Cellaring Tobacco and Mason Jars???

[bowler1]

A couple of quick questions on cellaring and storing tobacco. First, if you are going to cellar tobacco, is it better to store it in the unopened and factory sealed tin? Or is it better to crack the seal and transfer to a mason jar? Or does it matter?
Second, if you do store tobacco in mason jars, should you reduce the size of the jar as the supply of tobacco diminishes? In other words, a full tin of tobacco fills a pint sized mason jar pretty nicely; however that changes obviously as you smoke the tin down. Once the tin is at a half or less of its original volume there is a lot of air space in the mason jar. Not sure if that makes a difference. Seems that it would allow a lot of the moisture to equalize with the air volume in the jar, which would then be quickly lost upon opening. A smaller volume jar would seem to be less prone to doing that.
So as you smoke down the volume of tobacco to half or so of the jar do you transfer it to a smaller mason jar, like a half pint sized? Or am I being too analytical here?
thanks

Matt

 

[yorkshirepipe]

There are a lot of views on cellaring tobacco - I believe that it would be better to keep the tin sealed if it's going to be cellared - particularly if it's vacuum sealed! I personally wouldn't see the point in opening an air-tight tin, to unload it into an air-tight jar. Pouches of tobacco would need to be transferred, or if a tin had a broken seal.
As far as changing jar size goes, if you had the jars available I imagine downsizing certainly wouldn't harm the tobacco, if anything you're probably right in saying it'd do it good if there's a better tobacco-air ratio, plus it frees up the bigger one for a fresh tin if you wanted to get another blend in the rotation!

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Once you pop the seal on a jar, it is no longer being aged. So, it doesn't really matter what you do with it at that point. Because of this, I usually suggest people break up large volumes into smaller jars to begin with. But a 1.7oz tin is just fine in whatever you put it in, especially if you are dipping into it to smoke it.
As for tins to jars, that would depend on what type of tin it is and what type of tobacco. Sutliff uses cardboard tins, so they should go into jars. As the tobacco ages, it creates gases and the tins will swell up like balloons after a few years. So, cardboard is pointless to keep your tobaccos in. However, most of Sutliuff's tobaccos are aromatics, which won't gain anything with the aging process, so I suggest just smoking those blends as is. No point in aging those.

 

[pipedreamer]

I have many sizes of mason jars, best thing since sliced bread. Small ones for daily flight and those on up I will get into later from a month to 10 years. You get to know them after awhile.

 

[bullbriar]

I primarily buy bulk tobaccos, so I always pack them in a mason jar. I store 4 oz of tobacco in a widemouth pint jar. For every different blend, though, I also have two half pint jars, each with 2oz in them. The smaller jars are in my rotation, and get smoked fast enough that drying is never an issue. When both half pint jars are empty, I break open a pint jar, and refill them both. This system works well for me.

 

[escioe]

I leave 2 oz tins sealed until I want to smoke them. The McClelland/C&D/GL Pease tin types are pretty bulletproof with their seals. Square tins have a reputation for the seals failing, but even then, I'd likely keep them there until I knew the seal was broken, and smoke them then.
I usually leave 8 oz tins alone until I feel like smoking the blend, and then I'll break them up into 2 oz increments in half-pint mason jars.

 

[bowler1]

thanks for all the replies...so I am gathering that aging is fine in a sealed factory tin. That tobacco is probably best kept in an airtight container with the smallest amount of excess air possible, and that once the seal is broken that the aging process stops--so that if you have an mason jar of old tobacco you truly must refrain from opening it and smoking it until it is time (kind of like a bottle of wine I guess). In that regard an aging jar of tobacco must be totally left alone and not "dipped into " occasionally.
Is this an accurate assessment?
thanks

matt

 

[escioe]

I dip into certain jarred blends and don't worry about it. For long-term aging, yes, keep them sealed, but I don't worry about opening something for a special reason. For example: I've got some Bohemian Scandal that I might smoke a bowl of per month, and I don't mind opening and closing that one. It had ten years sealed before I opened it at all, and I don't think I'm losing all that much by opening it once a month for a minute. I'm not gaining anything either, but at this point, it doesn't matter to me.
I also do this with blends I want once in a while. I often keep some Jackknife Plug in a jar for this. I like the blend but don't love it, and can't handle the nicotine on a regular basis. But on a Friday night after a long week, I sometimes pour a big ol' whisky and pack a pipe with this and sip myself into the spins. It's lovely.

 

[darwin]

Bowler it's not really true that the minimum possible amount of air is preferable. Tobacco needs a little bit of air to age properly and for the most part the amount of air in a sealed unopened tin, or a moderately well filled Mason jar, is about right.