Tube Storage

[Maritimer]

What is the general consensus regarding storage of tubes? Is the preferred method to remove the sticks from the tubes before placing them in the humidor, or complete with tube?

Tks

M

[Orion21]

My rule of thumb is to store the cigars as they are packaged in the box. I always keep my BRC Tubos in their tubes and have had great success. Many people will tell you they think cigars kept in their tube are better than their dress box counterparts. I am also one of those people. Tubos are a beautiful presentation piece and you are paying a premium for them. It makes no sense to buy them just to take the cigars out...

[CUBANO]

Keep them in the tube with cap on. I have a couple of Bolivar Tubos #2 from 2002 that smell amazing.

[stargazer14]

Much is written on this and I will be the one to differ here - I open my tubes as I have found

the only problem with mold I ever had was in tubes. It has happened a number of times

so I like to keep the smokes out where I can keep an eye on them

or leave the caps on loose, rather than uncapping and reclosing tubes to check.

That said, I do not have many boxes of tubes, now maybe 15 singles at the most,

so I can see an advantage to keeping them closed if you have 28 full boxes!

The only thing I hate worse than taking a tubo with me only to find it moldy later

is glass in my mashed potoatos. I hate that.

[Ginseng]

Here is a proposal for a reasonable middle ground.

1. Remove the cigars from the tubes and hold both in a storage system held stable at your preferred conditions. So, upon receipt, take the cigars out of the tubes and store everything in a humidor/cabinet/cooler at 60% RH. Keep them there for, oh, who knows, maybe 30 days?
   
2. Return the cigars to their tubes, cap tightly, and store as originally received in your humidor etc.
   

This approach addresses Stargazer's observations that mold and tubes go hand in hand. Moreso this is true for NCs than Habanos, but it certainly makes sense that if a cigar is packed at/with high humidity, the tubo will seal that in allowing any viable mold on the cigar to grow. This re-equilibration process also allows you to reap the slow-aging benefits of tubos. It's having your cake and eating it too.

What do you guys think?

Wilkey

[Trevor2118]

Here is a proposal for a reasonable middle ground.

1. Remove the cigars from the tubes and hold both in a storage system held stable at your preferred conditions. So, upon receipt, take the cigars out of the tubes and store everything in a humidor/cabinet/cooler at 60% RH. Keep them there for, oh, who knows, maybe 30 days?
   
2. Return the cigars to their tubes, cap tightly, and store as originally received in your humidor etc.
   

This approach addresses Stargazer's observations that mold and tubes go hand in hand. Moreso this is true for NCs than Habanos, but it certainly makes sense that if a cigar is packed at/with high humidity, the tubo will seal that in allowing any viable mold on the cigar to grow. This re-equilibration process also allows you to reap the slow-aging benefits of tubos. It's having your cake and eating it too.

What do you guys think?

Wilkey

I agree with this approach 100%.

it will avoid the mold/mould problem.

[stargazer14]

Makes sense to me! (Tho I will just cap it off when I take it on the road.)

But this is a great approach for those with a number of tubos.

[SurpriseMVP]

My rule of thumb is to store the cigars as they are packaged in the box. I always keep my BRC Tubos in their tubes and have had great success. Many people will tell you they think cigars kept in their tube are better than their dress box counterparts. I am also one of those people. Tubos are a beautiful presentation piece and you are paying a premium for them. It makes no sense to buy them just to take the cigars out...

100% agree i have tubes over 12 years old and they are better than the boxed counterpart. I buy lots of tubed cigars for long term storage

Mike

[Maritimer]

Thank you all.

I guess specifically my concern was for the actual evaporation/elimination of the ammonia et al. The 30 day suggestion would seem to be a reasonable approach to that end.

Thanks again for the input.

Regards!

M

[Ginseng]

Thus far no one has any definitive information on ammonia removal. It has been remarked that cigars years old might still have traces. It's possible. My question to you is this: What do you understand to be the significance of ammonia production in finished cigars?

Wilkey

[Maritimer]

Personally I haven't noticed ammonia. But an acquaintance , who is not a regular smoker at all, but does work with chemicals including ammonia, noticed the taste immediately in a "fresh" Cohiba stick that was NOT in a tube.

My concern is that the less ammonia in me the better....whether I taste it or not.

[Kruz]

Here is a proposal for a reasonable middle ground.

1. Remove the cigars from the tubes and hold both in a storage system held stable at your preferred conditions. So, upon receipt, take the cigars out of the tubes and store everything in a humidor/cabinet/cooler at 60% RH. Keep them there for, oh, who knows, maybe 30 days?
   
2. Return the cigars to their tubes, cap tightly, and store as originally received in your humidor etc.
   

This approach addresses Stargazer's observations that mold and tubes go hand in hand. Moreso this is true for NCs than Habanos, but it certainly makes sense that if a cigar is packed at/with high humidity, the tubo will seal that in allowing any viable mold on the cigar to grow. This re-equilibration process also allows you to reap the slow-aging benefits of tubos. It's having your cake and eating it too.

What do you guys think?

Wilkey

I like this idea a lot because I too have notice mold on tubes but like the presenation part of it.

[mk05]

But wilkey, what about all those guys who keep intact?!

[Ginseng]

Two words: risk tolerance

Mold in Habanos tubos is very rare in my experience. In fact, I don't ever recall finding mold at least not in the last dozen or so boxes/packs.

I have, however, received 5 or 6 moldy dressed boxes. Why? Perhaps not because of the conditions of original packing but rather intermediate supply chain storage conditions. But that's just a hypothesis.

Thus, the risk is not sufficient for me to go to any additional effort aside from spot checking a few tubes per box.

Wilkey

[Ginseng]

Do keep in mind that any single person's experience is a small statistical sample and may not be representative of the actual, current risk. For all you Bayesians, my priors are low.

Wilkey

Ps. Forgive my digression, I've just had a rather large rum and ginger and have a belly full of sausage and potato salad.

[PigFish]

Wilkey my friend, how are you?

I like your suggestions, but there are variables. If we assume that a tubo has the potential of being water tight, then we are trusting that the conditions that were packaged with your tubed cigar are optimum.

For me, optimum is what I define it and certainly not what another has defined it. Where I will diverge from your ideas is not in concept, which is sound, but in the assumtption that 30 days solves all or a majority of acclimation issues.

I have no evedence beyond that of the empirical, but I feel that 30 days is not enough.

Tobacco will transfer water at different rates depending on temperature. Therefore 30 days at 80 dF will likely find different rates of adsorption/desorption than cigars at 60 dF, which will be less, perhaps considerably less.

If cigars are not firm then they are likely too wet and will need longer to dry. If they are too firm with too much crackle it may take months to rehydrate the concealed core of the cigar.

Frankly I see the tubo as a short term storage device. It is just an armored, one round cigar case. I find nothing magical about them. They are just a different skin for the same cat. They are handy and I like them. Frankly I save a bunch of them and just put a cigar in one now and again to transport that cigar. I don't pride myself on buying fancy packaging with cigars and tubo cigar generally just cost you more because the tubo costs more than the cigar inside!!! Nice cases are easy to come by and while tubos have their place... it is on the go and not in the humidor!

Cheers, the Pig

[Ginseng]

Wilkey my friend, how are you?

...

Cheers, the Pig

Hey there! It has been a pig's age, sir. I've been traveling quite a bit for work. Halfway into 2013 and I'm already platinum or gold on my loyalty cards. Sigh.

Thank you for taking the time to comment. I can't argue with the points you make and I agree with much of what you said. I hope you didn't take my noodling to be pronouncement. I did try to be equivocal about things I was talking about in a more general sense, but perhaps was not as successful as I had hoped. For example, with respect to the (unknown) original packing conditions and the 30-day acclimatization period. And I agree, optimum is always some combination of the mechanism (the cigar) and its user (the smoker).

I also have used tubos for short term travel/herf cigar portage. Truly, there is nothing magical about the tubo, but it certainly is a functional item...as well as aesthetic. Else I wouldn't have taken the effort to collect them.

Fond Regards,

Wilkey

[MamBear]

Much is written on this and I will be the one to differ here - I open my tubes as I have found

the only problem with mold I ever had was in tubes. It has happened a number of times

so I like to keep the smokes out where I can keep an eye on them

or leave the caps on loose, rather than uncapping and reclosing tubes to check.

That said, I do not have many boxes of tubes, now maybe 15 singles at the most,

so I can see an advantage to keeping them closed if you have 28 full boxes!

The only thing I hate worse than taking a tubo with me only to find it moldy later

is glass in my mashed potoatos. I hate that.

I hate that, too!

I would also think that it depends on the tube - are they slotted and/or are they cedar lined (as we know cedar inhibits mold)? In the absence of either of these, I would fear that a tight cap would restrict air flow.

As my experience with tubos is limited, and only NC, I would have to defer to those with more extensive experience than I. However, I would think, in a proper environment, a slightly loosened cap would (as you mentioned) be a fair compromise.

Thank you for the great question, as it came at a perfect time for me. I was just returning some Davi Anni's to their tubes! Purchased 12-24mos ago, I stored them in my Davidoff humidor, sans tubos, as I didn't really know if they should be stored en tubo (and accustomed to naked sticks in my humi). It's odd, but if I left them in their BN box, I would not have thought twice about the tubes and would have just stored them as is. I had just returned one to its tube, when I thought about the cedar and the fact that the tubes had been stored in a cabinet, and stopped. Great ideas here, as I was wondering how to condition the tubes. I'm going to put them in their box for a couple months, with an 85% Boveda.

I got my second (in 25 years) box of tubos, Avo, early this year. I must have that look on my face when I removed one from the cedar lined tube, as the owner instantly assured me it was plumed. Knowing the B&M and the fact that I'm the only Avo box customer, I know that the box has a least 2ys of age and likely more. The white spots scattered over the stick did readily rub off, however they were larger than I had ever experienced. Louping them at home, some spots did appear to have a spread that I would consider fuzzy, but I have never seen mold before and have no baseline in which to compare it. Being cautious, and perhaps still a little skeptical, I left all en tubo within their full BN box and hope that is sufficient isolation if I later do in fact find any mold.

I only get tubos for those cigars I want to carry and present as a gift. There are some Habano tubos that have caught my eye, and now having no fear of "the tube" I can give them another look!

[Ginseng]

Hey there, MamBear,

If cedar inhibits mold, it's not absolute as I've seen mold in paper-wrapped dressed boxes as well as bare wood boxes. The point about a cap inhibiting air flow is actually the goal, at least as far as holding cigars for a long time. To do this, we were suggesting that a good way to do this is, 1) get your cigar and tube to the condition you want, then 2) twist on the cap to seal in the freshness in a nifty little time capsule.

Wilkey

PS, love the Davi Millenium line, Avo tubes have been some of the moldiest I've ever found. Then RyJ, then Aroma de Cuba.

[MamBear]

Howdy, Wilkey!

Correct. While cedar does inhibit the growth of mold and is used extensively for that purpose (yeah, and that aroma ain't bad, either!), the fungicidal properties of cedar is not absolute; otherwise, I guess there would never be mold in BN boxes, humidors and cedar lined tubes!

As O2 is a requirement of fermentation, and the goal is to inhibit air flow, I would have to assume you talking about a tight cap on aged cigars in order to maintain that aged set point, correct? That definitely makes sense. I guess no matter how tight the cap, lacking an airtight seal some O2 will still be able to enter, but further aging would be minimized as would the production of the noxious gaseous by products (i.e., ammonia).

BTW, I did get the idea to recondition the Mille tubes from you, thanks! They'll be back in their own little beds, where they belong. Well, you drove my skeptical meter back up! I had a second of those Avo's a couple of months ago, so now I'm going to have to go check on them. Also, they did not have the flavor to which I'm accustomed, and presumed it was because it was a much smaller vitola than I smoke; hmm, hope there's not a problem...that would give some credence to a post attributing mold to primarily NC's.

[mk05]

Looks like you are missing the Partagas Visible Inmensos tubo.

[Ginseng]

I'm missing a few tubes but I've decided to stay away from coffins for now. Did the PVI come in a tubo? If so, I was not aware.

As you can probably see, my collection is not current. I hold few of the recent tubos re-issues. And I haven't filled out the Siglo range either.

Mam,

Right, restricting oxygen flow would in effect slow down time for the sealed-in cigar.As for ammonia, after the true fermentation that takes place during production, there shouldn't be very much if any ammonia produced by the final product. In an improperly or incompletely fermented or finished cigar, you could have excessive amounts of ammonia that could be relatively easily detected. What will certainly happen over time is that any ammonia in the tobacco will diffuse out and away. I think this process is what people are thinking when they're talking about removing ammonia.

This is what I recall to be the case. If you all would like to know about this in greater detail, there are a number of good papers on the subject of cigar tobacco fermentation.

Wilkey

[mk05]

Well I saw some glass looking tubes, so I was making a funny.

[Ginseng]

Ah.

W

[PapaDisco]

The two times I've found mold in tubes has been in recent R&J Churchills. Both times the mold was light and easy to remove, and appeared to have halted, sort of like the tubes had been packed hot and humid and then dried out. I brushed off the mold, re-tubed, bagged in a ziplock (box, tubes with cigars and all) and then restored to the tuperdor at 65%RH. The flaw in this of course is re-using a tube (there will be spores inside) even though it's cedar lined, and putting any old moldy back in the humi, but it's such a pain to have separate storage for the odd box or two. So long as I'm not opening the R&J's in the presence of the humi, I figure it should prevent spores getting elsewhere. And mostly keeping a low RH prevents any spores from blooming. Should I do it differently?

Do you guys keep a separate humi for the long term storage of rescued cigars?