I have been reading through a lot of the cellaring and aging of tobacco but have a question related to a post regarding mason jars and vacuum sealing vs sealed tins. If oxygen is initially needed to start the aging process with the aerobic aspect as would occur in placing in mason jars without vacuum sealing, does the tobacco I am cellaring in unopened sealed tins still age or should I open the tins and place the tobacco in jars?
Cellaring and aging are not exactly the same thing. I'll cellar to have blends on hand when I want to smoke them. If I buy faster than I smoke, then what I'm cellaring ages.
There's been a lot of discussion about anerobic aging, etc, mostly by duffers like me who repeat what they've been told without actually knowing the science behind it, so maybe it's true and maybe it isn't. Blends left to set for years in vacuum packed tins do "change" over time, which is all that aging is.
Also, there are different types of tinning, compressed vacuum packed and loose with air space, and the contents of both types of tinning do change over time. Which works better? I have no idea, and I suspect they work equally well since they are the choices of professionals for presenting their work.
There have been experiments with vacuum jarring to see if a lack of oxygen stops the aging process
G. L. Pease - Articles & Essays - http://www.glpease.com/Articles/vacuum.html but no one has presented a methodology, at least here, that guarantees to stop all aging, if that's a goal. Probably flushing with an inert gas, like argon, would do the trick.
But short of that, tobaccos change as the years of by, sometimes markedly, sometimes little. Whether that change is an "improvement" is up to the individual smoker to decide.
If your intent is to cellar tins for longer than a decade, there's an element of chance that enters into the results. Square and rectangular vacuum sealed tins are never 100% sealed and over time the pressure between outside the tin and inside the tin equalizes, and the seal goes kaput. Once the seal goes kaput, the contents dry out. Round tins are much more successful for retaining their seal over a longer period of time, as are canisters.
Jarring is a time honored method of allowing tobaccos to change over long periods without worrying about failures, and Mylar bags, .7mil food grade, have become popular over the past 6-7 years among end users, while having been in use by professionals for over 20 years.
If I plan to keep tobaccos for over 10 years that are tinned in rectangular or square tins, I either jar them or heat seal them in Mylar.
Greg Pease has changed his position on long term storage and no longer advocates keeping everything in its original tin, but rather recommends transferring to jars soon after purchase. He found too many "disappointments" in his cellar, and he's been at this longer than most of us.
