Mold on cigars
AriPhillips
Posts: 1 ✭
in Cigar 101
Just found 4 cigars, none with a cellophane wrapper, with mold in my humidor of about 130. One was buried by other cigars and was the only one with mold. I've inspected my cigars and am tossing the ones with mold out. Do I need to clean my humidor even if there's no mold in it? Also does the cellophane protect against mold? Should I be worried about the cigars touching the moldy ones even if they aren't moldy themselves? Thanks.
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Cellophane does help protect against mold. I've only seen mold in my cigars on naked cigars, cigars stored in tubos, and cigars with cedar sleeves.
If the mold isn't on the end of the cigar and isn't too bad, I've brushed off the mold and smoked the cigar, I know others who've done this too, but you do you here. Just make sure that the mold isn't on the foot of the cigar. Also, this decision is often weighted by how good a cigar we're talking about.
I would remove all the moldy cigars from your humidor and if you feel that the mold isn't on the walls of the humidor and maybe you wiped down the cello of the neighbor cigars somewhere away from your humidor I would just watch it for future mold growth and either brush off and smoke the removed cigars or toss them.
Don't toss them, unless the mold got into the foot. Just wipe them off and put them back. Really, I promise.
It happens, no biggie.
However, if the mold is in the foot, toss that thing bro.
What’s the deal about mold on the foot being the kiss of death? Are y’all claiming that the mold travels up into the cigar unseen? I clipped about 3/4” off some moldy feet once on at least eight or ten sticks from the same box and those cigars smoked well for me and even after I kept them stored for quite a while with no new mold returning to those cigars.
If it is a wooden humidor I would clean it. Wood is a porous substance and spores can be buried that will not be visible. Just simply wipe it out with rubbing alcohol and let it air dry until you cannot smell it anymore. As far as cellophane it does help and will help it from spreading if you do get mold on a few. If the cigars were buried under others you may want to check the humidity and temperature that you’re storing them at. If you’re not using them…switch to Boveda.
I'm claiming that it could, in which case it could and would have the effect of tasting like mold instead of like a cigar. Never thought of clipping it, but I guess it would work. I suppose if it were a 5 dollar cao, I'd pitch it, and if it were a hundred dollar davidoff, I'd clip it. Of course, you gotta make sure it doesn't unravel. Maybe a touch of pectin on the end of the new end of wrapper might be in order.
It's Plume. Smoke it.
Trapped in the People's Communist Republic of Massachusetts.
FIFY
I clipped it.
Mold is much easier to deal with for cigars compared to pipe tobacco. Once you've got mold in your loose pipe tobacco, there's not a lot you can do to clean it up. I suppose if you had mold on a solid plug of pipe tobacco you could clean it up, but I've never seen a moldy plug so far.
Pipe tobacco is cased and topped with sugars and flavors which can evaporate and leave behind white substances that can be mistaken for mold, so you have to check to see if it's really mold or evaporate. I have a USB microscope I use to examine my tobacco and look for hairs.
With cigars, one dead giveaway that you have mold and not plume is when you see it on the cigar band.
FIFY I clipped it.
I learned this from @Bob_Luken
I had a box of Liga 9's that got moldy, and I never figured out what caused it. The box was in the same container with 10 others and none are affected. There was dry dusty mold scattered on the wrapper and about half had mold on the foot. I clipped about an inch off and it looked clean on the cut end so I smoked the heck out of them!!
"Not all heroes eat crepes"
Let me guess,.... the ones you clipped, and smoked, did not unravel.
You learned to clip someone else's post in the same style as I did, sure but, I'm not certain you perceived what I was trying to convey. By clipping the last portion of your post, I was trying to alert you as delicately as possible that I think you are mistaken about the foot being likely to unravel if you clip it off. For certain, you might unintentionally crack the wrapper or binder as you clip the foot, which would cause trouble, which I doubt pectin would help anyway, but the cigar will not "unravel". You may consider this a difference without a distinction, but we can disagree if this is the case.
As I'm sure you know, but I will mention for anyone who may not, the foot of most all cigars is/are clipped during the making, and no pectin glue is required at the foot during construction because the wrapper overlaps itself from foot to head, then the head is capped and will prevent unraveling. Same as a strip of paper that you roll up diagonally to create a cylinder, it will unravel from one end but not the other. So, because of the direction of this overlap, cigar wrappers can and will unravel from head to foot if the cap is removed, but not foot to head if the foot is clipped.