CigarFox

How to Smoke Cigars

Far be it for us to instruct anyone how to smoke their cigars, but here goes anyway:

Four out of five of your senses have an important role to play in assessing the cigar. Sight, touch, smell and taste. Rolling a cigar next to your ear does not achieve anything useful – you can leave your ears at home.

There are two elements to the process of smoking your cigar. The first is the physical practicality of cutting, lighting and smoking. The second is the effect a cigar has on your senses while you carry out these various functions.

The Physical Practicalities:

Cutting
Once you have selected your cigar (see below – ‘Cigar Sensations’), you will need to cut the closed end. All handmade cigars have a cap (Havanas have a double cap) over the head end – this end goes in your mouth. If you attempt to smoke a cigar the other way around, you will find that half way through it will unravel and take on the appearance of an exploded stick. There are a number of ways of cutting the cap, ranging from the use of a thumb-nail, to portable guillotine cutters (both single and double bladed – see ‘Accessories’ on navigation bar), from cheap to expensive, to the more exotic cigar scissors and table-top cutters.

The cut should be clean and level, or there will be difficulties with the draw and a risk of damaging the wrapper. Cut the cigar so that an eighth of an inch of the cap is left around the cigar wrapper. It is not recommended that you pierce the cap with a pin, as this will interfere with the passage of smoke, make the cigar overheat and lead to unpleasant flavours from residues condensing at the point the cap was pierced. Cap hole-punching devices do work well as long as the diameter of the punch is at least a quarter of an inch. Wedge-shaped cutters are also not recommended, as these have a tendency to cut through all of the band on either side and the cigar wrapper can then unravel.

Whatever you use, make sure it is sharp, and that you expose enough of the filler leaves under the cap to allow the smoke uninterrupted passage.

Lighting Up
When you light a cigar, use either a butane lighter (not one filled with gasoline) or a match. Anything else, such as using a candle, will tend to taint the flavour of the cigar, and will ultimately impede the passage of smoke through the cigar with particles from the flame. Avoid matches with high sulphur or wax contact (don’t use paper matches). Take time and care to light the cigar.

First, hold the cigar horizontally in direct contact with the flame, and slowly revolve it until the end is charred evenly over its entire surface.

Put the cigar between your lips, hold the flame about half an inch away from the end, and draw slowly while rotating the cigar. Its end should now ignite. Ensure an even burn has taken hold.

Gently blow on the burning end to make sure the cigar is fully lit.

Smoking
After five minutes the cigar will have warned up and you will have reached cruising altitude.

Unlike cigarettes, cigars will naturally go out if left unattended. If your cigar goes out, don’t worry. Remove any ash clinging to the previously lit end by tapping the cigar. Blow through the cigar to clear away stale smoke. Re-light as previously described above. As long as the cigar has not been out for too long, the flavour will not be unduly affected. Continuous re-lighting of cigars will affect the flavour, and if a cigar is allowed to cool, then on re-lighting the tastes can become tainted and unpleasant (due to condensation of the smoke in the remaining part of the cigar).

Havanas are made from long filler tobacco leaves (another difference to cigarettes and machine made cigars). This means that the ash on the cigar, if it is a good one, should not fall off the moment it appears. There is no particular merit in keeping a long ash on a cigar, but neither is there any need to continually tap it to remove any excess ash. In assessing the quality of construction of your cigar, a long solid cylinder of ash is a good sign.

There is no need to warm the length of the cigar before smoking it. This was done in the nineteenth century to burn off the rather unpleasant gum used on some cigars made in Seville. Today’s handmade Cuban cigars use a small drop of flavourless, odorless vegetable gum at the cap end of the wrapper leaf.

The “End”
The final third of your cigar will be when the smoke is at its strongest. This is the time to part company before flavours become bitter and the effect of the cigar on your well-being may become detrimental. There is absolutely no need to stub or grind a cigar out to extinguish it. Left in the ashtray it will go out by itself: if you stub it out, it will release foul odours into the room. Once the cigar has self-extinguished remove any butts and ash from the room before they start to give out unpleasant smells (i.e. before going to bed!).

About the Author:

Mike Keesling is a freelance seo consultant and cigar afficiando. His favorite cigar shop in Los Angeles is the Ceniza Lounge in Pasadena.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – How to Smoke a Cigar

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BarryMagic.MOV

Is there such a thing as a perfect cigar? This is a question that’s been debated for hundreds of years, but even now, well into the twenty-first century, there’s no definitive answer. Or rather, there are hundreds of “definitive” answers, because virtually every cigar smoker has his or her own idea of what constitutes perfection. Discussions along these lines tend to include prolific use of phrases like “patiently hand made,” “peak of flavor,” “intoxicating aroma,” “deftly hand rolled” and “creamy smoke.” Very descriptive, but how on Earth does one quantify these words and come out with a definition of “perfect?”

All arguments aside, it is possible to at least spike out some of the key variables that most aficionados would agree contribute toward distinguishing a mediocre cigar from an excellent one. With these basics to fall back on, someone new to the world of cigars might not be able to settle the age-old argument of perfection, but at least they would stand a decent chance of buying a good cigar instead of wasting their money.

Construction:
There’s an art to rolling a cigar properly and not everyone knows it. A cigar that’s been overfilled is difficult to smoke, and easily goes out.  If it’s under filled, the cigar burns too quickly and produces hot, harsh smoke. The perfectly rolled cigar burns evenly all the way down and is neither too hard nor too spongy to the feel. The wrapper should be blemish free and above all, it should not be dry or showing signs of unraveling.  In addition, a sloppy appearing cigar is a good indicator of poor craftsmanship.

Consistency:
This is a frequently overlooked factor, but really it is quite important. If a cigar producer cannot achieve consistency in their product, the consumer is left wondering from year to year whether the box they buy will be a good batch, or one of those unfortunate “off” batches. A good producer sources their tobacco from the same quality suppliers every year and keeps a stockpile to cover any poor crops, so there is little variation in the raw material; workers are well-trained and kept on as craftsmen. As a result, a cigar produced by this company is almost always good.

Tobacco:
It should go without saying that a good cigar requires good tobacco. Besides being of high quality, the tobacco needs to be aged properly or the end result will be a fast burning cigar that produces a harsh smoke. Like the question of the perfect cigar, there’s endless argument about what region or country produces the best tobacco. Historically, Cuba is the country most frequently considered to be tops in terms of premium tobacco production.

About the Author:

Lawrence Olsen is a cigar enthusiast, with a memorabilia collection that includes dutch masters boxes dating to the company’s first run in 1911. When it comes to smoking a cigar versus collecting, Lawrence prefers the hint of cocoa bean and coffee found in padron cigars.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Are Dutch Masters The Perfect Cigars?

Cigar Masters tastes CUBAO

Are there any lower cost cigars that taste as good as the Camacho Corojo?

Try the Sancho Panza Double Maduros. Excellant cigar for about $2-$3. I also like the Punch, CAO Brazilia and Italia, and the Bolivar.

Perdomo Grand Cru Toro Corojo Cigar Review

BCam reviews a Camacho Liberty 2008

Do you want to present a cigar to your boss? If you have someone in your guest list who is a cigar smoker, you may consider presenting him with a high quality cigar. Cigars satisfy the cravings of people who love to smoke. Grown in major quantities in countries such as Brazil, Cameroon, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Indonesia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Sumatra, Philippines, and the Eastern United States, Cigars are a tightly rolled bundle of dried and fermented tobacco that is ignited; hence its smoke may be drawn into the mouth. Be sure to buy a cigar only after knowing learning about the product as it requires specific temperature to be fresh and scented.

Cigar and Temperature

Temperature of 16 C to 20 C and a relative humidity of 65% – 70% are essential for cigars to save them from drying out. For keeping cigars fresh and scented, you need to maintain a desired level of temperature and humidity. Either high or low temperature, both are harmful for them. Humidors have been introduced for preserving cigars as they are neutral and odor-free. This is because cigars have a tendency to absorb odors from their surrounding environment.

Popular Cigar Manufacturers

Rocky Patel, Gurkha, Ashton, Romeo y Julietta, Montecristo, and Cohiba are some of the common manufacturers of cigars that have got worldwide recognition. In order to please cigar smokers, Gotham Cigars is proudly associated with some of the reputed cigar manufacturers such as Altadis, General Cigars, Davidoff, and Camacho.

Cigar Types and its Accessories

Most people do not know that cigars are categorized by various ways depending upon their size and shape, flavor or strength, and country of origin. Gurkha cigars, Macanudo cigars, Cohiba cigars and Acid cigars are some of the recognized cigar brands appealing to more experienced cigar smokers, but beginners can also try them.

Buying Cigars Easily

Individuals can buy cigars through the internet as it consumes less time and offers the facility of buying them according to budget and taste. For buying cigars online, all you have to do is search a reliable store and fill out its order form. You will get your order in a matter of days.

About the Author:

GothamCigars.com provides the freshest selections of premium Cigars, humidors, cigar samplers and tobacco cigar accessories. It is your best choice for buying discount Cigar online.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Enjoying your Cigar

Camacho Cigars – 2009 Bikini Calendar – Behind the Scenes

In his essay “Sifting the Ashes,” the writer Jonathan Franzen has the following to say about the smoking habit he struggles to quit: “[W]hen you’re smoking, you’re acutely present to yourself: you step outside the unconscious forward rush of life.”

Beautiful words, with which many cigar smokers would agree. Perhaps that’s why so many of history’s most famous and best-loved writers are hard to mentally picture without a cigar: Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Collette, George Sand, Karl Marx. Not terrible company, and they’re not alone. Some major contemporary writers are cigar smokers as well.

Paul Auster

Born in Newark, New Jersey, Paul Auster graduated from Columbia, then moved to Paris, France to eke out a living as a French-literature translator. He’s been married to two highly-regarded American writers “Siri Hustvedt (currently) and, before that, Lydia Davis, who is also known for her translation work – and his novels The New York Trilogy and Moon Palace are modern classics. He’s known for using the shape of the detective story to entertain larger questions about the meaning of identity, of language, and of existence. But his biggest fame – and his importance to smokers – came when he wrote and co-directed the movie Smoke, a landmark of American indie cinema set in a Brooklyn cigar shop.

Centered on Auggie Wren, owner of the Brooklyn Cigar Company – a sort of existential Dew Drop Inn where large cross-sections of humanity gather – it ponders the random yet seemingly meaningful connections among various people, a major theme in Auster’s writing (as well as of several other major American art films from the same period – consider 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.

Edward Whittemore

Here’s an artist with a colorful life indeed – he went from Yale to the Marines to the CIA, wrote for the Japan Times (it was part of his cover), lived in Crete, and wrote the massive, tripped-out series of literary espionage novels known as the Jerusalem Quartet, a work lauded by Tom Robbins as – like a bowl of hashish pudding – and by Jonathon Carroll as a book that
“makes your soul grow.” (To give you an idea: one of the books is about a 12-year-long game of poker in which the winner becomes owner of the Holy Land. That’s just the plot of one of them.) Yet the Quartet went out of print after only a few years, and Whittemore ended his days in dire poverty and obscurity, working as a photocopier for a law firm.

In 2003, eight years after his death, the Quartet was republished to all-but-universal acclaim; Jim Hougan, writing in Harper’s, called it “one of the last, best arguments against television” and Whittemore – an author of extraordinary talents. His friend Thomas C. Wallace remembers his love of cigars: “We walked the woods and fields of southern Vermont by day, sat in front of the house after dinner on solid green Adirondack chairs, drinks in hand and smoking cigars.” In a similar spirit, lovers of fine cigars should search out his one-of-a-kind novels – after all, premium cigar smokers already know that the most immediately accessible pleasures aren’t always the deepest.

John Grisham

You probably know that John Grisham is an ex-lawyer and the biggest-selling novelist of the 1990s, but you probably don’t know about his charity work, his advocacy on behalf of the wrongly imprisoned, his tireless support of less-commercially-successful writers – or the fact that it’s been said he smokes four cigars a week. In addition to writing the well-loved legal thrillers The Firm and A Time To Kill, among others (as well as such departures as A Painted House), he has done missionary and relief work in Brazil and service on the board of the Innocence Project, which uses DNA testing to exonerate the wrongfully convicted. Perhaps all of this is why he ended up on one of Cigar Aficionado’s lists of the top hundred smokers.

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 – Writers (And Their Books!) For Cigar Lovers

The Contenders for Cigar of the Year

Room 101 Cigars Official Launch

A Cigar is a natural product and the quality of a cigar is directly linked with the type and quality of tobacco used in its production, just as the wine depends on the type and quality of grapes used for the brewing.

The fields for tobacco are flat so that the seeds don’t flow away with the water stream. After planting the seed, they are covered with cloth or straw to protect them from the direct light of the sun. This covering is gradually removed as they begin to germinate, and after around 35 days the fields are sprayed with pesticides, they are then transplanted in to tobacco fields usually in the second half of October. The fields are irrigated from below and the leaves are watered both by rain and the morning dew.

The tobacco plant is mainly considered as a three parts plant: the top of the plant is called corona, the middle, and the bottom. As the leaves grow, buds appear at the top. These have to be removed by hand to prevent the plants from stunting leaf and growth. The quality of wrapper leaf is very important for any cigar. A special type of plant called Corojos, specifically used to provide wrapper leaves for the very best cigars. These plants are always grown under gauze sheets held up by tall wooden poles, which protects them from becoming too thick in a protective response to sunlight. Another technique, called tapado can also be used to cover the plants to helps them remain smooth.

During the harvest, leaves are removed by hand using a single movement. The selected leaves for wrappers are put in bundles of five called manojo, or hand. The leaves are picked in six phases:

1. libra de pie (at the base)
2. uno y medio (one-and-a-half)
3. centro ligero (light center)
4. centro fino (thin center)
5. centro gordo (thick center)
6. corona (crown)

The libra de pie section cannot be used for wrappers. A gap of one week is given between each phase. The finest leaves are found in the middle of the plant; the top leaves (corona) are usually too oily to be used for wrappers so they are only used for domestic consumption, and are often used as binder leaves. Each plant is visited for an average of 170 times and the whole cycle from transplanted seedlings to the end of harvesting takes some 120 days.

The wrapper leaves grown under cover are classified by color:

ligero (light)

seco (dry)

viso (glossy)

amarillo (yellow)

medio tiempo (half texture)

quebrado (broken)

The plants, which are grown direct sun, are divided into volado, seco, ligero, and medio tiempo. The leaves from the top of the plant have a very strong flavor, the seco from the middle are much lighter, and the volado leaves from the bottom are used to add bulk and for their burning qualities. To make a good quality cigar, all the various types are blended together, along with a suitable wrapper leaf, in a special proportions to give cigar a mild, medium, or full flavor. It also ensures that the cigar will burn well. Large, average, small size are classified and by physical condition. Unhealthy or broken leaves are used for cigarettes or machine-made cigars. If all the leaves are good, each wrapper plant can wrap 32 cigars. The condition and quality of the wrapper leaf is important for the attractive appearance of a cigar, as well as for the aroma and taste.

The bundles of leaves are then taken to a shelter. The shelter faces west so that the sun heats one end in the morning and the other in the late after-noon. The temperature and humidity under the shelter is carefully controlled, by opening and closing the doors at both ends to take account of changes of temperature or rainfall. The leaves are left to dry for between 45 and 60 days, depending on the weather. During this time, the green chlorophyll in the leaves turns to brown carotene, giving them their characteristic color.

Then these are brought to fermentation houses and placed in piles about three feet high, covered with jute. Enough moisture remains in the leaves to start the fermentation. Heat develops, but the temperature must be watched carefully so that it does not exceed 92 degrees F during the 35 to 40 days that the piles are left intact. The leaves assume a uniform color.

These leaves are then sorted and stripped. Each leaf is carefully examined and graded. Broken leaves are set aside, to be used for cigarettes.
The leaves then return to the fermentation area. The second fermentation begins within the damp leaves. The temperature inside must not exceed 110 degrees F for around 60 days. Because of the fermentation process, cigar tobacco is much lower in acidity, tar, and nicotine than cigarette tobacco, making it much more appetizing.

It is now time for the leaves to be sent to the factories or warehouses for further production.

Gotham Cigars provides you the opportunity to build your own cigar sampler of the finest cigars that include all major brand names like Rocky Patel Cigars, Swisher sweets cigarsand many more. GothamCigars.com is your best choice for discount cigars.  Our cheap cigar prices give customers the opportunity to enjoy a wide range of quality cigar products.  Don’t forget to check out our humidors, cigar samplers and other cigar tobacco products and accessories.

About the Author:

http://www.gothamcigars.com

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – The Process of Growing Tobacco for the Finest Cigar Construction

Room101 Cigars Launch Party

Cigars have long been associated with the rich and powerful, with relaxation and rich flavor. Cigar aficionados have created a culture around the art of smoking, assembling various theories and accessories to debate and facilitate smoking. Much like wine tasting, cigar smoking has been seen as a diversion of the upper echelons of society.

It is believed that cigars were probably first produced in Spain, and then quickly caught on in other European countries. Although many different countries manufacture cigars, Cuban cigars have long been highly regarded as one of the most flavorful and rich of all cigars. This is due to regional microclimates that are said to produce the highest quality tobacco, as well as the skill of the country’s cigar makers. Other countries that produce significant amounts of tobacco and cigars include Brazil, Mexico, Honduras, Ecuador, Cameroon, Dominican Republic, Indonesia, and the United States. Why have cigars long caught the attention of so many? Many speculate that the cigar’s main attraction is in the way it is manufactured. High quality cigars are always wrapped by hand. Unlike cigarettes, cigars undergo a lengthy process of fermentation and aging (much like wine), resulting in subtle flavors and textures. They are highly individual and the best cigars will provide no smoky aftertaste at all.

The taste of cigars is much more complex than cigarettes. The majority of all cigars are created by wrapping three different layers of tobacco leaves together. High quality cigars usually contain long leaves of nicotine as the filler, although they may also contain a combination of scraps. This results in subtle variations, different textures, and complex flavors. Cigarettes, on the other hand, are mass-produced and generally only contain one type of tobacco. Cigars also come in an incredible variety of flavors. The dedicated cigar aficionado can find chocolate, vanilla, apple, and even coffee-flavored cigars!

Although cigars have long been lauded for their smooth and complex flavors, they can also pose a great health risk. All tobacco contains nicotine. We’ve all heard about the negative health risks of nicotine, but what does it do exactly? Nicotine is a stimulant that produces a sense of euphoria. Even the casual smoker cannot escape the fact that nicotine is highly addictive and contains various toxins, carcinogens, and irritants. Although most connoisseurs of cigars will avoid inhaling the smoke, they are still at risk of developing various types of oral and larynx cancers.

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Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Cigars: the Basics

CigarBoyz in Honduras at the Rocky Patel Cigar Factory Tour