Sour smell... Ammonia? Mold?

[Guybrush]

I keep some of my cigar boxes in airtight sealed containers. I put the full boxes in fresh and wait a couple of years without humidification. There have been variations in temperature. Unfortunately it gets hot during summer. Does anyone else notice a sour smell when opening such a box? It reminds me of diluted fruity vinegar. The smell is in the cardboard as well as in the cabinet boxes. I once read that MRN recommends oxygen-deficient aging. 
Do you recommend that you ventilate the cigars before smoking?

[nKostyan]

Without Boveda?

I store it in the same way, I did not find any foreign odors. But I put a couple of Boveda 60 grams each

[smbauerllc]

I have no idea, and am just here to see what the more knowledgeable and experienced members have to say.

I'm surprised that they stay properly humidified without a boveda or something, even in an airtight container.
Interesting

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[Edicion]

I don't know for sure, but I'm wondering if it's the boxes themselves that give out the smell.

You could try to open every 2/3 weeks or shorter intervals. I do that with my tupperdors.

Some say cigars go through various cycles, including an ammonia cycle. You can maybe find more info here on FOH by searching for it.

Definitely recommend a temp and RH meter that you can get sent to your home from a well known website. Less than $25 and takes the guessing game out of humidity and temperature levels. Just to be sure it's not a environment that is promoting mould growth. 

If you haven't already, try to give the cigars a trip to the freezer for a week or so (should be safe, but at your own risk). 

Final thing I would do is to take out the cigars from the boxes, see if that helps then you'll know if it's the boxes or cigars. 

You have really nice cigars. Enjoy in a few years. 

[Chibearsv]

I'd be very careful to not store your cigars where they can get too hot.  Without any experience of your conditions, the combination of stale humid air in the container, organic material (cigars), heat, and no circulation doesn't sound like a good combo to me.  

[TheGipper]

I have been vacuum sealing boxes for long term aging for almost 20 years.  I think your method is similar.

Over the years, I have found that I prefer to remove a box from vacuum seal about a year before I will smoke them.  I find that a box taken out of a long term vacuum seal will go into a sick period for several months after coming out of seal.

You are on the right path.  Don't let anybody tell you any nonsense about "air circulation" or "you need to let them breathe occasionally".  MRN was on to something good.

[leebert]

You know, plume smells sour...

[Guybrush]

4 hours ago, leebert said:

You know, plume smells sour...

No, I didn't. I had problems with mold. So this could be the reason. Do mold infected cigars really smell sour?

 

5 hours ago, TheGipper said:

I have been vacuum sealing boxes for long term aging for almost 20 years.  I think your method is similar.

Over the years, I have found that I prefer to remove a box from vacuum seal about a year before I will smoke them.  I find that a box taken out of a long term vacuum seal will go into a sick period for several months after coming out of seal.

You are on the right path.  Don't let anybody tell you any nonsense about "air circulation" or "you need to let them breathe occasionally".  MRN was on to something good.

That's good advice. Thank you. Some of my 8-10 years old cigars tasted sour, flat, boring or way too mild. I thought they were over the peak...

I have not seen any mold on my 2013 SLR DCs but thats one of the boxes that smells a bit sour. 

[Ginseng]

1 hour ago, Guybrush said:

That's good advice. Thank you. Some of my 8-10 years old cigars tasted sour, flat, boring or way too mild. I thought they were over the peak...

I have not seen any mold on my 2013 SLR DCs but thats one of the boxes that smells a bit sour. 

That's certainly not right. Innocuous bits of white mold have no scent as far as I have been able to tell. Evil mold/milldew smells characteristically musty like wet, old, moldy books. Most cigars should be very enjoyable with 8-10 years on. Some are just getting started at that point. 

Closing the system is a fine thing to do as long as the cigars were at or around the deserted long term storage conditions upon sealing. Cigars don't need to breath, containers don't need to be burped...if they are stable, in temperature and humidity. 

I cannot bear to make my cigars untouchable so so no vacuum sealing for me. Just lots of tight coolers all kept in a stable, finished basement with heat and aircon. 

When I have bought deep and intend to keep them for smoking through the years, I have constructed "super-cabs" for example, all these Quintero Brevas.

I basically take the cigars out of their packaging and stuff as many of them as I can into a spent 50-SLB. I've done this with a number of cigars including Bolivar Gold Medals and Trinidad Ingenios.

 

[PigFish]

I am not going to step on anyone's opinions about what cloistering does to anyone's cigars. I am not an aging guru and I don't look at cigars as groups. I tend to look at them as individuals.

I can tell you that water migration is a real issue with hygroscopic materials. I can also tell you that vendors often keep cigars on the wetter side. A 'wetter' verses 'dryer' cigar will ship better. It might not break when it is dropped by a customer on the floor. It is not as easily damaged when the customer squeezes it to test it for compaction. It smells better!

For this reason is it unwise to take a cigar from an unknown environment and cloister it. If the cigar has sufficient water for mold growth when you buy it and cloister it, you have sealed in your fate for mold and mildew.

About your high temps. What happens to a cigar when you heat it? Water evaporates from it. Where does it go? Into the atmosphere generally. But what if the atmosphere of the cigar is cloistered with the cigar? The box... The paper... the inside of a vacuum bag, with all that free water???

Briefly, the heating of a cigar will drive water from it. It will look to seek room in free space. When the free space is saturated it has two choices, precipitation (rain), or condensation.

All that mold needs is a food source and capillary water. Now you dry out your whole cigar and then wet the outside of the cigar due to psychrometric laws and you got both.

Food for thought, food for mold.

You can speculate all you want on what good there is from sealing in a cigar. Is the speculation worth it, when there is actual science behind what it takes to ruin it with mold? if you are going to seal them up, do it with known storage equilibrium conditions. Store them in a stable space, OR expect to ruin some of them.

Cheers! -Piggy