new questions and concerns
newtocigars
Posts: 37
in Cigar 101
Ok guys had another cigar today after i got home. I smoked an onyx reserve. I seem to have the same reoccurring problems with most cigars. I number one cant keep them lit, I will smoke till the stack is about 1/2 an inch long to 3/4 an inch long and my cigar will burn out. Then I have to ash and relight. I also seem to get light headed with most every cigar. Now I light my cigars with matches could that have something to do with my issue? By the way my thoughts on the onyx, it was very smooth and slightly sweet tasting to me with the slightest choclate/nutty flavor.
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From what it sounds like though, you might not be fully lighting your stogie. If your smoking at night, just make sure that the entire end of the cigar is lit, if its during the day, it might be a little more hit and miss. What I do is look at the end and keep lighting till I just barely see gray ash spread uniformly on the end.
Regarding your light headedness, depending on the cigar you smoke, you might need something in your stomach beforehand. Or you might be smoking the stogie too quickly. Hope this helps.
I use matches too from time to time, and it's sounds like you have a good technique,toasting the end and then lighting it. To keep a more even burn try rotating your cigar as you smoke it, or as it is burning. By that I mean , if the band was on it don't always smoke with the band facing up. sort of roll it as you draw on it. And it sounds like you are smoking some fuller bodied cigars, sort of "sip" them instead of drawing a full mouth full of smoke, take your time...
A good mild cigar to start out on would be the 5 Vegas Gold, or the Classic. Nice on the wallet and pretty good smokes, only bad thing is, you can only find them online. Another good starter cigar would be the Oliva Serie G, heck, one of my first cigars was a Rocky Patel Connecticut, good stick and wasn't too harsh to start out with.
Edit: Just read your newest post newtocigars and I wouldn't jump headfirst into saying you can't smoke anything below medium. When you go to your B&M tomorrow, look for or ask for a Nub Connecticut, it'll be a short, fat cigar, but will really show that being a mild cigar doesn't mean that it is a boring cigar. Only drawback is that it will probably be a short smoke, so pick up 2 if your looking to smoke for an hour or two.
I had a friend of mine that I could not watch when he smoked cigars because it was almost painful. He never seemed to get it right, no matter how many times I explained it to him. He has smoked cigarettes for the longest time. I think that perhaps how he used to smoke cigars might be what is happening to you... let me explain...
When my friend (we'll call him "Derek") puffed on a cigar, he seemed confused about what he was supposed to do with the smoke he took in. He always wanted to inhale it, because that's what he was used to, even though he knew that he wasn't supposed to. Sooooo, what he always ended up doing was, he'd use his lungs to draw in through the cigar, taking smoke into his mouth, and then would stop inhaling when his mouth filled with smoke. However, the problem this created was that when he'd draw on a cigar, it looked as though he was trying to breath through a coffee stirrer after running 5 miles through 100 degree heat. Sort of like a repetitive full-body lung heave. It put a strain on me every time i saw him do it because he just never seemed to get it.
Derek had a lot of the same exact problems you have been having. The cigar may not have had a hard draw or even a somewhat firm draw, but because of the way he was doing it, he'd get lightheaded fairly quickly.
Also, because of the way he drew smoke in, there wasn't enough air passing through the ash and the coals to keep the cigar lit. He would also have to relight several times, even on relatively short smokes, like the RP Vintage 1992 robusto i gave him last weekend.
If this sounds anything like what you may be doing (for it seems as though you're doing everything else right) try this piece of advice that i gave him when he was halfway through that RP:
"Don't think of a cigar as an over-sized cigarette. It is not an over-sized cigarette. Instead, imagine your cigar is a big straw, and the smoke you draw in through it is water that you are planning on spitting at someone."
I told him this, and 30 seconds later he was doing just fine, with huge amounts of smoke, and no full-body lung heave.
"Long ashes my friends."