Starting a Cellar

Have you tried a lot of blends? Do you know what you like? This is simple, you buy stuff you really like and keep it away to age! Don't buy 10 tins of something you did not tried!

Seems to me there's two goals of cellaring: one is to store tobacco to age, and the other is to preserve blends you would like to experience on a semi-regular basis but do not want to smoke through a tin. Get yourself a dark cool cabinet and some mason jars, then vink's advice is great. Buy what you like. If you're buying to age, some of the others around here will have more advice on that, but generally, it is to pick tobaccos that improve with age.

Unless you already have a few blends that are favorites, and you are fairly sure will age well, then start off with variety, looking for that one or two blends to stock up on. Then, buy as much of that one blend as you can afford at a time. My goal is five pounds of a given favorite. If it comes in bulk, it is easy and cheap to just buy it in five pound intervals. If it is tins, then I will try to buy 50 tins, which is tough, because most of the time the vendor won't have that much on hand at one time, so you have to keep focus on buying it all up each time the vendor restocks. Perseverance, determination.
As for which ones to stock up on, many will suggest (out of hearsay and rumor) that aromatics and Englishes won't cellar well. But, that is bunk. I think that Virginias age the "BEST," but that is far from taking away from the aging properties of the other blends. GLP has based a career on aging latakia blends, so... Just stock up on what you like, and let fears of it not aging well fall aside. If you like it, stock it.
Do not stock something just because you assume that it will get better. If you don't like it now, you probably won't like it later. It's not like miracles happen over time. It will be the same blend, just different, but not an entirely different smoke.
I used Styrofoam coolers to store my hoard. At one point I had 12 coolers stacked to the ceiling, until I had my cabinets built. You have to start somewhere, and coolers were given away for free at those businesses that sell and dispense ice. I could get a free cooler with $2.50 worth of ice. Then, I'd dump the ice in the driveway and fill it with jars and tins. It was way cheaper than buying plastic bins. YMMV.
Patience, determination. A cellar is not built overnight. Also, for each pipe you buy, you sacrifice pounds of tobacco. I have to keep telling myself how pointless it is to keep buying pipes when you have over a hundred of the damned things. Pipes can be made at any time, or bought on the estate market, but tobacco may not always be available. Priorities.

My goal is five pounds of a given favorite.

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Dammit! I thought I was good with my 1 pound of Solani Silver Flake!

I learned my lesson with buying up several pounds of MacBite-me's Virginia Swill #1. Bites like a mouth full of rattlesnakes. I jarred up several pounds and will probably never smoke that aromatic bunk weed. I had any hope derailed in a box pass that had some ten year old Virginia #1 in it. Ten years and it still burns like battery acid on my tongue. Now, when I am running short on jars, just lacking a couple, I will open up the VA#1 and pour it in the compost and reuse the jars. There's absolutely no hope in that bunk Germanic nazi weed. YMMV ::

Vink, ask yourself "why," when you set a goal of poundage. Is one pound arbitrary? I figured in how long I expect to live with how much I smoke, projected aging intervals that i will smoke from, and how much I can afford. I expect five pounds of any given blend to last me to my end of days.

Little at a time. Sample often and buy large quantities of the stuff you love. For example I've been smoking a two year old tin of Star of the East mixture and have a tin of the Flake version. I will decide which is the better version and start buying a tin of it per order. I already do this with Cornell and Diehl Buffalo Soldier. Every tobacco order has a tin or two of Buffalo Soldier. Finding a place to store the tobacco is the problem.

"My goal is five pounds of a given favorite. If it comes in bulk, it is easy and cheap to just buy it in five pound intervals. If it is tins, then I will try to buy 50 tins"
Agree with this for my favorites. Most of the time, especially on the tins, I will work my way up to the goal. Bulk, I will try and get the 5 lbs at once. I have about 10 that are around 5 lbs or more, and an large assortment of tin-blends in varying amounts from one tin on up. My goal is to get them all to around 5 years, and then crack-on.

Agree with above. So the reasons for cellaring are (in my own particular priority order):

1. To age a blend that will improve with time. Micheal brings up a good point that although Virginias seem to benefit from time in a cool, dry place, I have a few potent English blends that have done very well with time.

2. To have a "stash" of tobaccos you like and which you might have gotten on sale for a very good price - you can never save too much money after all.

3. If you are a End-of-Time kind of thinker, there may be a point at which availability or taxation might make tobacco prohibitive to buy. Personally, I think pipe tobacco is currently amazingly inexpensive.

So, experiment with various tobacco blends, find what you like and buy more of it to cellar. Is that overly simplistic?

I think pipe tobacco is currently amazingly inexpensive.

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Yep, I am so amazed when someone talks about how expensive tobacco is. Obviously from folks that have never had a smoking habit outside of pipes. As a cigarette smoker years ago, I spent $300 a month. Cigars run even way higher. A tin of tobacco equals just one really good cigar, so... when you say how expensive tobacco is, you obviously either can't afford the hobby, or you have never compared pipes to other forms of tobacco.
I transferred my cigarette budget to pipe tobacco, and $300 stretches a loooong way in this hobby. I actually see tobacco as being cheap AS HELL. For a months supply of coffin nails, I can set aside 35 or so tins or 6-7+ pounds of quality pipe tobacco.

There's some solid advice here. I will just note that different types of blends age differently. Keep this in mind as you buy, and also remember why you are buying - just to have a supply of a favorite, or to keep and enjoy a good blend as it ages and improves. deathmetal mentioned this in his first post.

I just bought 5 packets of Sail Natural. I did this because I enjoy it,and it is being discontinued. Is it going to improve with age? Don't know - don't really care. That's not why I bought it.

Likewise, I keep stashes of some of my favorite lat blends around, not for the long haul, but just to have. ::

I wouldn't go cellaring anything your first year of smoking. I would be trying a bunch of different blends from categories that interest you. Say you like a vaper, try many different ones. Virginia,Virginia/Perique and Virginia/Kentucky aka Burley flakes in my opinion age better than any other category of tobacco. You also have to take into account that chances are you are going to have at least one major taste change i.e you were consistently smoking English blends then all of a sudden you hated them and switched to Va's and others. It happened to me and many others I know. You don't want to have a cellar full of English that you will end up hating. I did not begin to cellar seriously until I had been smoking 7 or 8 years.

I'm going to go a little contrarian.
You say that you're relatively new with pipes and tobaccos.
Don't start by stocking up on 5 lbs of anything.
Start by buying a variety of blends of different types, Aromatics, Virginias, VaPers, VaBurs, Burley, English, Balkan/Oriental etc, and find out what you really enjoy smoking. Think of it as dating. No commitments. Play the field.
Then stock up on the few that you really like. Be prepared to have your tastes change as time goes by. You might find that you have 5 lbs of something that you once liked, but which now gives you the heaves when you look at it.
A pound or two of anything is enough for me, and I'm thankful that I haven't got a significant pile of anything that I once loved and currently hate. I can always add more of something that's proven the test of time once I recognize it.
Then, expect that your tastes will change yet again and you will find a new smoking fascination. And you stock up on a bit of that as well. Build up gradually and forget about all of the fear mongering that goes on in these forums.
"Marry in haste, repent at leisure" applies to building a cellar as well.

That's a good point. Experience alone will tell you what blends will be with you "4 lyfe."

C'mon, Sable. We should be encouraging these new cellarers to stash hundreds of pounds of what we like. That way they can sell it to us cheap when they figure out they don't like it! Ahhh, just kidding. It is good advice to proceed with caution when tying up a bunch of money and storage space in a cellar.
My biggest reason for cellaring these days is having had one too many blends I like discontinued right out from under me. Sometimes there comes a time when you can't get one you like at any price.

No, no, no throw caution to the wind and buy five pounds of the first thing you try. All this caution and won't get you a closet full of jarred 1Q? What are you waiting on? No boxes of pouched Captain Black? Come on, what's wrong with you? ha ha.

Yep yep, listen to Sable and Harris. Wise words.
I am a little more reckless though. I have six pairs of the same shoe in my closet still in their boxes, because I know that after three months those style jerkheads will change on me, and I won't be able to find these one kind of shoes. It's not like my shoes size will change. And, don't get me started on what happened to cargo pants. You find something you love, buy the heck out of it. :wink:

We should be encouraging these new cellarers to stash hundreds of pounds of what we like

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Yep, I've always said that it is stupid to do two things on a forum like this.
1. This blend X is awesome! Then you can't find it again for months. I only EVER suggest things that I can live without.

2. Should I buy this pipe? with link included. I am known to just buy the piece of crap pipe to teach them a lesson. Ha ha. :twisted:

My biggest reason for cellaring these days is having had one too many blends I like discontinued right out from under me. Sometimes there comes a time when you can't get one you like at any price.

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It happens. I used to love Balkan Sobranie and it's not made anymore. Yeah, there's that Germain's poop, but that ain't Balkan Sobranie.
There are literally hundreds, perhaps thousands of blends available, plenty from which to choose. Being able to enjoy a blend while having some in reserve to season is another good reason to stock up. But you really need to allow time to decide on what to stock up.