Puzzled
hoghunter
Posts: 539 ✭✭✭✭✭
Not sure what else to do here. Started my cigar journey several months ago. Bought two Boveda acrylic humidors and had two large 69% packs in each. RH was hovering around 72 and temp at 73 degrees. Smoking outside in FL humidity. I could barely get through a stick without it going out mushy half way through. Fast forward and I swap out the Bovedas for two large 62 RH packs and now I’m at 63~65 Rh and still 73 degrees measured by a pair of Boveda Butlers. I figured lowering the Rh was the right move- and that solved the mushy issue. Now I get to enjoy about an inch of every stick and they all just turn blah with no flavor the rest of the stick. I just had a small Fuente Work of Art. Cut/light/enjoy about a half inch and then blah. No taste. WTF? I’m throwing money down the drain on nice quality sticks and letting them sit for weeks in the Boveda humidors between 63-65 Rh. I swear I’m not smoking too fast. Doesn’t matter the brand or price point or even vitola- they all just taste like nothing quickly after light up. I do have to smoke outside. What am I doing wrong????
Comments
When I went to sniper school the instructor always said, its you, fix it
-- Winston Churchill
"LET'S GO FRANCIS" Peter
He has COVID no sense of taste lol 😂
Are you taking any medications, sometimes that can affect your sense of taste and smell.
Trapped in the People's Communist Republic of Massachusetts.
Sounds like a headline:
Florida man pays ten dollarss a stick, smokes a buck fifty worth to save money....
Maybe try to get the temperature down, store in a cellar or basement. Or are you eating alot of spicy foods
No cellar or basement in Florida. I guess I could throw the humidors in the pool 😂. I haVe them in a dark drawer. It’s about as cool as it gets in my home.
EXACTLY. Now you know my frustration. I should just buy $2 sticks and smoke .50 cents worth. I guess that wouldn’t hurt so bad 😊
No meds, no Covid, no spicy foods.
Excessive masturbation also causes taste loss, according to Nick.
Don't ever go on Nasonex nasal spray for allergies, it helps with smoke odor smells and will erase your taste of a cigar next to nothing. Go to your nearest B&M buy two of the exact same cigar and smoke one there. Smoke the other where you always normally smoke, see if that makes any difference.
And stay away from pre-made hamburger patties.
I doubt temp is the issue. I store all my cigars with 65% bovedas and don't really pay much attention to temperature. Some days it's 80+ inside and I never run my AC higher than 78 or else my electricity bill is $550-$$575 to keep it 65 degrees (vaulted ceilings and large house). There are about four months when my cigars sit at 78 degrees or higher and they always smoke fine. My guess is the humidity.
That said, I did buy a small wooden humidor recently and put a bunch of naked cigars in there and added two 60 gram Boveda packs 65% and the humidity settled at 63% humidity for a few days. I smoked about three cigars before I quickly replaced the wooden humidor with a small plastic snap bin with gaskets. I could taste the difference and just the small humidity changes made my cigars taste dryer, hotter, and less flavorful. After switching back to plastic and getting the humidity back up to 65%-69% (which 65% bovedas keep in that range, regardless of temperature) my cigars tasted right as rain again. The Mrs. got a new nifty storage box...😆.
It can be frustrating to figure out what your optimal storage configuration needs to be but keep at it. It's worth it once you lock it down. I don't have humidity issues to deal with though so I could only guess as to how that can affect flavors but I remember many of folks discussing their frustration over the years. Try a few different humidity levels with some cheap storage bins and naked cigars. It takes a long time for cigars with cello on, even longer if in bags or wrapped, to acclimate the entire length of the cigar. You can even clip them also to get humidity going from both sides and speed things along. Storing naked and clipped, you should know after two weeks. Smoke some from each sample and compare.
I live in South Florida and this year has been hotter and more humid than normal. It has slowed my cigar smoking down, but has not effected the flavor at all.
As suggested already, go to a local shop, get a stick and smoke it there. If you have the same taste issue as at home, may something you drink at home while smoking is numbing your tastebuds, or maybe nicotine?
Do you smoke cigarettes?
I guess it's worth saying that a lot or maybe many or maybe most cigars have a little bit of an extra kick at the very beginning. That initial sharp taste or pepper blast or little kick typically comes because many cigars are constructed in a manner where the tips of the leaves are near the foot of the cigar. These tips typically have the most sun exposure and for some scientific reason that is either beyond my grasp or beyond my interest, contain a little bit more of the nicotine and other good stuff that gives a cigar the most flavor.
Many people will call this a transition or a flavor change or something like that. If you're talking about the cigar just settling down after an inch or so, it could very well be that. Have you ever smoked a cigar where it didn't do what you described in your first post?
I'm smoking a padrone 1964 this morning and it has the same pepper blast in the beginning. After about the first inch, the pepper subsidized but it still has a very nice long and sharp finish.
This may not be it. You're talking about smoking that fuente and I've never found those to have very much kick in the beginning.
Try a Punisher. If that flavor fades out on you, find a different hobby
My favorite cigar list here
Thinking about this.
One question above stands out, do you smoke cigarettes? If you're used to inhaling nicotine and getting that FAST rush of it, your body will tell you that cigars are just not doing it for your addicted brain. I've seen many cigarette smokers fire up a cigarette while smoking a cigar! That's too much.
Nasonex, allergy meds etc. mentioned above, I didn't see an answer from you, although I'm still on my 1st cup of coffee right now, so I may have missed it.
However, along those lines, do you take any Zinc? Or vitamin supplements high in zinc? Or denture paste that has zinc in it? Zinc will erase your taste for cigars.
I'm fortunate to be able to smoke indoors, so keeping my cigars at 65 - 69% works great indoors. When I do smoke outdoors, it's usually not one of my better cigars, since Tennessee is so humid. We are fortunate here to have days when it's actually NOT humid, sometimes. I find that I have a lot more problems when the humidity is high.
Lastly, you've been hanging around for awhile now, so you're familiar with our sense of humor, as seen above. And you haven't whined or complained about it, so you must "get it". Hang in there.
P.S. Also, consider a pipe, which is much more forgiving and WAY cheaper to feed.
"If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." -- Mark Twain
Thanks- I’ve never smoked a cigarette.No allergy meds, no zinc, no nothing. I totally get the humor around here!
Note: if humidity is really the problem, ask yourself how long are you resting at 62? Give it a couple of weeks... mostly wet cigars for me have burn and draw issues...
additionally the old dry box technique can help just before your light... usually place cigars in a dry environment for 1-2 days before smoking ... in Florida I am not sure how people do this... SC is hot and humid ( I am not sure id it’s as bad as there ) I am experimenting with Boveda packs in the 50s with cigars in a Tupperware.
Some people talk about using unscented cat litter as well ( as a drying agent in the dry box). I haven’t used it yet but I am sure it’s effective.
It'd only work if the drying agent was kept out of the environment, i.e. at a lower humidity than the room you're dry-boxing in and the storage the cigar was in.
Consistency is key. The 69RH myth is sometimes garbage. Good things take time, as in 3 or more weeks steady. Cooler is better, but if you maintain RH under 65 it doesn't really matter. Your cigars could also be crap because of the way they were stored, so try some new cigars and stop believing there's a magical percentage. Higher humidity is not ideal, especially in places like Florida.
And no matter how simple you try to make this topic, there will always be a few thousand experts out there who claim to know some secret humidity to hold your cigars at to maximize flavor.
Smoke one at the BnM indoor and a few days later outside. This should quickly help to tell if it’s a storage issue, environment, or you.
....or your b&m.
Trapped in the People's Communist Republic of Massachusetts.
Or try the Bee and Emm
Sounds like a pair of Silver Foxes
Aunt Bee & Auntie Emm?
"If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." -- Mark Twain
Once a cigar gets mushy like that you end up having to puff on it more and harder to keep it lit which causes it to heat up and turn bitter. In a highly humid environment if you can’t smoke indoors you might want to switch to smaller sizes like a corona or petite robusto. You can always smoke two.
Maybe a good reason why I think @usaf06's favorite vitola is the corona.
Yes- I’m quickly learning that the Corona vitola smokes much better for me here in FL.