Palate Development 101

[jhedrick83]

THIS! Oh, this is dead-on!

One of my favorite smokes early on was the Sancho Panza Double Maduro - especially the Quixote. For the money, they were (and still are) SO good ROTT. So I figured they MUST get better and better with age, right? Well, yes - to a point. After 2 years the flavor begins to decline dramatically. I ended up with a lot of "meh" smokes. If I had known the "fiver" time test, I'd have been much better off.

It was very helpful to me when I got more into CCs as well. There's a tangent there but I'll post it in the Habanos section so I don't clutter this up.

The other thing that I think is very helpful is to play with RH. As long as you give the cigars about a week per percent change to acclimate you might be shocked how different the same cigar smokes at 68,65 and 62%. When I started I dreaded my cigars getting below 65%, I thought it would all be dried up crap! I store everything at 62-63% now and I feel like I taste more, have fewer burn issues, fewer draw problems and never get a tarry stick. YMMV, don't take what someone tells you about temp and RH as gospel, everyone has different tastes, find what works for you.

[droy1958]

It was very helpful to me when I got more into CCs as well. There's a tangent there but I'll post it in the Habanos section so I don't clutter this up.

The other thing that I think is very helpful is to play with RH. As long as you give the cigars about a week per percent change to acclimate you might be shocked how different the same cigar smokes at 68,65 and 62%. When I started I dreaded my cigars getting below 65%, I thought it would all be dried up crap! I store everything at 62-63% now and I feel like I taste more, have fewer burn issues, fewer draw problems and never get a tarry stick. YMMV, don't take what someone tells you about temp and RH as gospel, everyone has different tastes, find what works for you.

THIS! It changed my cigar life getting the RH down to 62-63.....