What's Your Aging Strategy?

[MooseAMuffin]

Most of my stock is NC so I am trying to smoke through all of my NCs first while every CC I buy goes into an aging tupperdoor. I'll let the CCs sit for 30 days before I try one but I am hoping to let them sit for a few years. Slowly but surely!

[Wilzc]

All these buying with vigor, from 24:24....

makes me ponder if our host needs to make it 36:24...  or 48:24...

 

 

[skalls]

Step 1:  Buy more cigars than I can smoke

Step 2: Smoke fewer cigars than planned/wanted too (not expected, but weather/illness happens)

Step 3: ???

Step 4: Find a box playing tetris at the bottom of the cooler that I forgot about.  Profit!

[BrightonCorgi]

I vacuum sealed a box of Noella's and put in my wine cellar.  I want to try with a dress box vacuum sealed and see how they fare over a year.

[garbandz]

" What really gets my temperature up is when I hear someone say something like, “Wow, I tried X type of cigars after 90 days rest in my humi, and it was an outstanding smoke, they are too good to smoke now, I am gonna lay them down awhile”

never heard anyone say that.....who said that?

[BuzzArd]

1 hour ago, garbandz said:

" What really gets my temperature up is when I hear someone say something like, “Wow, I tried X type of cigars after 90 days rest in my humi, and it was an outstanding smoke, they are too good to smoke now, I am gonna lay them down awhile”

never heard anyone say that.....who said that?

I never said that.  

 

Wasn't me. 

[planetary]

My goals are two:

1. Only smoke cigars around the peak, give or take.  (The aging target to reach the peak depends on the cigar, but in general it's 3 to 10 years. It might skew later for me, because I *like* the aged / more subtle character, even at the expense of some vibrance.  I know not everyone agrees.)
2. At any given time, have a wide range of options: marcas, vitolas, flavor profiles.

At the moment, for goal #1, I'm not there yet.  It's going to phase in over the next several years.  I have bought broadly and, in cases where I know I like something, more deeply (several boxes of a single cigar) and over time.

Until the aging clock is my friend, I can at least satisfy my second objective, by sampling boxes as they age.  This is also educational, which I like.

When I have multiple boxes of a given cigar, I tend to have only 1 of the boxes open/cracked at a time.  I often pick either a box of middle age (not the oldest), or the one of least quality which I've purchased.  For example, i have half a dozen CoRo boxes.  Most are PSP and HQ.  One is PE.  I smoke out of the PE box, while the others are aging.  Sometimes, I'll have bought a PCC Vintage box.  I enjoy smoking out of those right away.

[Lotusguy]

No strategy whatsoever. I don’t do any special wrapping, vacuum sealing, storage mumbo Jumbo either. I just buy a ton, don’t keep any records, and surprise myself. I rarely smoke the same cigar more than once a month.

[canadianbeaver]

16 minutes ago, Lotusguy said:

No strategy whatsoever. I don’t do any special wrapping, vacuum sealing, storage mumbo Jumbo either. I just buy a ton, don’t keep any records, and surprise myself. I rarely smoke the same cigar more than once a month.

I just do what he does. 

CB

[Puros Y Vino]

14 hours ago, BrightonCorgi said:

I vacuum sealed a box of Noella's and put in my wine cellar.  I want to try with a dress box vacuum sealed and see how they fare over a year.

Be careful vacuum sealing dress boxes.  You might crush the sticks beyond box pressing them.  It works best with cabs, which are stronger.  A friend of mine did a few experiments with vacuum sealing a few years back on  some cheapie sticks.  The cigars got compressed really bad which lead to flaky, tattered wrappers. They still smoked OK otherwise and held their humidity.

[Piligrim]

I buy a lot of aged boxes. Our importer always has some differrent. Personally aging only rare cigars, Reservas, GR, ELs and ERs.

[PuffDaddie]

I age them 3 to 5 years,

[Islandboy]

4 hours ago, Lotusguy said:

No strategy whatsoever. I don’t do any special wrapping, vacuum sealing, storage mumbo Jumbo either. I just buy a ton, don’t keep any records, and surprise myself. I rarely smoke the same cigar more than once a month.

This seems closest to my non-strategy, although I wouldn’t call my stash a ton quite yet.

I’m really on the fence with aging - the few little experiments I’ve done comparing an aged vs young stick has me preferring the younger one almost every time...the vibrancy of the flavors and aroma, etc. Of course then there’s certain stuff - Cohibas, and boxes that just don’t taste quite right - that I try to forget about in the back of the humidor.

[BrightonCorgi]

1 hour ago, bundwallah said:

Be careful vacuum sealing dress boxes.  You might crush the sticks beyond box pressing them.  It works best with cabs, which are stronger.  A friend of mine did a few experiments with vacuum sealing a few years back on  some cheapie sticks.  The cigars got compressed really bad which lead to flaky, tattered wrappers. They still smoked OK otherwise and held their humidity.

I stop before the box compresses.  Have a commercial vacuum sealer.

[Silverstix]

19 hours ago, MooseAMuffin said:

Most of my stock is NC so I am trying to smoke through all of my NCs first while every CC I buy goes into an aging tupperdoor. I'll let the CCs sit for 30 days before I try one but I am hoping to let them sit for a few years. Slowly but surely!

Same here Moose.  I have about 300 NCs to smoke through, I smoke about 3 per week, so do the math that's 2 years worth if I didn't re-order any.  And I will probably reorder some that I like the most (illusione, oliva).  I will mix in some CC's from time to time but I will try like hell to let any CC's age while I smoke through my NC stash

[luckme10]

I try to age boxes that have decent looking wrappers. Otherwise I usually just end up picking at a box in rotation until the first row is gone, then I have to really want it to pull out a cigar from that box or need to make room in the humidors. Like the wife says, I've always had a hard time 'finishing' things.

[dageshi]

I've typically been trying to set aside 1/3rd of everything I buy for aging. I either smoke everything in the box till that last third (if they're smoking well). Or I have boxes sitting waiting till the cigars hit their stride.

Either way, last third gets split up into bundles, 3 cigars per bundle, I wrap them up with a ribbon, label them with year & box code and set them aside in cedar lined tupperdores. When the tupperdore is full I buy another and continue.

[ayepatz]

I have many boxes and cabs, but, as an infrequent smoker, it takes me a while to get through a whole box. 

So my strategy is to buy a single box of something I like, then dip into it over the next few years. 

You get a real sense of the development of the cigar this way, in my opinion. If I was a heavier smoker, I’d buy more boxes, but at my present rate of consumption, I’ve got enough cigars to last me 20 years! Lol

[PapaDisco]

4 hours ago, dezbo said:

Why do you use use Saran Wrap and Tupperware?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ha ha . . . that sounds like the start of a very risqué joke . . .  

Saran Wrap, as it turns out, is more impermeable than ziplocks.  While a ziplock bag will hold liquid water, it actually breathes vapors.  Slowly, but there is a real vapor exchange.  So, IF your cigars are finished with their ammonia cycle, AND you believe that oxidation is bad for aging, then you'll want to wrap your sticks up, in their original packaging, in saran wrap to minimize any air exchange with the outside world.  Ideally your sticks will come packaged in a wooden cab, but even a dress box will do.  Wrap them up and let them stew in their own juices for 5-10 years.  It's a magic chemistry.  

Now, other aficionados believe that air circulation is important to aging.  My argument is that while plenty of air will help a cigar 'blow off' harshness, it will also blow off all the volatile flavor compounds.  IMHO, and I willingly admit the possibility that I'm wrong, is that air circulation will give you a more smokeable cigar early, but denature all of the complexity and flavor later.   So I wrap them up and let the chemistry in the box work its wonders.

The oversized tupperware (I use 20 gallon watertight clear units) are a convenient and inexpensive way to age cigars, IF you have stable temperatures.  I happen to have a cellar that hovers around 65F and 65%rH so a full tupperware can easily withstand some minor, short term, fluctuations around that zone without the cigars being affected.  If you have larger temperature swings that last for several hours, then you need a cooler instead, and if the swings are longer or more pronounced then you'll have to go to active stabilization.   I pack my tuppers full, with boxes wrapped, and then stuff in a dozen Boveda packets at 65%rH.  

[Habana Mike]

I buy cigars by the box and smoke what looks interesting to me at the moment and has a decent draw when I clip it. If it doesn't draw well, it's in to the singles drawers.

As I've been smoking and buying cigars for over 20 years now there are many boxes in my humidors and many many sticks in the singles drawers.

At this point it seems they just age themselves as I can only smoke so many in any given time period.

Net net, if you buy more than you smoke that's just aging without any particular strategy at all.

 

[JamesKPolkEsq]

Strategy : Buy lots of different cigars, stash them and smoke them as my fancy takes me. 

Buy more than I smoke, and don't worry too much - they're just cigars. 

[Fugu]

No fix rules here. I much enjoy smoking young (even fresh) as well as aged versions, different vintages of the same cigars at the same time, and am therefore keeping several "active" boxes of certain cigars in parallel in my regular rotation.

That being said, a certain share of my stash is set aside for aging and not being touched, not even opened for inspection (call it neglect ), for years.