Sugar Crystals or Mold?
- Thread starter Sharp_tungsten
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it's always crystals. Always. If it's mold it smells gross and bad.
anyone who has had moldy tobacco will tell you it doesn't tend to leave any question. Even if you didn't know what mold was it would still smell bad and gross.
Have had pipe tobacco go moldy once, very neglected and abused tobacco I didn't really want to smoke that got left in a draw. And had some snuff get moldy. Both smelled horrid and unpalatable and there was zero question is this mold. It clearly was growing something and it was clearly something not to consume. Now crystals had those once on some cigars and at first thought it was mold but it actually smelled wonderful and I now call them flavor crystals.
Have had pipe tobacco go moldy once, very neglected and abused tobacco I didn't really want to smoke that got left in a draw. And had some snuff get moldy. Both smelled horrid and unpalatable and there was zero question is this mold. It clearly was growing something and it was clearly something not to consume. Now crystals had those once on some cigars and at first thought it was mold but it actually smelled wonderful and I now call them flavor crystals.
Thank you all for the advice. First time I've come across this as my cellar ages.
Mold, it would not leave that tobacco with those sweet honey colors. It looks great...............
Lick it! Let the taste guide you young Skywalker!
Let us know how it smoked.
To be honestly, it looks 50/50 to me on this picture only. Usually, crystals appear roughly at the same rate on similar leaves. It's encouraging the whiteness appears to only be on the bright yellow leaves, but the barren yellow leaves above is kind of odd.
Usually mold is around a central location across all leaves.
To be honestly, it looks 50/50 to me on this picture only. Usually, crystals appear roughly at the same rate on similar leaves. It's encouraging the whiteness appears to only be on the bright yellow leaves, but the barren yellow leaves above is kind of odd.
Usually mold is around a central location across all leaves.
The pic is blurry when I zoom in but it looks more like mold than crystals to me. Especially since its localized and it looks somewhat fuzzy.
I think it crystals as it smells like sweet hay and floral of a Virginia. Forgive my camera but it looks like ice formed on the leaves. No sour or funk smell at all. Now the bigger issue is something is wrong with my palate as thus is about the 15th good quality Virginia I've tried and I think I'm done with them. They are taste like sucking cardboard to me. I've tried Capstan, orlik, escudo, navy rolls, Stonehenge and many more. They are meh to me. I wanted to be a Virginia guy so bad lol.
Yea my tins of SHF have looked like that. I have about 10 tins with 3 years on them. Even freshly opened they have some crystals.
To be honest, it doesn't look good, I hope they are sugar crystals. A month ago I threw away about ten grams of Ascanian 2, I had it in a can for daily rotation, but it got too wet, with the paper wrapped around it.
If that's the case, then you are a-okay on the mold/crystals front.
As for your virginia issues, probably just the growing pains of the newby. It took myself a few years to "get" virginias and then a few more to realize I have a slight sensitivity/palette reaction to red virginias that make them taste like chemicals.
I did smoke a bunch of it. It tastes just like sucking on a cardboard tube. Nothing, no taste other than burning paper. Like I said my palate cannot stand Virginia's I guess.