A few newb questions!
I am new to the community but not new to forums I have used the search and searched on my how because I know how frustrating it is to see the same questions asked time and time again!
First I have a friend that wants to use and electric humidification device for his humidor. I have shown him some of the various gels and beads but he insists on the electric devices. His humidor is a 150 count shelved unit with glass walls.
Second I have a few cigars that I want to age and plan on building a collection of aged cigars. I have a small humidor and don't have room for different shelves but I want a way of labeling my cigars for how long they have been aged and do some experiments on how they taste as they age and when the aging becomes pointless. Basically I don't want to reach into my humidor and pull out an 3 year old aged cigar when I want something different but because I have 5 - 10 of the same brand in various stages of aging I'd like a way of labeling to differienciate which one is which.
First I have a friend that wants to use and electric humidification device for his humidor. I have shown him some of the various gels and beads but he insists on the electric devices. His humidor is a 150 count shelved unit with glass walls.
Second I have a few cigars that I want to age and plan on building a collection of aged cigars. I have a small humidor and don't have room for different shelves but I want a way of labeling my cigars for how long they have been aged and do some experiments on how they taste as they age and when the aging becomes pointless. Basically I don't want to reach into my humidor and pull out an 3 year old aged cigar when I want something different but because I have 5 - 10 of the same brand in various stages of aging I'd like a way of labeling to differienciate which one is which.
Comments
i label my cigars with a bit of masking tape outside of the cellophane. just the date. it helps.
Cigar Oasis is the premiere electronic humidification and is the best way to go for large storage but works just fine in smaller storage as well. The advantage to active humidification is that it doesn't matter if your humi has one cigar in it or is stuffed to the gills. With Passive humidification(gels, beads, sponge) you need to stick as close as possible to the 2/3 rule(your humi should stay around 2/3's full).
Second, a few of us, including myself and Duty track every cigar we own in spreadsheets. The way I personally do it is every cigar I own is assigned a number, which, I either write on the cello with a permanent marker or if there is no cello, onto a piece of masking tape which is stuck to the band. Then in the spread sheet I keep track of EVERYTHING, date acquired, how acquired(bought, trade, bomb, etc), where or who acquired from, Wrapper, binder, filler. THen I have two other tabs on the spreadsheet, one where I move all cigars I trade, pass or bomb and another where I move all cigars I smoke and I put a little summary of the cigar.
In typing this I notice that pulling them out of the cello and allowing the flavors to mingle might hurt my taste building in that they might all pick up a bit of one another. Also I have a few that are in alum tubes with cedar inside and a few in cardboard individual boxes so I am decided what to do with those as well.
this brings me to the question of whether anyone has put their cigars into a database and managed information in there? Have been dabbling with the idea in my head, but haven't really had the drive to sit down and do it, I deal with a database program in my work everyday and entering every form, phone call, changes, is a whole lot of fun **insert sarcasm**- the idea of doing the same thing for the cigars I own seems not so attractive....my laziness is trumping my OCD.
Well I plan on at least starting that method whether it catches or I continue to use it well...only time will tell.
Well I feel better it sounds like I am on the right path. Its be quite interesting how much I have learned and how my cigar smoking has changed from my first cigar to now.
I have a tab which contains my inventory, which is the information from the brand tab, plus data on the acquisition date, humi date (for my smoking queue humi), source, and some formulas which compute the aging time since acquisition, and days it has been in the smoking queue humi (so I know if t's ready yet).
I have a tab which contains ratings for the cigars I've smoked (I won't go into the details), and a tab where I record long journal entries (just written descriptions) of each smoke. By "long" I mean anywhere from a few sentences to a few paragraphs.
Other tabs have stuff like maintenance records for the humi and hygrometer, auction trackers (that record the best price for which a partcular item of interest has ever been had), cigars that have been passed in games or to friends, recommendations I have received, but have not yet tried (like stuff from the old "Pick Joe's Smoke" thread), and a couple spreadsheets which I use to compile proposed future orders.
You mean to tell me everybody doesn't do this?
One contributing factor is all the time she's spending training for an actual marathon... she's running 20 miles every Saturday, plus workouts and additional running during the week... she's been pretty tired, and I've been pretty much the same. The last two Mondays have featured 3 hrs of climbing followed by a late-night hockey game, and that pretty much wipes me out for the week.