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Hello my friends. I understand many of you build humidors on this platform. It would appear (to me at least) that what these people sell as a working humidor does not actually work. I hate to be so blunt, but there you have it! It is also the source of the most common questions that I am asked about in correspondence. I just received yet another one this AM... I know many of you are happy with your products and purchase of these, so for you simply ignore what I am going to ask. Operation of a humidor is in the eye of the beholder, I get that. I am curious however. Many of you know that I convert wine coolers to humidors as a boutique business. And these, working or not are very popular. So if I told you to trash the beads and all the guesswork in converting one of these, what would it be worth to you to get a project that actually worked? Yes, this is a money question. You see, I have never thought of these as a viable humidor, but honestly I have never bothered to try and convert one. Development costs me time and money and neither in my case are unlimited. If I sold a kit for one of these, one that really worked that I could prove within a reasonable tolerance, would any of you be interested in buying it? And lastly, what would it be worth? There is no right or wrong answer. I believe that I can develop this into a platform that can work within the realm of what performance a TE cooler can deliver. Will it work in my shop at 90F? No way, well, I doubt it. But will it work at ambients below 80F? Maybe, maybe high 70's... I don't know. But the parts and the system cost money. And my development time and the cost of the materials including the cooler, something that I have no real interest in building for myself are real. So what say you? Thanks for helping me out... and don't be embarrassed to post. If it working is only worth $100.00 put it down. I want to know. If the concuss is that I can make money at it and get you guys that are log jammed happy it might be worth it for me to take the project on. Cheers! -Piggy

I did not get myself much for Christmas. However I did get myself a couple of fun lighters. Here's one! Did you get yourself any fun accessories during the 'gift' season? Cheers! -Piggy

One of my late year smoking goals was to revisit some of the really memorable cigars from 2019. So I am late... as usual! Enter the Monte Esp. #2 vintage 2001. I have noticed a few near '01 vintage cigars showing up in this review series. So, lets talk a little about these cigars. Over and over again I see 99 to 01 vintage cigars maligned over the internet. I realize that I am an 'anti-establishment' smoker, but I have to wonder if any of these people parroting such rhetoric have actually smoked any of these cigars. In my time smoking Cuban cigars, I have to say that year over year, 01 vintage cigars prove themselves over and over as being some of the most complex, memorable cigar experiences. I covet mine... Considering how much I read about rH and temperature and storage from those without a clue, representing that they do have a clue, it would not surprise me that this is another case of internet puffing of knowledge not actually had. You don't have to go far to find an expert of everything here on the net. A recent thread about trying to tie cigar condition to aH tickles me as a recent example... I digress! I have smoked several of these this year. Look at what is left in the box. I hate to see them go, but I am not big on storing largely empty boxes. In this case I am making some exceptions. These cigars are so good, that I really don't want to commingle them with a bunch of nameless, homeless singles. They are simply too special for that. These cigars, including the one that I smoked this day, epitomize what I consider to be the Cuban cigar. This is a rich, firm drawing robust cigar. As you likely know, I store cigars rather dry. As a result, these have little bouquet. This does not mean the cigar is finished, over the hill, nor any of the many other prejudices that follow with 'nose' and a fine cigar. If you passed up on this cigar over your nose... you made a grave error. There was no 'foreplay' with this cigar! It opened, and opened to what might well have been the last third. It just turned on and stayed on. This was a rich, unctuous, high mouthfeel, lush and 'thick' tasting cigar. While the cigar had a moderately stiff draw, she breathed, thick, viscous, white smoke. The smoke was heavy and lingered. You could almost see it fall... The taste was bursting with stone fruit, plumb and peach but not sweet. Dried fruit is more accurate. Dense and lightly oily describes it best. The mouth feel is worth mentioning. While the last one of these was more complex with a bit more character, this slightly lesser sibling was no runt. I did not time my smoke. I enjoyed the beautiful weather, my wife and dog's company. The interesting elements from the cigar varied as if with the conversation and the music that we listened to. The tastes of spices, fruits and nuts all came to the table to serve me. This was a sublime smoke. I say this over and over. It was not the missing 22 ring of shallow filler that made this cigar what it was. You don't need 50 plus ring cigars to deliver like this. You need quality tobacco of the proper blend and a roller who knows and cares about what he/she is doing. If that is magic, well this cigar had that... Thanks for reading and sharing my experience. Cheers! -the Pig

After 35 years of smoking, I believe I have finally perfected my herf kit. My kit is the simple accessories needed to smoke a like a pro anywhere! Cigar, not included!!! -LOL I pinched the design of the cigar stand from our host, picture of monkey in fez not included. I upscaled it a bit and machined it from 0.125 6061... How do my mates say it... AL-U-min-Eoum! Cheers! -Piggy

I call this the Cuban crush, or the smash technique. Before you pitch that marginal cigar that tunnels give it a fighting chance and push the combustion back to the foot where it belongs. By crushing the 'tunnel' you can force the cigar to burn again on the foot at the cross-section instead of just burning axially up the core. Cheers! -Piggy

So... I have not done a video review in some time so I thought I would finally edit this one up and post it. Frankly, I find the review boring!!! Watch if you must but these cigars have not been that impressive. I wanted a new version of the RS12. I did not find it here, but in fairness they may be hiding in some boxes of these somewhere. Enjoy! Cheers! -Piggy

Oh the pain!!! Hello all, been awhile. More life and times according to Mr. Piggy. If you have 20 minutes to burn, light up a Chicos and join me! -Piggy

No, this is a departure from the Pig's now standardized video review. I figured I would just make it simple... The recent thread on the Boli Gold Medal more or less motivated me to pull out a box and smoke one. I did buy some of the original CW release, but just like today, I have not been much to be stabbed by 'limited' cigars and even at the 'group buy' price, I figured that they were more expensive than what they were worth. As their interest began to wane, I bought more of the re-release and I am glad that I did. My cigar was firm and really well packed. It was dried sufficiently so that I could remove the foil and bands without tearing them. You might say that they had become a nice, dry 9 year old cigar. It was a brisk 90F on Isla Pigfish, and I was wondering how well I might take the adverse climate! ... the soldiers weapons aligned, I went to battle! The cigar opened with dry oats and shredded wheat. A hint of sweet followed and I thought that this was somewhat mild from what I remembered these to be. Within an inch or so these flavors developed and became more robust as they added various spices including nutmeg and some cinnamon. The cigar gracefully conveyed me though this nominally robust and lighthearted medley for some period. It bobbed and weaved removing and adding variances to the melody until about halfway through the smoke. It then appeared that the opening band was left over from the 'home for the aged' festival... and I had arrived early to the 'tribute to heavy metal' festival... And it began. The more graceful cigar came to a rather abrupt halt. As I have had a rather annoying cough for the past two weeks and have been off cigars since my last review, I began to wheeze a little and began to get some tingle from my throat, not previously hurting, but hurting now... I was slammed with straight tobacco, pepper and smoked paprika. The lovely essence was gone, the brute force of untamed tobacco had begun. In better condition, I would have likely enjoyed the cigar more, but being somewhat sick (still) I was bowled over by the torrent. Don't get me wrong, the cigar was good. It was very interesting, as far a ambushes go, but I was just not well suited for it that day... While super strong cigars are not really my forte, robust ones are. The cigar gets great points for making my interest and keeping it. It had huge constitution, and a lot of character to boot. In the right health and frame of mind I might have really been impressed, but in my case I felt more 'assaulted.' This of course was not the cigar's fault, but mine alone. Eventually I had to leave a good 2 inches in the ashtray... I just could no longer take it! If you are ready for a boorish cigar, a bully in lambs wool, pull one of these out and give it a try. Me, my throat is now sore as hell, and I am hacking like a sputtering lawnmower with water in the fuel. It is not the cigars fault, but my own. I look forward to taking one of his siblings to task another day, a day when I am done dressing my own wounds!!! -LOL Let the healing begin! -Piggy

Hello again my brothers, time for another lighthearted video review from the Pig... Been absent these past days and likely will be for awhile. I just picked up a new project management job, 27M corporate HQ TI. The job is a mess, of course and I am pretty immersed in it. The team is great and I am having some fun building again!!! With that said, this is the first cigar that I have smoked in two weeks. I just have not had the time. It is once more a good time for me to stock up on Partagas Chicos and leave a box on my trailer office desk (right Nik???). That way I will have sufficient motivation to take some time to enjoy great Cuban leaf while 'workin' for the man! I hope you guys enjoy the video as much as I did the cigar! Cheers, Piggy

This cigar was a gift from our generous host. I have had the cigar for years, since the RTDA show in 2006. Lets just say, it is not exactly right off the truck! Nor was it a graceful Lanceros... Enjoy the story and the review me amigos!!! -Piggy

DAMN... WHAT A CIGAR! Hopefully you can hang through the review. It is long... too long! I repeat myself over and over again...! I would not give back a second of it. Video review is up... ... beware the 'the wildlife detour.' Thanks for watching! -Piggy

... these videos don't appear to be getting any shorter!!! -LOL I used to think, 'what am I gonna' talk about for 10 minutes...!' Enjoy. -PIggy

One more in the ongoing saga of great cigars past. One fantastic thing about working in the shop is that it is 'my space' and the smoking lamp is always lit! Enjoy! -the Pig

So I am not a 'fan' of the Oust Fan! However there are a number of people who don't have automated systems who would still like an automated timed fan that can push a hefty amount of air and water around inside their humidor. Seeing it is a holiday weekend, I decided to prototype such a device, and here it is! I purchased a couple of these programable timer modules about 6-8 months ago and have wondered just how good they are and what their mean-time to failure was. So I set one of them up to run a fan on a bench in the lab, 4 seconds run time, 4 seconds off time. The damn thing has been running almost non-stop for over 6 months now. The setup: Wood pattern PVC box that I port in the shop. This one has a ball bearing, long life 23CFM 60mm fan, tobacco plant grill guard, programmable timer, lever nut (EZ connect wire connectors) and some silicone rubber feet for the bottom. It is completely wired inside the box (the timer is in there as well). Plug in the wires to a 12VDC power supply (maybe an old router/cordless vacuum power supply) and you are off and running. I don't have literature on the timer, but it has a nonvolatile memory and runs off 12VDC just like the fan. You plug in a 12VDC power supply and off it goes. I figure running one 30 seconds out of 300 seconds is just perfect. Of course you can select just about any time you want. Cheers! -Piggy

Sometime I have a good laugh at how people store their cigars...! This is their chance to have one at my expense... With all this talk of mold recently, I had a little run in of my own. NO, I am admitting that my humidors don't work (nice try), I am saying sometimes 'I' don't work! Laziness, ignorance, poor running humidors, all contribute to mold on cigars. The fact is, anytime you neglect your cigars you are in for trouble, regardless of how much you spent on your humidor. This is one such case and an example of just how fast mold can develop in a box of cigars. Victims here, no not really, just my pride... Watch and have a laugh, perhaps you might learn something. Cheers! -Piggy

I am often asked this question. A fine is an archaic term for losses of tobacco due mishandling and neglect. Mold is a fine... Breakage is a fine... A few years ago I decided to resurrect the term and include it in my writing here. I decided to borrow this picture from another thread. I thought that it might be interesting to hear what the membership thought went wrong here. I can quickly think of maybe 5 or 6 reasons. What do you think it was? If you want to include it, please say who you believe is at fault, if anyone. -Piggy

I am trying to keep my videos here on the humidor tutorial forum so people can find them. This is the same video posted on another thread. -Piggy

Another video review from the Isle of PigFish. If you don't like it, blame our own @JohnS. He made me do it!!! You know me, I am not exactly concise. Best to take this one in with a Coronas and a strong drink!!! Or, not at all!!! -LOL Enjoy! -Piggy

Video currently ripping. Hold on to your socks! Just waiting on YouTube now...! Stop your grinn'n and pull up your linen... -the Pig

Understanding a cigar. Having read a comment about the Hoyo Coronas this morning got me to thinking… That’s bad, I know! The comment was, and I am paraphrasing, 'one of the few cigars in MRN’s book that got trashed.' I scoffed at that comment, and got to thinking about it some. Why should I scoff at panning a cigar? Many of us ‘pan’ cigars. I am certainly one of the worst perpetrators… These ELs and REs are favorite targets of mine. I suppose it is because it comes from the lips of a collector, and my obvious bias against them as a group. More on that another day… I know, many think these guys are gurus and gods but I don’t share their sentiments. Smoking was designed as a pleasure, not a competitive practice. (MHO). I cannot say that I like the direction smoking has gone since the 'collector community' has come to the forefront. I give you the topic at hand. How well do you know any cigar? As for me, there was a day that I smoked several cigars a day. I no longer smoke like this. I rarely have a cigar a day, lately anyway. I may go on binges where I smoke everyday for a few days, however that usually subsides within about a week. I also largely smoke from one box, but that too is getting less common. As I smoke less often, I have been picking away at the decades growth of my singles and strays. I have no ‘rotation’ as some put it. When I used to smoke this often, it was largely done from one box. That open box, might just travel around with me in the car as it would not last longer than a week or so. It was more habitual and little time was put into 'thinking about what to smoke.' When I wanted to smoke, I just went to 'the open box' to smoke from! That was more or less a time when I considered myself largely a ‘this is my cigar’ smoker. Let me explain. Those days were largely filled with Coronas. Punch Coronas and Partagas Coronas as well as others, and of course plenty of Petit Coronas and sub-Petit Coronas cigars. My favorite back then was the Partagas PC, generally in 50 cabs. Another 50 cab cigar that was a staple, was the du Depute. These were the days when I was consuming 1000 (or so) cigars a year. At that rate, I felt I got to know certain cigars pretty well. I mean if you smoked say 300 of one cigar in a year, you got to know them pretty well… Yesterday as today, cigar quality would ebb and flow with the trends in cigar manufacturing, both good and bad. I felt connected to certain cigars back then. I called those cigars, 'my own.' I brought this up in a thread recently about considering a cigar, or a brand of cigar your own. While I cannot comment on the habits of others, there were certainly signature cigars that were really my staples. While I was certainly smoking other brands and sizes of cigars, I wanted to pick my way through the entire Cuban cigar catalogue back then, there was simply never the time nor smoking experience to call ‘every’ cigar I owned or tried, my signature cigar. As cigars have changed so much I am a bit of an anachronism. I still know my favorites better than any made today. There are of course some of my favorite cigars that are still made, such as the QdO Coronas, but since I am not consuming over 100 of them a year, there is no real means for me to claim to be an expert on them. I certainly know more about the ones made 15 years ago, than I do today. So this brings me to the point. What is ‘your’ cigar, if you have one? How well do you know it? How long have you known it and what does it take in your mind to be an authority about it? Reading an 'expert's' tasting notes on hundreds of cigars got me thinking more and more about this. Who is kidding whom here? How many cigars must you consume in a day, a week, a year to be an expert? Can there really be an expert on all those cigars? For me the authority days are pretty much a thing of the past. I likely know more about the Grande de Espana than the RASS. I certainly know more about the Diplomaticos #1 than the Monte 2…! As those cigars are no longer available, calling them 'my own,' categorizing them as such has more or less become an obsolete notion. So I have come full circle. How many cigars a day does an expert need to smoke to become intimate with the entire Cuban catalogue of cigars? Can there really be an expert on them all, or even just a few? As cigars change over time, how many of them would one need to smoke and need to keep smoking over time in order remain current? I proffer there are no expert smokers. Even with the limited catalogue today, one simply cannot consume enough of more than a few cigars to really know them intimately. Intimately, meaning having a continuing depth of knowledge about their past and their current trends… As for me, I know more about humidors than the cigars that most people keep in them today! I suppose as long as I have one more RA PC to smoke, I will know more about that one (and a few others) than many will ever know. Yet it is only due to the fact that the cigars is no longer made and there are not newer vintages to become familiar with and no need to keep current. Perhaps as cigars are cancelled from the catalog, that act makes some of us who have smoked them 'experts?' After all, who is going to argue? Now that is collector logic for you!!! Thanks for reading. -Piggy

As I have been posting up videos on my most recent controlled humidor build on the Humidor Tutorial forum, I decided to post up the progress of the performance of this new build. Here on Isla PigFish we have been experiencing a little bit of a heat wave. While this happens, I get an opportunity to move away from cool weather performance and work on some warmer weather performance. Most controlled humidor solutions have to deal with extreme dehydration during a cooling cycle. All units that have active cooling; regardless of the BS you read all over the net, dehydrate while cooling. Unless one uses a series of high-resolution data loggers one will never know. I know, many don’t care… But I do! Here is progress on the latest Generation 12 cooler (controlled humidor) from Mr. Piggy. Thanks for reading. Cheers... -the Pig

For me, packaging means precious little! But, one thing that I have been taught about cigar smokers being around this site, is that branding is important to a lot of people! I just like to be creative when I make items that I need, and sometimes a little 'fluff' is a lot of fun! Enjoy. -the Pig

It has been awhile since I have smoked a cigar so I picked something deliberately small. I was thinking that I was going to get something a bit more powerful, these cigars can be robust. Yet with all said and done, with a few too many narcotics in my system already, using the wrong words with regularity, I was quite happy that this one did not bowl me over while making some history today. This is my first ever video review. Get a good laugh at my expense brothers (and sisters). Time to poke at the Pig!!! -LOL Thanks again Chris for the cigar, lovely. Thanks for watching brothers, be gentile, I am still afraid to move my neck... -LOL Bolivar DT- A Bolivar DT- B -Ray

As you know, my friend Bwana is after some samples of Plume, mold etc... I don't know, sending a moldy cigar when you know it is mold seems a bit silly but I get the concept. In order to help a brother out and advance science I am seriously looking though boxes of cigars for plume. No, I don't believe in plume, pixies or pink pony unicorns, but what the hell, when a mate calls you to arms, you man up... right? Open up some boxes mates and snap a pic or two and post them up. If nothing more than for the fun of it and showing our host he is being supported. Rob, brother, if I find plume, or a pink pony unicorn, I am sending him to Oz...! Cheers! -Piggy

...not a TIED NECK! Christmas 2016, another one of the record books! Looking forward to 2017, and a refill of oxycodone! -the Pig