How Many Open Tins??

[joshremy]

Just curious...
How many kinds of tobacco do you have open?
Personally I'm a little OCD about it. I have a pipe labelled for each day of the week (although this keeps changing as I acquire more pipes and my moods change with the seasons) and I've labelled specific tobaccos for each day of the week. I have a couple extra for specific moments such as travel, or with my big Gourd Calabash, and I havent quite found my favorite 7 magical tobaccos yet (though this also changes with season)...
so all in all... I have 10 tobacco types open that I rotate.
Anyone else as flighty as me? Am I good to go, or am I nuts!
How many do you have open and why?

 

[joshremy]

I found that out too. I had opened some tins and after about 2 months they dried out and just seemed to become all bite and no flavor.
I keep all my tobacco in sealed mason jars which are obsessively labelled by printing scans of the tobacco label and fixing them to the jar.
It keeps the moisture level.
How is the walnut? I havent tried that flavor.

 

[rmbittner]

I usually have 5-6 tins open at a time, which are what I'm currently smoking, spread across the main categories I smoke. So, I keep an English, a Balkan, a straight Viginia, a VA/burley flake, an aromatic, and Penzance open at all times.
Bob

 

[gray4lines]

Let's see... I have about 5-6 open tins now, the rest are jarred up.
It's hard not to pop open all the tins I have since they are all blends I have never tried! If I notice a tin getting dry, or after more than a few weeks of not touching, I will jar it.

 

[joshwolftree]

I use small 2-4 oz mason jars to store my tobacco in, because of this I never have open tins, tins are either cellared or tossed into a mason jar. I go back and forth between blends so fast depending on my mood...sometimes 3 or four different blends in a day. I estimate probably 15-16 jars on the smoking table at any time. Of course I also buy a lot of bulk blends so a jar may go unopened for weeks at a time or may get hit up 5 times in a day.

 

[joshremy]

I go back and forth between blends so fast depending on my mood...sometimes 3 or four different blends in a day.

I'm with you on that! glad to know there are others! :D

 

[Perique]

I guess I'm in the minority in that I have probably a dozen or so tins open right now.

 

[joshremy]

I say I have about 10 open, but if you include the ones I've jarred away until they come back into season for my taste, and the ones I'm constantly sampling, I probably have at least 16...
It seems the quest for that perfect rotation of tobaccos may be as elusive as the perfect sound for electric guitar... just an endless ever changing quest. :D

 

[atboth]

Eleven open tins at present. It's been more, seldom less. Whatever doesn't get finished within a month or so goes into a glass jar, with a label detailing the what is it and the when was it. I have two dozen of such jars on the shelf with the five volume set of Rashi. Where I also keep most of the Sam Gawith tobaccos I bought in 2007.
Usually one or two flakes, two or three English blends, and a few odd fish.
At present I'm smoking Dunhill 956, Rattrays Accountant's Mixture, Greg Pease Navigator, Wessex Red Virginia Flake, and seven Cornell & Diehl products: Old College, Yale Mixture, Red Odessa, Old Hollywood, Haunted Bookshop, Manhattan Afternoon, and Plantation Evening.
Plus one of my own concoctions, which is a mild-medium Balkan.

 

[joshremy]

That's a nice selection!

 

[englishdave]

Five open tins at the moment. Four of those were placed into 4 oz air-tight glass jars with hand written labels. The other tin was opened a couple of days ago, since it's more than a year old and I wanted to see how it was doing. I have two other tins I want to open. I guess I'll have to buy more jars...

 

[dottle]

Lets see, right now I have open Blackhouse,Magnum Opus,PS Proper English,Balkan Supreme,Lux Navy flake, and Larrys Blend.

 

[mustanggt]

I keep my 15 open tins in a big plastic container, like one you would put flour in, with a distilled water dampened paper towel. Works well so far. I can't help myself as when I get a new one in I just have to try it. I like lots of variety to suit my mood.

 

[Perique]

My open tins consist of, in no particular order:
McClelland's Holiday Spirit 2011, Beacon Extra, St James Woods, and Bayou Slice; Mac Baren's Golden Extra, London Burley, and Vanilla Cream flake; GL Pease's Barbary Coast, Cairo, Fillmore, and Haddo's Delight; OTCs Carter Hall, Walnut, and Sugar Barrel; Hal o' the Wynd; Escudo; Orlik Golden Sliced; H&H Angler's Dream, Freight Train, and Anniversary Kake; C&D Blockade Runner; and Savinelli Cavendish. And mason jars (non-aging) of Mountain Mall Mix, Stanwell Melange, and 1Q.
Would be tough for me to only have a handful of open tins at a time. So much interesting tobacco, so little time!

 

[joshremy]

So much interesting tobacco, so little time!

so true! ::

 

[yadan]

Wow! By coincidence, I just started a very similar thread.Sorry, I should have looked more carefully.

Anyway, I have 6 tins (actually 5 and one pouch) open: RY, NC, EMP, Peterson Special Edition, Connoisseur Turkish Black and Amphora Red. ::

 

[lyle]

I've found keeping opened tins inside resealable containers keeps them smokeable for a very long time, so at various times I have had huge numbers of them opened up. That said, I tend to keep 5-6 open at a time, just because I like to focus and really get to know a blend before moving on to something else. I keep at least one favorite opened at any given time, so that I have something familiar to smoke as I work my way through a "challenging" new blend.
I say "challenging", but he truth is that there is only one blend in the last seven years that I actively disliked and didn't look forward smoking again.

 

[lestrout]

I'm with lyle re being surprised how long the vast majority of my blends keep their 'freshness'. I'm sensitive to the changing tastes of each blend as it airs out after opening the tin. The only blend (out of maybe 700-800 that I have available) that deteriorated (I think) is some old Petersen & Sorenson Tradition, but I need to open up another tin sometime to check against the residue that I have from the first tin.
I don't go through a lot of tobacco since I average only 3 bowls daily, and usually small ones at that. But I rarely puff the same stuff twice in the same day, since I use a light, medium then heavy routine - and since a repetition would confound my simplistic Excel semi-database. Much of my puffing is geared towards qualifying candidates for cellaring, so within each genre, I will try out the new stuff vs. known controls that already reside in the cellar. Even in the course of several weeks, I won't repeat a specific blend very much at all.
Rehydration can substantially restore the stuff that I have opened from several years ago, which is a good thang.
hp

les

 

[mustanggt]

I got a tin of McC. Bombay Extra from 1992. I was pretty stoked when I got it but found since that lat doesn't age like virginias. So I opened it and it was drier than a popcorn fart. I rehydrated with distilled water and after a couple of days I tried some. Not too good. What a disapointment. I thought it might be ok with the aged virginias in it but it just wasn't there. Oh well live and learn.

 

[brdavidson]

Right now i have Erinmore Flake, Escudo, Dunhill EMP, Peterson's Sunset Breeze, WO Larsen Old Fashioned, and CBR