Buy a $5 misting bottle off of Amazon, fill it with distilled water, spread the tobacco out n something and give it a few spritz, l mix it all up and jar it back up. Let it sit a bit. I had some FVF that was almos kindling, i did that let it sit for a few days and it was almost as good as new, didn’t even lose too much flavor.
Should I Buy Aged Tobacco?
- Thread starter Cyxelsid
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I don’t want to spend $100 on ANY tin of tobacco.
My advice: Find a Virginia blend that you like and enjoy it. Put a several tins away every time you order more. Before you know it, a few years will pass and you can start in on the cellared stuff.
And believe me, the older you get, the faster those years go by. Having kids accelerates the phenomena exponentially.
Definitely worth a try. The tobacco in tins should still be smokeable, though the environment in which the tins have been sitting will have played a role in how the contents changed. The stuff in bags, some may come back to life and some may not, but definitely worth a try. Not all blends resuscitate well, or at all, but some do.
I agree with you 100%. And I understand why some people will shell out significant amounts of money on vintage tobaccos, such as Dunhill made Dunhill blends or McConnell made Rattray blends, which represent qualities no longer available in what's currently produced, when the buyer is able to appreciate those qualities.
What I find truly puzzling is why anyone would shell out $400 for a brand new bag of Stonehaven. A significantly aged bag? Sure, if that's your best thinking about how to spend your money, but the NEW crap? I don't see a psychologically or emotionally healthy reason to do that. FOMO? Ignorance? Filling an empty interior with stuff? Junkie thinking? Curiosity? Sure what people do with their money is their own business, but don't for a nanosecond kid yourself that what people choose to do with their money, even in as screwed up times as these, isn't telling.
I’m surprised by your response to this. I’ve had fvf side by side, fresh and 7 years aged. It wasn’t even close, the 7 years aged blew the doors off the fresh. Don’t get me wrong, it is still quite good fresh, but the difference was dramatic and in terms of taste and smoothness. I had no stock in desiring aged to be better or worse.
CONSUME MASS QUANTITIES
Buy them Fresh
Buy them Aged
Measure your Self Worth by the Size of your Quantities
It Is TheAmerican Way
Buy them Fresh
Buy them Aged
Measure your Self Worth by the Size of your Quantities
It Is The
With eighty-some posts on this thread, I doubt I have anything to add. My comment would be that, though I have never bought tobacco, blends or condiments, to age, since I buy more leaf than I smoke, I end up aging much of it anyway. I've ended up with many unopened tins eight or ten years old. And this is buying just a few tins and baggies at a time, and the occasional bag or tub. Aging happens, and I don't just mean tobacco.
Think of it this way. Quality blenders, like Gawith & Hoggarth have a vision of how their blends should taste and they distribute them when they believe blend is ready to be enjoyed. Aging is a fairly recent phenomenon, and doesn't result in the blend as the blender envisioned it. It's now your view of the blend, not theirs. I've smoked FVF fresh and with considerable age on it, and I enjoy it both ways, so I'm agnostic on the subject. Aging hasn't been a serious consideration for my building up a cellar. Price and availability is, however. And I do like how some of the FVF has changed after 7 or more years. But it's not the blend as the blender intended it. Also, some blenders find the insistent claim that their blends need aging to be worthy, that they are putiing out immature products, extremely irritating. Bottom line, it's a personal choice.
I just stock up so that I don't get caught with nothing to smoke when the hatchet falls on the whole tobacco industry. Aging is just a side benefit.
It's only a fool that advocates not cellaring. And, they will be the ones who squeal the loudest when they can't get their tobaccos.
Not sure why surprised when I have always said our tobacco is produced ready to be smoked and that this "Ageing" is a new trend and not something we encourage. It's completely subjective as to whether someone finds an aged tobacco better or not than the fresh version.
Again from another thread on this, it's like cuban cigars, lots of people buy them to age them and i've had some amazing vintage cuban cigars, that being said they are blended and rolled to be smoked on the spot, and on factory tours that's quit literally.
Smoking it fresh and liking it and buying more and putting it away is your best, bet, also that has been said numerous times, nothing like paying some stupid amount for a tin of tobacco then opening it to find you don't like it, or it was stored poorly or it just sucks. Then again if you have the money who are we to tell you what to do with your cash, other than please donate to a local no kill animal shelter =D
Smoking it fresh and liking it and buying more and putting it away is your best, bet, also that has been said numerous times, nothing like paying some stupid amount for a tin of tobacco then opening it to find you don't like it, or it was stored poorly or it just sucks. Then again if you have the money who are we to tell you what to do with your cash, other than please donate to a local no kill animal shelter =D
Surprised bc you called the poster a voice of reason, which implies he is stating truth about tobacco found through reason, I.e. logic. The poster was saying that aging was marketing hype etc. And yet here, in this second post, you are speaking to it being a matter of opinion (subjective) which would imply no reason (I.e. facts and wisdom) at all but merely preference.
Back to my original surprise… I was surprised that you would make a claim about reason/logic where preference prevails as the only logical reasonable explanation.
I don't know what is meant by "aging is a new trend." It was already a thing going on in force in the 90s, when I became aware of it. I've been into it since then and I'm glad I did. It is, however, a matter of personal taste, as many have already suggested.
To the OP, my suggestion is to buy an aged tin of something you like (more than 5 years old, preferably more than 10 years old), then buy the same blend new. That will give you a pretty good idea if this is something you would like to pursue further or not.
To the OP, my suggestion is to buy an aged tin of something you like (more than 5 years old, preferably more than 10 years old), then buy the same blend new. That will give you a pretty good idea if this is something you would like to pursue further or not.
Ageing has become a trend. And yes is relatively new. Considering we have been producing tobacco as a family for 200+ years, the fact that a relatively few people in a couple of countries decided to put some away for later, makes it relatively new. Many now buy many tins of the same thing to squirrel away in a cellar in the hope that it will be worth more in the future, many buy numerous tins to flip later for profit. This is nothing to do with preference. Yes some people age because they want to see how a blend changes over time, some prefer a blend to age for whatever reason, some are stocking up in case tobacco is finally outlawed or whatever (pretty sure most of them will be long gone before this ever happens, especially in the States where rules are fairly lax compared to other countries) but many are not cellaring for this reason. Hoarding and cellaring skews the market, the prices, demand......
I cellar because some of my favourite blends have a habit of being discontinued - Warrior Plug and Spring Time Flake come to mind but there are others - and because I cellared I can still smoke them. Also, tobacco just gets ever more expensive with more & more tax being added (in the UK anyway). Ageing is just a nice by-product as far as i'm concerned.
“A long time” for an Englishman, is like “really far away” is to an American.” 40 to 50 years is a long time for us. Whereas 100 miles is a daily commute for us. Heck, for many Americans 100 miles is “just down the road.”
@cosmicfolklore - haha yes this is true. The house I live in is considered fairly new, it's only around 120 years old. Our old farm was built in the 1600's, the factory at Lowther Street in the 1700's. And my daily commute is around 7 miles and that's considered living in the middle of nowhere and a long way in!
Our antique stores are full of 20 to 40 year old furniture, ha ha.
It was nowhere to be found that I know of in the mid-90s, and I managed one tobacconist and worked at another a few years later. Sure, guys bought a sleeve of tins and had them stacked in their closet, or if they went to the Dunhill shop in London would have their own blends made up for novelty and then stack away a bunch. Or we would catch wind of a tobacco changing hands or being discontinued that would cause some bulk tin purchases. I knew a few guys with a stockpile, but aging was never the intention. To be honest, I don't think I ever even heard the term related to pipe tobacco until the 2000s. Someone buying 1LB of tobacco was something of note. Someone buying three tins of anything was something of note. 99.99% bought tin to tin...because even buying bulk was almost unnecessary. Tins were so cheap that bulk was mostly reserved for aromatic smokers. We sold a couple McClellands and 965 in bulk, but really, it was tins for even the struggling college smokers.