MOW Stems

gio164

Let me start by saying MOW is one of my favorite cigars, wich is why I was so surprised when I got past the first 3rd it starting getting bitter. When I got to the half way point the bitterness made it unsmokable. I put it out and cut it open to find 3 big stems. I've smoked countless MOW's and enjoyed everyone of them until this one. Has anyone else ever had this problem. By the way I was smoking a torpedo.

TatuajeVI

Weird. I guess I've never considered cutting open a bad stick, I just kinda assume it's handrolled and occasionally I'll get a bad one. Did you happen to take pictures of it?

gio164

I didn't take any pictures. I cut it open because I had the same bitterness with a Gurkha and could see the stem at the head of the cigar. I didn't see any stem at the head of this MOW but knew something wasn't right, so I cut it open.

Fourtotheflush

Ver interesting
I could totally see how stems would make a cigar completely bitter.
The buncher must have missed a step in the process.

cabinetmaker

I've had them happen before. I pull them out with needle nose pliers and keep smoking. Never had one in a MOW before, though.

bacon.jay

When my local shop owner bunches the filler for the cigars he rolls, he does it individually by hand and he feels for the stems and takes them out.

A lot of people don't know this, but many of the factories that make "hand-made" cigars actually use a lever-operated bunching tool. They load the filler leaves in the channel by hand, but they pull the lever and the bunching tool actually bunches it together, and they take it out and roll the binder leaf onto it.

That's why you find so many stems and thick leaf veins in some of the more 'mass-produced' hand-made cigars, and the 'roll' in the filler is tighter on one side than the other.