Thanks for the reply, esp. the link. So, one guy's written piece with not a shred of reason, facts or figures!
I don't think any one has conducted a study big enough to prove how much air is bad, and how little air there can be before it gets bad.
Sadly, the pipe tobacco scientist community is rather marginal, so peer-reviewed articles on the effects of the proper amount of air one should have in their jar of Frog Morton just simply aren't available.
Sarcasm aside, I hear you and I respect what you're getting at. I want empirical data to back up my approach to my hobby, too. If it helps, my mindset is that other consumables that are "cellared" or aged depend on some measure of oxygen to age properly. Wine comes to mind, and there are, or I would assume so given the popularity and entire cottage industry devoted to it, studies that would confirm this. (I'm not a wine connoisseur, so I admit I may be fully mistaken.) Of course, too much oxygen will leave a wine thin and lacking. Too little and it doesn't age as fully or as quickly as it otherwise would. I think that much is readily agreed upon, as far as I can tell.
The goldilocks ratio for cellaring pipe tobacco is not known to me. At the very least, I figure, putting it in a jar that I know will have an air-tight seal and allows some measure of breathing room, as it were, strikes me as the best approach that I can hazard. The tins tobacco comes in are made more for keeping tobacco fresh enough to sell while keeping production costs down; cellaring potential is likely not a major factor most manufacturers consider when packaging their product. So, I put mine in a jar ASAP. It has worked well for me so far. And, yes, I do leave a smidgeon of room at the top, and that too, as far as I can tell, has worked well. But I'm willing to have my mind changed if something concrete comes out that contradicts my method. Until then, however, I'm gonna keep on keeping on. This is, to paraphrase one famous tobacconist, a subjective hobby we are all too inclined to treat as an objective one, anyhow.
