsters have done their own bit to promote the smoking of stogies) and its cigar-oriented plot, the film ought to hold at least some interest for cigar lovers. It is described by Cigar Aficionado’s David Savona as “B-level material, an R-rated, small-budget experience that nevertheless should appeal to cigar smokers.” [it] serves up a subject matter palatable to aficionados. The movie includes the search for the mob’s missing Cubans and a plot to put real Cohiba bands on a trove of horrendous counterfeit cigars. There’s also a hilarious cigar-sniffing Doberman Pinscher who can tell a real Cuban from a fake.” If only every cigar smoker in America had a dog like that…

Predator

OK, this eighties sci-fi opus is not about cigars at all – at least not on the surface. Rather, it concerns a scary invisible alien hunter-thing that crash-lands in a Central American jungle and cuts up an elite Arnold Schwarzenegger-led military unit after they’re tricked into illegal Black Ops action by a corrupt major (Carl Weathers). (But what cigar smoker can forget the sight of Schwarzenegger’s character, Dutch, lighting up the fattest imaginable stogie as he suits up?

About the Author:

CigarFox provides you the opportunity to build your own sampler of the finest cigars that include cigar brands like Montecristo, Romeo & Julieta, H Upmann, Macanudo, Cohiba, Gurkha and many more. Choose from more than 1000 different brands! Other cigar products include cigar humidors, cigar boxes, and cigar accessories like Zippo Lighters.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Plays And Movies For Cigar Lovers

My Humidor

The Firm – Affirmative Action ft NTM (International Remix)

Cain F Cigar Review – Part 2

Are cigarette lighters allowed on airplanes yet?

on a flight from virginia to florida?

According to the Transportation Security Association’s website (http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/airtravel/assistant/editorial_multi_image_with_table_0099.shtm) As of August 4, 2007, in an effort to concentrate resources on detecting explosive threats, TSA will no longer ban common lighters in carry-on luggage. Torch lighters remain banned in carry-ons.
Can’t find an answer-ask your local librarian. www.dekalblibrary.org

Arctic Air Portable Airplane Air Conditioner from Sporty’s

What are some good Sweet cigars?

My fried likes Acid Kuba cigars. I was thinking about getting her some cigars and a nice lighter for christmas. Was wondering if anyone had any other cigars I could get her.

i love hula girl cigars they are flavored — coconut, pineapple and grape are my favs. i offered them at the cigar bar at my wedding. it was a huge success.

T Willy & Willy Tones at Kuba Cigars Feat. Josh Fabelo (Davis Islands, Tampa)

For many of us, casino gambling and cigar smoking go together like Frank and Bing. Generations of first-time Vegas visitors have enhanced their experience via frequent applications of cigar smoke, just like those iconic Rat Packers of yesteryear with their impeccable suits, suave manner, and constantly-replenished supplies of alcohol and tobacco.

Which made it all the more surprising, for many cigar lovers, when the Nevada legislature imposed a public-smoking ban in 2006. That ban doesn’t yet apply to Las Vegas gaming floors – there is such a thing as tradition, after all. But Atlantic City recently took Nevada’s ball and ran with it: the New Jersey state legislature has instituted a smoking ban, effective October 2008, which includes the area’s famed casinos.

All of which raises the question: where can a gambling smoker still enjoy a cigar?

Well, part of the answer depends on timing. Ontario, Canada, long a major vacation destination for gamblers, also banned smoking in casinos in 2006. This decision was particularly lamented by American visitors to the area, who took advantage of the Canadian casinos’ proximity to cigar stores that sell banned-in-America Cuban cigars (though it’s technically illegal for Americans abroad to buy Cuban cigars). Ontario’s casinos acknowledged these smokers’ concerns, successfully petitioning the province’s legislature for permission to build special “smoking shelters.” So you can smoke cigars during your visit to an Ontario casino – just wait till you’re off the gaming floor and in the outdoor shelter.

Elsewhere in Canada, consider Edmonton, Alberta – or, actually, just west of it. Though public smoking is banned in Alberta, due to a 2006 ban, the Enoch Cree First Nation has voted to exempt its own casino from this ban. So visitors to the River Cree casino can light up.

Pennsylvania remains another possibility. Casinos fought successfully to be exempted from the statewide smoking ban passed by Governor Ed Rendell in June 2008. As of summer 2008, you can no longer smoke cigars in most Pennsylvania bars and restaurants, but you can smoke in casinos located outside Philadelphia. That leaves such places as Pittsburgh (with the Majestic Star casino slated to open in late 2008), Bethlehem (the Sands Bethworks Casino, also under construction), and a handful of other locations.

The Michigan legislature recently adjourned for the summer without deciding whether not to pass a statewide smoking ban. In the meantime, Wayne County recently passed a ban that exempts casinos. This means that the non-Native owned casinos of Detroit will continue to be able to compete with the state’s several large Native American-owned casinos, which will not be subject to any statewide ban.

Biloxi, Mississippi, remains a favorite for Southern gamblers who like to smoke, owing to its lack of a statewide smoking ban. Though some larger Mississippi cities have banned public smoking, Biloxi remains a smoke-positive place, rendering its nine casinos attractive destinations for a smoker-gambler.

South Dakota casino owners, meanwhile, are relishing the prospects created by a statewide smoking ban recently passed in neighboring Iowa. According to reports in local newspapers, casino owners in North Sioux City are hoping Iowa’s ban will drive smoking gamblers to the state’s many casinos – while they worry that South Dakota might pass a similar law in the near future. After all, half the population of the United States currently lives in an area (state, city or town) where public smoking is proscribed to at least some extent – and the popularity of such bans seems on the increase. Even Mississippi’s state legislature is considering one. So light ‘em while you’ve got ‘em – and no matter where you are, whenever you gamble, check before you light up. It’s not fun to be ejected from a casino!

About the Author:

CigarFox provides you the opportunity to build your own sampler of the finest cigars that include cigar brands like Montecristo, Romeo & Julieta, H Upmann, Macanudo, Cohiba, Partagas, Gurkha and many more. Choose from more than 1200 different cigars! Other cigar products include cigar humidors, cigar boxes, and cigar accessories like Zippo Lighters.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Stogies And Slots: How To Plan A Cigar-Friendly Gambling Vacation

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Jember Tobacco And Cigar – Cheroot , East Java