Cellared Tobacco and "Breathing'
- Thread starter pipinho
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Yes, I've found that to be the case too. After I crack the seal, I'll let it sit a while before my first bowl.
This is another one of those areas dictated by personal preference, pipinho. Personally I feel that some do, some less than others. My own habits usually have me with an opened rotation of around 20 blends, so some will air more just due to that; looking over my logs I tend to smoke through aromatics and VaPers most rapidly, burleys and Lats more slowly. This seems to point out to me that the aromatic volatiles in the former blends suit me better when fresh, while I prefer the latter to be more settled. This is no hard and fast rule, of course, just what my taste dictates. On the subject of well-aged blends, however, I firmly believe less airing will yield the best flavor; when the anaerobic processes have had a thorough run of the tobacco, the byproducts that make it so tasty will degrade rapidly once opened.
To address the question of the blend *changing*, yes, it does--once the sealed environment of the tin is disturbed, many microbiotic processes are halted and others begun. Whether this is good or bad depends on so many other variables that you have...pipe forums, Ask GL Pease, and a whole community of lunters scratching their heads.
To address the question of the blend *changing*, yes, it does--once the sealed environment of the tin is disturbed, many microbiotic processes are halted and others begun. Whether this is good or bad depends on so many other variables that you have...pipe forums, Ask GL Pease, and a whole community of lunters scratching their heads.
Romeo - I met a very knowledgable piper from Cali while at a Vegas pipe show. He had bought out a bunch of stock years ago from B&Ms exiting the pipe business. He felt that the old (several decades) tins especially benefitted from airing out a few days. It is true that the anaerobic processes halt when oxygen/air is reintroduced, so maybe that works out for a better taste?
Air/oxygen does things for our taste buds. Boiled water is flat until it's allowed to sit for awhile. I remember pineapple juice in my youth was tinned - directions were to decant the juice back and forth between two glasses, aerating it. That really made for a big improvement in flavor.
hp
les
Air/oxygen does things for our taste buds. Boiled water is flat until it's allowed to sit for awhile. I remember pineapple juice in my youth was tinned - directions were to decant the juice back and forth between two glasses, aerating it. That really made for a big improvement in flavor.
hp
les
Les! We've had this discussion amongst ourselves at the pipe club a few times, and I'm still gathering the data. Bear in mind that chemistry is purely a hobby for me, while conjecture and anecdote are my profession.
When opening well-aged blends (let's say anything ten years and above), I have experienced that the flavors *and the moisture* will fade rather more rapidly than newer tins. For example, the 50+ year Escudo that we shared at the picnic was ambrosial upon opening, while a week later it was a mere ghost of itself, and crumbled to dust when packing--and this was sealed in a mason jar. I recently rehydrated some Mel Feldman blends from the early 90s, and while the flavor components were there, the soul of the tobacco seemed to have left. I know this is all rather metaphysical, but there are components to the tasting that I simply don't have the science or vocabulary to quantify. Conversely, a year-old tin of Bedloe's Island I opened up in Kansas CIty a fortnight ago is still vibrant, and perhaps more rounded out, with a bit of airing time.
I got into a heavy discussion with a friend of mine who is extremely knowledgable about wine, trying to pick his brain on this subject. When selecting wines for his own cellar, and at tastings, he will go so far as to aerate a full bottle in a blender. A BLENDER. However, he would never do this to an aged wine; his take was that anything from the cellar should be drunk from the bottle, or perhaps decanted for at most a day--that it should require no more aeration than that. It does make sense as far as the chemistry is concerned: with the addition of air as a carrier, the aromatic volatiles have something to cling to and use as a vehicle for delivery, thus liberating them from the main mass and allowing for some separation when they're applied to our palates. After several bottles and some whisky to boot, which we experimented with by adding water and ice in varying proportion, we came to no further conclusions other than it would be difficult to wake up the next morning.
Tobacco undergoes its fermentation processes differently than a liquid like wine or spirits, though. Exactly how to explicate that, I am again under-qualified to say. The only thing I can rely on here is my own experience, and so far that has shown me that (at least for my tastes) older tins taste best when unsealed, and decline over the next few days with increasing velocity. Another variable, too, is that the excitement of cracking that old tin and reveling in the experience is difficult to prolong due to my lack of patience--and I'm sure that is a huge factor in calibrating my perceptions.
When opening well-aged blends (let's say anything ten years and above), I have experienced that the flavors *and the moisture* will fade rather more rapidly than newer tins. For example, the 50+ year Escudo that we shared at the picnic was ambrosial upon opening, while a week later it was a mere ghost of itself, and crumbled to dust when packing--and this was sealed in a mason jar. I recently rehydrated some Mel Feldman blends from the early 90s, and while the flavor components were there, the soul of the tobacco seemed to have left. I know this is all rather metaphysical, but there are components to the tasting that I simply don't have the science or vocabulary to quantify. Conversely, a year-old tin of Bedloe's Island I opened up in Kansas CIty a fortnight ago is still vibrant, and perhaps more rounded out, with a bit of airing time.
I got into a heavy discussion with a friend of mine who is extremely knowledgable about wine, trying to pick his brain on this subject. When selecting wines for his own cellar, and at tastings, he will go so far as to aerate a full bottle in a blender. A BLENDER. However, he would never do this to an aged wine; his take was that anything from the cellar should be drunk from the bottle, or perhaps decanted for at most a day--that it should require no more aeration than that. It does make sense as far as the chemistry is concerned: with the addition of air as a carrier, the aromatic volatiles have something to cling to and use as a vehicle for delivery, thus liberating them from the main mass and allowing for some separation when they're applied to our palates. After several bottles and some whisky to boot, which we experimented with by adding water and ice in varying proportion, we came to no further conclusions other than it would be difficult to wake up the next morning.
Tobacco undergoes its fermentation processes differently than a liquid like wine or spirits, though. Exactly how to explicate that, I am again under-qualified to say. The only thing I can rely on here is my own experience, and so far that has shown me that (at least for my tastes) older tins taste best when unsealed, and decline over the next few days with increasing velocity. Another variable, too, is that the excitement of cracking that old tin and reveling in the experience is difficult to prolong due to my lack of patience--and I'm sure that is a huge factor in calibrating my perceptions.
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