Ageing Tobacco
pipejon
Newcomer
in Tobacco Talk
Are there any general rules for how long tobacco should be aged?
I stumbled across some unopened Capstan from 2013 as I was cleaning up and I'm wondering if I should let it continue to age or smoke it now?
I stumbled across some unopened Capstan from 2013 as I was cleaning up and I'm wondering if I should let it continue to age or smoke it now?
Comments
http://www.tobaccopipes.com/blog/cellaring-tobacco-the-dos-and-donts/ [Edited for length]
Consider this a beginner’s How To Guide to cellaring your favorite blends. Or, for the experienced collector, a refresher course to ensure your stock pile stays in tip top shape.
Why Cellar Pipe Tobacco
There are many benefits to aging and storing our tobacco. The main reason cellaring tobacco is a great idea is because tobacco--just like wine and wisdom--improves with age. When stored properly, the flavors and aroma of the blend are locked up with the tobacco. This gives chemistry time to perfect and meld together all aspects of the blend into itself.
Age brings uniformity and clarity to tobacco blends.
Another reason: We are living in the golden age of tobacco blends. With government regulations, inflation, and fewer farms, the price of tobacco is only going to go up. With this in mind, cellaring tobacco is a very clear and wise investment in the future of your favorite hobby, smoking a pipe. If you are a committed pipe smoker and plan to continue for years to come, it might not be a bad idea to stock up now. Think of it like a savings plan for your future happiness.
Tobacco’s Reaction To Aging
Here are a few quick examples:
How To Cellar Tobacco - The Do's
Control The Temperature And Humidity
Store Your Tobacco In A Dark Place
Limiting the light exposure will protect your containers, thus protecting your tobacco. Personally, my cellar consists of multiple cardboard boxes in my office. Your system doesn’t need to be fancy, do what is practical for you. Closed cardboard boxes protect the tobacco from light exposure. They also work well because a closed cardboard box will absorb the humidity before it has time to corrode the metal in my jars and tins.
Use Unopened Tins or Sealed Glass Jars For Storing
If you are storing bulk tobacco or did not buy a spare tin, I suggest using canning jars, such as mason jars. Canning jars easily create airtight seals.
Create A Plan For Smoking Your Tobacco
I recommend always taking taste notes. Not only will this be helpful, but also brings more meaning to the hobby. Have a set time you will open your aged tobacco. I suggest to let tobacco age periods of six months, one year, two years, five years, and 10 years. It is here the taste notes will be helpful. Not many people can clearly remember the nuances of a tobacco five years after they smoked it.
Don’ts Of Cellaring Tobacco
Do Not Store With Cigars Or In A Humidor
Pipe tobacco and cigars are both very aromatic. The last thing you want is for your tobacco and cigars to start taking on the taste of each other as they age. A humidor is the exact opposite of what you want to happen to your tobacco. You will want to keep your cans in a low level of humidity; a humidor is meant to keep the humidity level up.
Do Not Store In Plastic
People believe it is OK to store tobacco in plastic, mostly because when they buy tobacco from their local tobacconist, they store the tobacco in a plastic bag. The intent behind that bag is that you take it home and store it in a jar, or that you smoke it relatively quickly. The chemicals in the tobacco will begin to erode part of the plastic. This is then absorbed into the tobacco (not good). On top of that, the plastic will itself absorb the tobacco. It will begin to ghost (change colors). Just like how you store chili in a tub container, and after a few weeks the container is no longer clear, but reddish-brown, your tobacco will do the same. “Pounds of tobacco are often delivered to shops in plastic”, you may say. The truth is is these plastic bags have been chemically engineered to store tobacco for up to five years. So they are safe from the effect.
Do Not Add Moisture
If you add moisture to your tobacco, chances are after only a few months, you will find that your tobacco has molded. It is now ruined. (Ideally,) The tobacco has been stored and sold with the moisture content at the level the blender would like it to be sold at. It is my personal opinion that if you want to get the most out of your tobacco you should smoke it the way its inventor intended.
Tobacco Storage and Cellaring -- another POV, excerpted from http://www.cornellanddiehl.com/pipe-smoking-basics.cfm
Almost all straight-from-the-blender tobaccos with a reasonable amount of natural sugar, both tinned and bulk, will benefit from aging. Some blends, however, will age better than others, with the primary factor being the presence and percentage of Virginias (the most naturally sweet of tobaccos) in the mixture. A secondary, but still important, consideration is the attendance of Orientals. Though lower in sugar than Virginias, many Oriental varieties still contain enough sweetness to carry them through the fermentation process, plus bring an added bonus of higher complexity to the blend.
Once the right leafs are blended and placed in tin, the first of two initial aging mechanisms begin. 1. Tobaccos begin to interact/meld with each other ('marry' is a term that you will frequently run across), and the speed of the interaction is even greater with a flake, whose melding received a kick-start from a press. 2. The first fermentation stage, an aerobic process involving friendly microbes, begins. As the bacteria involved in "2" run out of air, your treasure-in-process moves into the second (and final), stage of fermentation; anaerobic, a state of slower aging that will continue until you open the tin.
The precise amount of time that it will take for your tinned, cellared leaf to enter anaerobic fermentation depends on a myriad of factors: composition of the blend, the amount of time between harvest and tin, the number of microbes in that initial 2/8oz tin, storage temperatures (both actual temp, as well as fluctuation), to name a few. Even then, there is precious little 'precision' in the guess. Depending on the time your mixture was tinned and when you purchased it, it's quite possible that your investment is already in the anaerobic state.
So, what happens during aging? While both stages contain processes that will work concurrently, as well as mechanisms which can only happen in sequence, the changes in the aerobic stage, and subsequent beginnings of the anaerobic leg, are the fastest. With an aging friendly blend, as the reactions and fermentation in the latter stage progress, a greater sweetness and complexity appears. In as little as 1-2 years, your smoke will likely show remarkable improvement over 'just tinned', and will positively shine at 5 years (sugar crystals!). After that (again, with the right tobacco) improvement will continue, but at a much slower pace. With an all Virginia blend, its pinnacle, much like a first growth Bordeaux of great vintage, could be decades. With a well-made English, the peak is likely be in the mid-to-late teens, with a gradual decline noticeable after a couple of decades.
Unlike cellaring wine, proper tobacco storage doesn't require a major investment in equipment, it simply needs a space to rest, preferably one where it won't be subjected to higher temperatures than you can comfortably handle, long term. No need for vintage charts, though there are some pretty dandy wine storage software programs out there, which have been modified by tobacco aficionados, for tracking tin count and age. Collecting is a snap; start by buying an extra tin or two along with your normal purchase. Given time, you can start smoking that older, delicious leaf, and rotating your new purchases to the back.
As a parting thought: one thing to keep in mind is that, unlike the above mentioned Bordeaux, popping a tin at two, five, or seven years isn't 'infanticide', you are still smoking something all the finer for your patience. Simply understand that once you pop that lid, you should either smoke it, or preserve it. Yes, one can 'reboot' a tobacco back into an aging state and it will continue to change, but you might not enjoy that change.
Do's and Don'ts of Cellaring Tobacco
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EspuIzJ1PZoCellaring Tobacco, why is it so important
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgnJG1wey-4Three Years of Vacuum Sealing - An Experiment Concluded
by Toren Smith 25 July 2001
http://www.glpease.com/Articles/vacuum.htmlI usually have smoked it right from the tin upon opening. It's then what Bradley calls "moist towelette." Best practice would be to give it some drying time (per bowl). Smoking it moist towette requires looser packing and results in a wetter heel.... and a little bite if you puff too hard. No bite otherwise. At least to me.....