Blog & Cigar News | Mardo Cigars

In this blog post, I will share some tips on how to avoid ammonia taste in cigars and speed up the aging process of freshly rolled cigars. We know the challenges facing the industry and manufacturers. When buying young cigars that may contain small amounts of ammonia, it is important to let them rest and age properly so they do not lose flavor. I will share a simple tactic I use to speed up the aging process and remove ammonia from cigars by cutting open the cellophane and exposing the base of the cigar to well-moistened air.

What Is Ammonia Taste?

All right, you guys. So yeah, ammonia is a byproduct of tobacco. It happens during the fermentation process. The byproduct of ammonia starts to admit from it, and freshly rolled cigars will have a little bit of ammonia. And how can you avoid this? I have done some research and experiment.

As for me, we have our factory in the Dominican Republic, and sometimes I want to sample cigars. And whenever I have these cigars freshly rolled, I don't have 40 to 60 days to let the cigar sit for me to get a sample. Although I make multiple samples, or at least have our employees make them between 25 - 50, I bring them back home.

And some of them, I store them for about 40 to 60 days, even cigars that I try three months down the road and see how they taste because you don't want the ammonia to affect the flavor of the cigar, which it does.

So if you have a cigar that is only maybe three days, four days, or even up to a week young, and it's going to have that ammonia, or even if you buy some cigars and they have that ammonia because they were not able to properly age.

Why It Happens?

The reason why that happens, no manufacturer wants to put out any bad product. Everybody intends to give you the best. However, there is a thing called supply and demand. If the demand's very high and the manufacturer is trying to do whatever they can to catch up with supply, sometimes they will not have the time to age the cigars.

As a cigar connoisseur, I am willing to take that burden if I buy cigars young cigars, and I can smell a little bit of ammonia. I will let the cigar rest, carry that burden, and give some leeway to the manufacturer because I understand the industry. I know the business, and I get it. I'm not going to hold it against them because I love cigars. I love the people in cigars. I will carry that burden. I'll let the cigars sit because I appreciate it.

How To Sit and Rest Cigars?

Now, how do I let the cigars sit? A lot of cigars come in cellophane, they have the fold, and then they have the sticker, the UPC sticker to keep it properly stored. And what I do is take off the sticker and cut some of that cellophane, so therefore, it exposes the foot of the cigar because now the cellophane is going to be open, and then I will take my cutter and clip the cap of the cigar with the cellophane on there.

Now, the cigar is cut and exposed, and I place him in my humidor. What I have is good circulation of well-humidified air through the cigar. So, therefore you can remove the ammonia. And this, believe me, I've done it many, many times. I continue to do it. It does speed up the process tremendously.

You can cut months off the aging of your cigar because we will use the concept of home-infusing, so if you have cigars and want to infuse it with such as bourbon or whiskey, whatever, usually you find a cylindrical type of Tupperware or a tub that has a sealed lid to it. And what you do is you place your cigars on the inside but on the outer perimeter of the tub.

In the middle, you place a shot glass of bourbon or whiskey, and those vapors will enter the foot of this cigar to give flavoring, right? So the longer you allow that vapor to sit in that sealed container. It will travel down the cigar further. Now, once vapors have weakened, you will replace that shot glass with a new amount of whiskey, and then more vapors will enter the cigar. And it enters from the foot, and they try to submerge itself into the cigar so you get more of that flavor within the cigar.

That is the same case when air goes into your cigar. It will help to emit some of that ammonia. Well, if there's no other egress or escape for that air to go out. So that's why I like to cut my cigar, to have good air movement going on. So that flow will increase and speed up the process of removing the ammonia. Hence, that's what the age of your cigar means.

So I hope that helps. It helps me a lot when I get my cigar's young samples from the factory, and I want that aging process to speed up a little bit. That's a little tactic that I use. Remember to follow us on Instagram, like us on Facebook, and navigate across our blog where you can find more articles about the cigars world information.

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