Plume Study
Vision
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Because this came up on vHerf
https://www.friendsofhabanos.com/forum/topic/131757-foh-mould-study/
No study really needed... just one god eye..... 🤦♂️
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im glad you posted this for some reason i had been thinking about plume a lot lately.
Because the Google knows everything, I searched for pictures of cigar plume. Here were some of the results:
And of course, one from our resident troll...errr....expert @danielzreyes:
You can find that one in this thread, lol https://forum.cigar.com/discussion/896224/plume-or-mold
In short, every picture of "plume" on google is absolutely mold, with very few exceptions. Here's an exception:
Now this actually looks like a crystalline formation on a cigar. Too bad it reminds me of this:
The cigar clearly has salt stuck to it like the 🥨.
So is plume a mythical concept that has been sometimes seen, rarely photographed, but never really been documented? Kind of reminds me of
But not the jovial cigar smoking version (SakaSquatch).
So let's assume that plume is real for a moment. Is it the crystalization of tobacco oils into unicorn fart dust as some people have claimed? Or, does Occam's Razor apply?
https://www.mold-advisor.com/white-mold.html
This might make sense, especially considering that most "real" plume occurs on Nicaraguan cigars. Nicaraguan has high concentrations of minerals that may, theoretically, be able to form a plume like substance on wrappers.
The truth is obvious. Plume is a completely manufactured term that unscrupulous retailers used to get us to accept their sub-standard products because they could not store them correctly. They convinced us that these spores make the cigars taste better because it is easier to keep them at 75% RH, with those sticks closest to the water sprayer at 85% RH, than it is to fix a walk in humidor.
I just saw a guy on IG a week or so ago talking about how the plume on his cigar was adding all these great flavors. Completely covered and you could see that it was fuzzy. 🤢
I found a bowl of something in the back of my fridge that clearly contained lots of plume.
Trapped in the People's Communist Republic of Massachusetts.
It may have been sweet peas, I hear they do that, too.
"If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." -- Mark Twain
I think it was tuna.
Trapped in the People's Communist Republic of Massachusetts.
Only one way to verify.
At any given time the urge to sing "In The Jungle" is just a whim away... A whim away... A whim away...
2 of the most controversial subjects in cigars.
Plume vs mold and fake vs real cuban.
The X-spurts out there will stand their ground that there is no plume or there is ALL plume.
Or that ALL cubans are fake.
Personally, I think there are too many X-spurts out there.
Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy cigars and that's close enough.
Now, is that your expert opinion? 😉😉
Nope.
I'm not an expert at anything.
Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy cigars and that's close enough.
Wouldn't that make you an expert of not being an expert?
"I've got a great cigar collection - it's actually not a collection, because that would imply I wasn't going to smoke ever last one of 'em." - Ron White
So your opinion is that anyone with an opinion is wrong....you sound opinionated.
Never said anything of the sort.
Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy cigars and that's close enough.
I’ve had plume one time. Should have let it go and see if any more spots appeared on it. Looked like tiny balls of dried sap. Which it basically is.
But I was excited to have my first plume so I smoked it up.
I’ve seen people in the business that I would expect to know better post pictures of their “plume” and it never fails they just won’t accept that it’s mold.
🦄 ^
Can someone please show me a picture of plume? I've yet to find one. If you could see it, you could photograph it.
I've had it on 3 cigars that were a decade plus years aged. It's a very light smattering of crystal like dust that twinkles (couldn't think of a better word) when you hold it at the right angle in light. You can wipe it right off. I generally concur with the consensus of this thread; it's generally mold nearly every time.
📷?
https://images.app.goo.gl/D2GGEZou1xoKmeC66
The top photo is as close as I can find to what I had. Mine was just a touch lighter in color though. Slightly more transparent if you will. It also had more coverage but in a similar pattern (smattering).
Plume? Or disgusting?
Lol, Daaayymmmm!! I'm sure a B&M will tell you that's plume..😆
Ploom/Plume/Bloom is crystallized oils.
It looks like very fine sugar. If you take a magnifying glass to it, you can actually see the crystals. It usually covers at least half the cigar in one continuous blanket of crystals. Not blotching or in patches. Most times it is so fine, that it is often not detected.
Mold on the other hand, under the magnifying glass, you will see the hairs or fibers of the mold and is blotchy. Most things are mold. If you don't need a magnifying glass to actually see the make up of it, it is mold.
Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy cigars and that's close enough.
That's a DZR pic...and my guess is that it's latex paint. Maybe DZR can log in under one of his burner accounts and tell us how he did it.
@danielzreyes?
Yep, I get it. I guess the thing that I don't get is that there is not one picture of plume on a cigar anywhere on the internet that I can find. That includes the picture posted by @cacigargiy007.
My skepticism is simply rooted in the fact that no picture exists. None! Most smokers I know say they have seen it and smoked it. Zero pictures. Every single picture that I've ever seen has always been mold always. Always!
I've also never seen a picture of a real live unicorn, an actual dragon, or Santa Claus climbing up a chimney. I'm pretty sure that none of these things exist either. I'm not saying that I know or that I'm an expert. I'm just saying that no evidence exists, kind of like Sasquatch.
Well I understand that it's translucent and then it only appears as a glimmer and then it's easy to overlook, I still don't understand why nobody has ever taken a picture of it ever.
I also don't understand why it is so elusive. It would seem to me that if cigar x had plume on it because of condition y and age z, why couldn't we replicate that and get the plume over and over and over again.
I also don't understand why 50 guys on this forum each have a thousand cigars between 5 and 20 years old, and still no plume. Maybe one cigar once in awhile has it. What are the conditions needed to conjure this substance? What scientific proof do we have that tobacco oils come to the surface of a cigar through the rolled leaves (instead of out the foot) and beade up on the outside?
This is where I am asking for help.
And finally, there have been 93,000 posts between the what are you smoking this morning, this afternoon, tonight and the I smoked a good cigar from threads. My search pulled up zero cigars where the smoker mentioned that they were smoking something with plume. Oh-for-93,000! How rare is this stuff!
I think 93000 is a small sample size. 100k then we can talk.
That’s freaking gross
Once upon a time I had a good picture. But unfortunately every picture I’ve seen on google of plume was mold.
Just remember mold is fuzzy.
Plume is basically dried sap. It turns hard and shiny.
It’s so rare that if you question it you’ve got mold which can really suck.
@VegasFrank
There used to be dozens of pictures, several on this forum, of good examples. Yet, the change in forums, loss of photobucket and with Google becoming a useless pile of dung for a search engine, most examples are long since gone.
Used to be, when you entered a search term, it searched the actual term, not what it thinks you want. If you search Plume, you get 50 pages of mold, cause that is what is what it relates to it.
That being said, the occurrence of the oil crystals is rare. Conditions have to be just right and the cigar not handled a thousand times. Add to that, I have yet to see it occur on a cigar with cello on it.
Then there is the conspiracy theory that plume does not exist. There are Fakebook groups out there that will crucify anyone who brings up plume.
Scientifically, it's known that plant leaves of just about any kind will release oils that can crystallize.
One specific iconic leaf comes to mind in which hippies get giddy when they see it.
Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy cigars and that's close enough.