I plan on getting a definite answer on optimal aging methods

[joeypots]

12 hours ago, Monterey said:

I guess you don't get the concept oxygen plays on organic material.

I get the concept but I’m skeptical about the difference no new oxygen, a tiny little bit of new oxygen, and just a tiny little bit more new oxygen will play out over time. Especially since Cuban cigars far more approachable young than they were 25 years ago. I’m interested in Fakhm’s research and applaud his discipline. I hope I’m here to read the results and wrong about my assumptions. 

[Corylax18]

4 hours ago, Fakhm said:

I am fairly certain no one has conducted a scientific study of this magnitude on cigar aging

And you wont be the first. I think its very cool that you're doing this and I'm a bit jealous of all the space you have to play with. 

But, and this is a big but. Please stop calling this a "scientific study". It isn't, for many reasons.

30 boxes or 300, same code, same month, hell even if it was the same roller, every cigar is different. Some better than others, regardless of age, humidity, any other factors. They roll a tremendous amount of PSD4, some will be great, the top 5%, some the worst, the bottom 5%, the rest in the middle. There just isn't anyway to scientifically correct for that. You might age a mediocre/crappy box for 10 years, only to find out its a dud then, or 12 years from now. That wont do anything but skew your opinion on the long term results. That same variation happens cigar to cigar too, within every box rolled. I think its the main cause of the "sick period" myth. Someone just gets a dud, waits 6 months to reach for the box again, and they happen to get a good one the second time. It was just a bad cigar vs a good one, not the entire box working through a "sick period". Again, its pretty much impossible to judge this by just looking at/feeling a cigar. 

I also didnt see how you are going to keep this a blind study, or even better, double blind. It would be terrible to go through all this work just to have the results skewed by your bias or the bias of your testers. I understand going double blind kinda ruins the whole point of the experiment, I mean your taste buds are what matters the most here, right? But its not scientific if the test administrator knows all the parameters and has a desired result in mind before the study even starts. It sounds like you want this to work, it would be a heck of a lot of work on your end for not much result if it didn't work. Will that, even subconsciously, affect your opinion of the results? Certainly.

I would dig into some of @PigFish threads on his humidor construction and the temp/humidity monitoring that he does. That gives you a taste of what science/engineering can look like when its applied to cigars. 

[Wookie]

13 hours ago, Monterey said:

I guess you don't get the concept oxygen plays on organic material.

I get it but for me it is not really discernible as I have 20-25 year old cigars that don’t seem different from my younger stock.  All I’ve done is kept them humidified.  Possibly my palate is not that great? Maybe the age of the cigar needs to be even greater to discern a difference.  I’ve been smoking some ~2000 fundadores that literally taste exactly the same as my 2017-2019 boxes.  I’m certainly not saying vacuum sealing doesn’t make a difference….I only question how much of a difference. 

[Monterey]

3 hours ago, Wookie said:

I get it but for me it is not really discernible as I have 20-25 year old cigars that don’t seem different from my younger stock.  All I’ve done is kept them humidified.  Possibly my palate is not that great? Maybe the age of the cigar needs to be even greater to discern a difference.  I’ve been smoking some ~2000 fundadores that literally taste exactly the same as my 2017-2019 boxes.  I’m certainly not saying vacuum sealing doesn’t make a difference….I only question how much of a difference. 

I hope you are right for the record.  I have way too many cigars.  Way way way to many cigars.  I am obsessed with keeping my cigars tasty vs 25 years from now smoking a cigar of hot air.  I'm so obsessed that I have had 10 vacuumed sealed cigars in the freezer for the past 5 years.  In 5 years, i'm going to fire them up.  ZERO idea if they will be great or a hot mess.  But I've never heard of anyone doing this so I thought "why not!"

[Ryan]

On 8/4/2022 at 7:48 AM, Fakhm said:

Hello gents

So I have been thinking of the subject we where discussing in the other thread, and I have decided this question is important enough to do a well thought out study, instead of just theorizing based on assumptions and hearsay.

I have separated 30 boxes from my main inventory, cigars from 2018-2022. And will do the following with them

I am taking each batch ( a batch is the cigar from the same year/factory/vitals ) and will store them in several ways:

1- Vacuum sealed
2- stored in ceramic jars ( semi airtight, exposed to air once every three month for an hour )
3- In the original box as is, stored in a humidity and temperature controlled walk in.
4- in closed Ziplock bags, without the air sucked out, not to be opened for the duration of the study

The cigars will be stored for five years, I figured that is the minimum safe duration in which the aging methods will have a detectable impact on the cigars and a conclusion can be made. 15 would be even better obviously but that would be too long to wait for a result that could impact the method in which I age my cigars.

Why such a large number of cigars and so many different vitolas? With the relative inconsistency in Cuban cigars I figured the wider the test sample and the more people participate in the judging at the five year mark the more concrete the conclusion will be.

I am posting this to let you know I plan on publishing the results on here and Reddit I frequent, and to listen to the community and see if there is any requirements for additional measures. Since I am doing this, I might as well cover all the basis.

Cigars that will be tested:

Mainly D4, E2, Monte 2, QDR54, Bolivar BF. The reason I chose these is that they are the most consistent in my experience from the batches I have, plus i am extremely familiar with them as I have smoked thousands of each, and I believe that will make determining differences between aging methods easier.

 I have also selected several regionals and EL’s simply because I have a good amount of stock of them, and figured the more variety we have the better then picture will be once we are done.

 

Great idea. Well done.

No idea if I'll still be around, but really looking forward to hearing your results.

Everybody deserves an opinion but opinions are not equally valid. After this experiment, yours will be more well founded than most. 

[Bijan]

14 hours ago, Fakhm said:

Secondly, that actually depends on your age. I am 42, by the time I am done with this I will be 47, which means I will have somewhere between 29 to 36 years to benefit from the results myself, taking into account an average life expectancy of 70-80 years and that I find a lab aging system includes cigars stored in different methods for different aging durations,

I'm 39 myself, but given my experience I'd get the most useful information after 20 or 25 years of storage (that's the point when conventionally stored cigars start to fade). By then I'll be 60-65 and won't benefit from being able to store more cigars for 25+ years as that point (if it turns out that this works well).

Edit: on the other hand, if I ever get my hands on a vacuum sealer i think i have a box or two i could easily set aside for 25 years for the benefit of future generations and such.

Edit2: anyways the very low hanging fruit for me is to put my multiple duplicate boxes meant for long term consumption in a single cooler, that costs me nothing and reduces the amount of Tetris i have to play getting to my currently open boxes. In parallel i can vacuum seal a few of those and see how they compare in 2045.

 

14 hours ago, Fakhm said:

anyway, I am planning a very comprehensive study, at this point I am fairly certain no one has conducted a scientific study of this magnitude on cigar aging, and I am confident we will have an extremely valuable report at the end of this which we can use to determine what the general guidelines are.

 

note: even though I am fairly confident in my abilities to test these cigars, as I have done multiple blind tasting sessions with friends and tend to surprise myself ( not being a sick, just letting you guys know I am not new to tasting Cubans of different varieties and age) but I will only be one out of ten testers who gauge the effectiveness of the cigars, having as many testers as possible ensures than not only determining the condition of the cigars is accurate, but that we are able to see how these methods fair with different people who have different preferences. Someone might prefer a smoother cigar regardless of some loss of flavor, while someone else might prefer as much punch as possible and not care at all about harshness, and others might be somewhere in between.

There was one such study and I think they also used volunteers testers. The problem was they took the cigars direct out of storage so it was unclear if they were measuring resting conditions effects on cigars moisture (from each storage environment) or long term aging effects.

I hope someone can post a link to it. It might have been in German or Dutch or just done in Europe, that's all I remember.

Edit: i think their main goals was trying to store cigars in cold conditions like in a wine cellar vs regular humidor conditions.

[Fakhm]

15 hours ago, Corylax18 said:

And you wont be the first. I think its very cool that you're doing this and I'm a bit jealous of all the space you have to play with. 

But, and this is a big but. Please stop calling this a "scientific study". It isn't, for many reasons.

30 boxes or 300, same code, same month, hell even if it was the same roller, every cigar is different. Some better than others, regardless of age, humidity, any other factors. They roll a tremendous amount of PSD4, some will be great, the top 5%, some the worst, the bottom 5%, the rest in the middle. There just isn't anyway to scientifically correct for that. You might age a mediocre/crappy box for 10 years, only to find out its a dud then, or 12 years from now. That wont do anything but skew your opinion on the long term results. That same variation happens cigar to cigar too, within every box rolled. I think its the main cause of the "sick period" myth. Someone just gets a dud, waits 6 months to reach for the box again, and they happen to get a good one the second time. It was just a bad cigar vs a good one, not the entire box working through a "sick period". Again, its pretty much impossible to judge this by just looking at/feeling a cigar. 

I also didnt see how you are going to keep this a blind study, or even better, double blind. It would be terrible to go through all this work just to have the results skewed by your bias or the bias of your testers. I understand going double blind kinda ruins the whole point of the experiment, I mean your taste buds are what matters the most here, right? But its not scientific if the test administrator knows all the parameters and has a desired result in mind before the study even starts. It sounds like you want this to work, it would be a heck of a lot of work on your end for not much result if it didn't work. Will that, even subconsciously, affect your opinion of the results? Certainly.

I would dig into some of @PigFish threads on his humidor construction and the temp/humidity monitoring that he does. That gives you a taste of what science/engineering can look like when its applied to cigars. 

Thank you for your thoughts. I certainly hope this is repeated and the results can be compared. I will do another thread to document the boxes before they are left for the duration, hopefully that encourages other to do their own side by side experimentation at the same time.

 

Regarding weather we can call this a scientific study or not, it very well can be a scientific study, which is why I am putting in as much though as I am, asking experts and the community, and documenting the steps. To explain how this can be regarding as a die rigid study even with variable, how do researchers investigate psychological phenomena? They utilize a process known as the scientific method to study different aspects of how people think and behave ( which is far far far more diverse than cigar quality ) 

 

I have some limited experience with the method applied both in computer science ( artificial intelligence specifically) and in stock market behavior, two projects I participated in at a company I worked with. I will attach an infographic that explains the five steps of the process, much more detail is available online if your interested ( I am not an expert beyond understanding the fundamentals)

To clarify, we have been discussing aging methods for many years, that’s step one, Many questions are raised and need answers, step 2, me and hopefully others will do step 3, the testing by the 10 evaluators will be step 4, and finally the report we will publish here and on Reddit is step five.

 

That would make it a scientific study, now the quality of a scientific study differs greately from one team to another in any field, the quality of the questions asked, the steps taken to minimize the effect of variables, how thourough the testing and evaluation process is, the detail of the report, the measure taken to ensure no external components required play a role, the diversity of the test subjects and “researchers”, etc etc etc. the more care taken the better it is, but it’s either a good scientific study or a bad one, the question for this month is how can we make it as solid as possible for the sake of the community?

 

8 hours ago, Ryan said:

Great idea. Well done.

No idea if I'll still be around, but really looking forward to hearing your results.

Everybody deserves an opinion but opinions are not equally valid. After this experiment, yours will be more well founded than most. 

It won’t be just my opinion, I will be choosing 9 others to participate in the evaluation, all have to be well know smokers with a published profile, I am thinking Eddy Sahakian, Min Ron Nee, Ali Al Lami, and we will see who else as this concludes 

 

7 hours ago, Bijan said:

I'm 39 myself, but given my experience I'd get the most useful information after 20 or 25 years of storage (that's the point when conventionally stored cigars start to fade). By then I'll be 60-65 and won't benefit from being able to store more cigars for 25+ years as that point (if it turns out that this works well).

Edit: on the other hand, if I ever get my hands on a vacuum sealer i think i have a box or two i could easily set aside for 25 years for the benefit of future generations and such.

Edit2: anyways the very low hanging fruit for me is to put my multiple duplicate boxes meant for long term consumption in a single cooler, that costs me nothing and reduces the amount of Tetris i have to play getting to my currently open boxes. In parallel i can vacuum seal a few of those and see how they compare in 2045.

 

There was one such study and I think they also used volunteers testers. The problem was they took the cigars direct out of storage so it was unclear if they were measuring resting conditions effects on cigars moisture (from each storage environment) or long term aging effects.

I hope someone can post a link to it. It might have been in German or Dutch or just done in Europe, that's all I remember.

Edit: i think their main goals was trying to store cigars in cold conditions like in a wine cellar vs regular humidor conditions.

Yes that is one potential issue with this experiment, will the duration be long enough to make the observations valid?

 

I can’t say for certain and don’t have any proof to back up this assumption,  I am only theorizing here, but I would say that the five year mark should make a discernible difference to extrapolate the finding to apply to different aging requirements IE if we find vacuum sealing has substantially reduced the aging process ( harshness, ammonia) but maintains or even enhances certain characteristics ( flavor, even burning ) the same can be expected for longer periods but with the effect multiplied. 

[Bijan]

49 minutes ago, Fakhm said:

Yes that is one potential issue with this experiment, will the duration be long enough to make the observations valid?

Again what i can say from experience is that around 20-25 years you will start to get clear physical changes in the cigar. The wrapper becomes very delicate (as though it is dry even when stored at perfect humidity). And the cigar overall seems dryer/lighter. (I end up running the wrapper (at least the head) under the water tap lightly to prevent the wrapper from splitting on punching or cutting).

It would be really interesting to see the results after 20-25 years and see if the vacuum sealed cigars would be closer to new cigars than cigars stored normally.

 

49 minutes ago, Fakhm said:

the question for this month is how can we make it as solid as possible for the sake of the community?

@Corylax18 gave you a really important concept, in terms of solidness: double blinding.

If the people smoking and rating the cigars know which ones are vacuum sealed that may obviously affect their ratings.

But even if only you know which cigars are vacuum sealed it may affect the results either because of how you react when giving them the cigar or asking their opinions and ratings or by it influencing your behaviour when analyzing the data (you may end up subconsciously massaging the data).

[Fakhm]

1 hour ago, Bijan said:

Again what i can say from experience is that around 20-25 years you will start to get clear physical changes in the cigar. The wrapper becomes very delicate (as though it is dry even when stored at perfect humidity). And the cigar overall seems dryer/lighter. (I end up running the wrapper (at least the head) under the water tap lightly to prevent the wrapper from splitting on punching or cutting).

It would be really interesting to see the results after 20-25 years and see if the vacuum sealed cigars would be closer to new cigars than cigars stored normally.

 

@Corylax18 gave you a really important concept, in terms of solidness: double blinding.

If the people smoking and rating the cigars know which ones are vacuum sealed that may obviously affect their ratings.

But even if only you know which cigars are vacuum sealed it may affect the results either because of how you react when giving them the cigar or asking their opinions and ratings or by it influencing your behaviour when analyzing the data (you may end up subconsciously massaging the data).

Yes that’s a very good point, the reviews will be double blind, I plan on having a smoker friend sort and number the cigars for me and the other participants, the mechanism in which we conduct the study as well as the exact timing and reporting will be determined when we are closer to that point, I hope they agree to do their own videos and posts, answer a question are I ( we) develop and before I compile our findings and impressions into a comprehensive report and make it available here.

 

more importantly, what can we do now to ensure the study is as concrete as possible?

 

I was thinking yesterday, even with identical boxes I will smoke a sample from each now to ensure they are close enough for the objectives, I started with the E2’s, smoked one yesterday and smoking one now. These are a go 👍

 

tomorrow and after tomorrow  might be the Hoyo Secos, etc. should be done in a month

[Edicion]

I think most of us will be thankful in five years time to learn the results when this test is done, whether the cigars smoke very differently or no difference at all or to which extent they differ (which remains to be found out)

I would like to ask if you could introduce some other measurements too, if there's any weight difference in the cigars between the storage methods between now and then, wrappers are more or less humid/oily, and even more subjective notes since you will smoke some now and later, if you could list your top 3-5 flavors that you get now - to compare later with what you get then, and I wouldn't even mind how the smell changes from now until then, if there's any smell on a scale of 1-5.  

[Fakhm]

2 hours ago, Edicion said:

I think most of us will be thankful in five years time to learn the results when this test is done, whether the cigars smoke very differently or no difference at all or to which extent they differ (which remains to be found out)

I would like to ask if you could introduce some other measurements too, if there's any weight difference in the cigars between the storage methods between now and then, wrappers are more or less humid/oily, and even more subjective notes since you will smoke some now and later, if you could list your top 3-5 flavors that you get now - to compare later with what you get then, and I wouldn't even mind how the smell changes from now until then, if there's any smell on a scale of 1-5.  

Good points, I will take those measurements and post the notes as I prepare the test samples this month and again once we are done.

 

I am very keen on this unfolding in five years! Really interested A- to find the results and B- to see how the seasoned reviewers rate them!

[karp]

This is a really cool idea and I hope it works out for you. One question - do the testers / reviewers smoke the cigars all at the same time? The main issue is that taste is subjective, and even the same cigar reviewed by the same reviewer on two different days, could generate a different score. You might be able to lower the variability by using the same questionnaire for every cigar (rating them on a scale?) and having them compared side-by-side simultaneously. If a reviewer gets a bunch of the same sticks labeled #1 through #4 (or whatever) and just goes for it, you should get a reasonable idea of which rates the highest. Then you decode the scores when you get them back. It's fairly objective and doesn't have to be double-blind. Something to think about I guess. You have time, right now it's just the conditions that you need to set up. 

[Monterey]

You've come a long way.  You didn't even own a vacuum sealer a week ago.  Good thing I went on a long tangent about you rotating every single cigar in your large collection every 3 months.  I'm glad I set you on this path!  I want to be added to your references on your research paper

[Fakhm]

2 hours ago, Monterey said:

You've come a long way.  You didn't even own a vacuum sealer a week ago.  Good thing I went on a long tangent about you rotating every single cigar in your large collection every 3 months.  I'm glad I set you on this path!  I want to be added to your references on your research paper

You definitely started this train of thought, I wouldn’t have decided to do the experiment if you weren’t so keen about your aging preferences.

 

I have to say though, I am still not convinced vacuum sealing is the optimal method for all, I believe a combination of different aging requirements are what most people will decide on based on the results.

 

I am getting ahead of myself, but depending on the scoring and observations and what data we extract from this study, I am imagine that a serious cigar smoker with a medium to large inventory looking at getting the most out of his cigar hobby while not going overboard in terms of expense and space ( I am thinking of myself here ) will determine that 25% of his stock will be vacuum sealed for long term aging (15+), 50% will be aged in boxes for medium term aging ( 7-9 years ), and 25% will be in a different chamber than the aging room ( a cabinet or walk in humidor ) for consumption in the next few years.

Again, it all depends on the results, but I am convinced that is what we will reach at.

 

[Fakhm]

On 8/6/2022 at 10:53 AM, Edicion said:

 

Hello gents

 

please take a look at this thread, I have updated the first post

 

I should be done posting the selected cigar within 2-4 weeks, in the mean time kindly share your input here regarding the study and any edits or modifications that you believe should be done, if you have any doubts or concerns this is the time to discuss them

and resolve them