As with anything cigar related, the answer ultimately boils down to whether or not you want to.  As long as you’re happy with your cigar experience, every other opinion can go suck an egg.  But I’d strongly recommend that you avoid it, because it’s a recipe for disaster.   

We’re not talking about just being gone for a quick phone call.  We’re talking about about hours passing before you can get back to your cigar.  And that, my friends, has never worked out to my advantage besides being able to write about it today. 

Cigar Disappointment Recipe:  

1. Start with a healthy serving of hope
2. Stir in a truck load of ash and tar, 
3. Sprinkle in an exponent of time
4. Serve raw for a pungent and demoralizing experience

Let’s start with a story.   

We moved into a new place this week, and smoked a few cigars to commemorate the new house with some of my in-laws that helped us.  I went with the Campesino Renacimiento because it’s a great all around cigar and shared my dates with me: both of us left the U.S. in 2016 and returned in 2018.  Just seemed fitting to smoke that cigar. 

Afterward, I noticed that there were only two cigars in the ash tray. That’s one short.  Turns out, someone took a half smoked cigar home with them to finish later. 

On the one hand, I’m glad that someone enjoyed it so much as to want to continue the experience.  On the other hand, I wish I would have thought about it at the time and could have passed out fresh cigars for everyone to take home.  As my in-law would find out, relighting a cigar sounds like a good idea but doesn’t work out like you’d expect. 

Here’s the problem.  

As you are smoking your cigar, tar develops and starts to build up. This is why most folks suggest that you purge your cigar before saving it for later.  To purge, drop the ash and blow into the cigar forcefully while placing a lighter perpendicular to the foot so that you can watch the impurities burn off.  Once purged, you can then clip the cigar about an inch or so above the ash line.  

Yet it doesn’t matter how long you purge, nor how many colors you can see in the flames as you burn those impurities away, nor how far you clip above the ash: the cigar remembers.  It remembers being set on fire and will forever hold it against you.

Once you stop smoking it, you’re left with a dilemma: leave it out in the open, or throw it in a tubo to keep it from stinking up your smoking area.   And this is where it really gets bad!  If you put it in a tubo, your cigar will marinate in noxious fumes while you wait.  And if you leave it out in the open, you’ll get to experience what a severely dry or wet cigar is like – only an already smoked, dry or wet cigar. 

It really is a losing battle, and one that I’d recommend forfeiting altogether.  

Tell Us!  What is YOUR experience trying to save cigars?