Mold and Freezing Cigars...

[rfenst]

Guys,

I received some cigars from a vendor (NOT CZAR) with a few specks of mold here and there on about 2-3 cigars per 10-box. Nothing any of us wouldn't simply wipe off and smoke. Now that I have dropped the RH of the cigars and they are no longer "wet", I plan to freeze them and places the empty boxes out in the sunlight or under some type of UV sterilizer before re-boxing the cigars Perhaps I will put the cigars under the UV sterilizer too. But, this got me thinking:

What affect on the mold will freezing the cigars have?

Any scholarly articles around?

Thanks

[sepp]

Mold growth is only slowed by freezing. Freeze to make sure you have no beetles. Mold, wipe it off and lower the rh like you have.

http://www.ehow.com/facts_7908130_temperature-mold-growth-bread-cheese.html

Freezing bread or cheese does not kill mold. Keeping food at zero degrees Fahrenheit will, however, stop the growth of mold.

[Smallclub]

If you keep your cigars at proper RH and temp, mold will probably never come back.

Freezing cigars because of "a few specks of mold here and there" is an overkill measure.

[randomhero1090]

We talking white mold? Wipe off and make sure your RH is sub 70% and you should be good to go. Freezing is overkill. Check the feet of the cigars. Moldly feet you would either need to trim or discard.

I got a box of BBF from another vendor. 4-5 of the heads had some white mold on them. I've smoked all the cigars that had mold on them (which never came back) and they tasted great.

[Lotusguy]

I agree with the statements above - freezing will not kill mold. Keeping the humidity and temperature sufficiently low will keep the mold from returning after you've wiped it off.

[rfenst]

The mold seemed to me to be VERY young- tiny, tiny specks. It is still 90F+ here every single day and the cigars surely got very overheated during 7-10 days in transit.* My hypothesis is that the mold growth probably occurred during transit over a several day period with the "wet", warm/hot cigars.

I immediately reduced the humidity of the cigars by leaving the boxes out for 2-3 days during which the lids were open. Thereafter, I closed the boxes and let them rest upside down at about 76F/50-55% RH, so that the exposed cedar on the bottom of the dress-boxes had time to equally dehumidify.

So, they were relatively stabilized and ready for storage, except for one thing- freezing them to kill any beetles or eggs- not to kill the mold, which I am sure could be done with a UV sanitation.

I am just curious to see if anyone has ever read anything "technical" on freezing and tobacco mold. After all, there has to be some temperature that it is killed off at- perhaps as theoretically low as Absolute Zero, right?

* I normally don't buy many cigars during the summer, but these LGC Tainos have been discontinued and I had them on back-order!

[tempbond]

Mold either spreads by direct contact or by spores. Spores are nororiously resistant to almost anything. Even if you put your cigars under a UV lamp, it will only sterilize the exterior of the wrapper and any spores remaining below that will thrive again in humid/warm conditions. But good thinking nonetheless !

Think of the flooded houses after a flood or a hurricane: there's mold everywhere water touched drywall and other building materials. The water didn't bring the mold, the spores where already there, they were just "activated" by the water.

Any cigar wild mold up given the right conditions, nothing you can do about that. So like others have said, keep the RH down and you should be fine. As long as the RH is low, temperature doesn't matter (only for mold now, I'm not talking about beetles !)

Here's something I wrote about freezing cigars to kill beetles if you're interested:

Cigaromania - How to freeze cigars