I’m looking to cellar some Plum Pudding from Seattle Pipe Club and some Bengal Slices... any tips?
Store it in a place near room temperature with stable temp and humidity. If concerned and/or planning to cellar it for an extended period of time, 10 years plus, then buy some 7mm mylar bags and put the tins in the bags, then heat seal them.
Should I leave the tins unopened and vacuum sealed? Thanks for the help!
My theory. ^^Buy the tins, put 'em on a shelf. Cellaring accomplished.
That's quite a haul!
The "shitdust" thing.. is not necessarily the same for every tobacco in any way it is handled. It is just my experience with Virginia based blends without heavy toppings. I can't speak to latakias or heavily cased or topped blends. I just throw it out as a precursory warning, because it's a gamble. There is no sure thing with aging tobaccos. You have to know that there is a chance that someone can spend $200 on an aged tin and get shit, not every time, nor every tobacco, but it is a potential result. Some wines turn to vinegar, and some rolls of the dice craps out. Newbies need to know that there is risk here. And, it would be irresponsible to skim over or exclude the risks from them. It's always a roll of the dice. Hell, even a new tin can come to me moldy or dried out. There's always a chance.... so the "shit dust" theory on that one for me flies out the window.
The "shitdust" thing.. is not necessarily the same for every tobacco in any way it is handled. It is just my experience with Virginia based blends without heavy toppings. I can't speak to latakias or heavily cased or topped blends. I just throw it out as a precursory warning, because it's a gamble. There is no sure thing with aging tobaccos. You have to know that there is a chance that someone can spend $200 on an aged tin and get shit, not every time, nor every tobacco, but it is a potential result. Some wines turn to vinegar, and some rolls of the dice craps out. Newbies need to know that there is risk here. And, it would be irresponsible to skim over or exclude the risks from them. It's always a roll of the dice. Hell, even a new tin can come to me moldy or dried out. There's always a chance.
I would love to hear more from people who have smoked decades-old tins of tobacco. If we're all cellaring lots of baccy only to have it quite likely turn to crap in twenty years as soon as it's opened, then it would be wise, at a minimum, to take that consideration into account. I've put away some blends with the (hopefully reasonable) expectation that they'll be good for decades down the road and won't immediately turn to crap when I open them, like the dudes in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade who drink from the fake holy grail and then immediately undergo an ultra-rapid aging process where the shrivel up and die in about fifteen seconds.
I will also add that in a tangentially-related matter, recent scuttlebutt has lead me to believe that perhaps the FDA deeming issues may not pose as much of an immediate threat as we all contemplated. I recall reading a thread about a popular manufacturer stating that they fully intend that a particular post-2007 blend will remain on the market and that they are jumping through the FDA hoops to make it happen. I understand that most of us are cellaring mainly because of concerns about future availability, largely in part due to increased FDA restrictions pushing blenders out of the market.
The overall "tobacco bad, smoking bad, smokers bad" thing of course is still a long-term issue in that all forces seem to be aligned against us, but I have some inkling of hope that at some point this hysteria will have run its course, and if it doesn't run its course, there are certainly other parts of the world that are not engaged in a "tobacco bad" moral panic. I mean, if you can readily buy embargoed Cuban cigars on the internet, whose to say that you won't be able to buy pipe tobacco from China? Even though I also am doing the cellaring thing, I'm hoping that perhaps future availability won't be as big a problem as we all think it might.