Blog & Cigar News | Mardo Cigars

Hi, and welcome to another episode of Mondays with Mardo's. I'm Gerard, and today we're going to talk about the beginner's guide to aging cigars properly. But before I get going, please click on that subscribe button, click on the bell to be notified every single week of new episodes of Mondays with Mardo's. All right, so I get asked all the time, how should I age my cigars properly, Gerard. Should I leave them in the cellophane? Or should I take him out of the cellophane and how do I place it in my humidor? So today we're going to talk about what to do when you want to age cigars. So when you get cigars most of the time as you can see right here, they're all going to be packaged and cellophane, which is a very good to protect the cigar, and it also allows for manufacturers to place their UPC barcode, which gives you a description of the product. And also retailers can scan it and therefore they can charge you whatever it is that you'd be charged for and make the sale.

So now, when it comes to aging a cigar, there is something that we need to understand that whenever you blend a cigar, there's a by-product within tobacco called ammonia. So when you are aging a cigar, what we are doing is we're trying to remove as much as the ammonia as possible. Now, when you have the cigar inside a cellophane and it's enclosed, there's really not much air movement going on. So if you want to age cigars, I highly recommend that you let some air movement going in and out of the cigar. The longer the air is allowed to penetrate the cigar, the more and more of the ammonia is going to be removed. All right, so here we have a cigar that's still in a cellophane, however it's open. So therefore you can get the air movement. The way a cigar is aged is the air comes in from the foot.

So the more time you allow that to happen, the more air is going to start penetrating deeper, deeper into the cigar. This thing can take many, many months. But what's happening is that the ammonia is going to be able to be removed as well at the same time. Now don't get this confused with dry boxing. Dry boxing is when you take a cigar and it has knots in it, and you put it in a humidor that does not have humidification system. So therefore it can dry out some of the tobacco on the inside so it can remove the knot. You want to do this at the most for a about a week. So therefore you can get the better draw that is not aging. When you are aging a cigar, you definitely want to make sure that the cap is still intact is not cut.

So therefore you don't get too much air movement, which will also remove some of the oils. So if you're going to age cigars, you do want to take them out of the cellophane. If you want to remain the cellophane, I recommend you just open it up and leave it. So therefore it can breathe a little bit, this can take up two months. Now, if you want to dry box the cigar. So if we can move some of the knots, I do recommend cutting it. So therefore you have a lot more air movement, but again, you won't do this for a very short period of time, because if you have too much air movement for too long of a period of time, you're going to lose some of the oils.

So dry boxing is strictly for just drying out some of the tobacco on the inside. So therefore you can remove some of the knots, but when it comes to aging again, open the cellophane, let it sit with an open-ended or if you want to remove it from the cellophane make sure you don't clip the cap and let it just sit in your humidor and a very humidified environment. Other than that, let's hear in the comments, how you age your cigars. But before I get going, don't forget to follow us on Instagram, like us on Facebook and remember to tell your friends to follow our Youtube channel. I'll see you guys next week.