What NO ONE TOLD ME about CIGARS! A beginner's guide

there are things no one told me about cigars that I need to tell you about [Music] one I'm Dave with beastmate reviews of course a channel dedicated to reviewing quality at different price points now one of the things I love about this channel in general is the rabbit hole you find out about a product and you go in an entirely different direction and you don't even realize how deep the rabbit hole is one of those rabbit holes is cigars now last year I made a video about what no one told me about fountain pens if you like the idea of this video and you don't know anything about fountain pens and you'd like to definitely check out the link up here to that video today though we're going to be talking about cigars and a lot of things you might not know some of these might be obvious to people who are into cigars for a number of years but if you're just beginning this might be a very helpful beginner's guide to you now of course I'm not going to get everything right in here there might be a lot of things that I just forgot to mention in this video so if there's something that you think is important that people should know about cigars why don't you comment down below and help everyone out but before we get started why don't you consider subscribing if you like content about quality products EDC clothes everything else in between I think you'll really like it here and I'll have some links down below if you buy anything through those links they will help out and support the channel always appreciate it when you do that this video probably won't get as much traction and probably won't be monetized so if you want more content like this feel free to help out in whatever way you can alright now let's go down the rabbit hole all right now first let's go into the health risks now there are health risks with anything if you go walking outside there are health risks if you drink the water if you breathe the air if you go walking outside in the sunlight there are health risks there are health risks with cigars but from the data that I have seen especially from recent Publications by the FDA the health risks associated with cigar use is a lot less especially when compared to cigarettes probably because of the tobacco and probably because of the method of smoking with cigarettes you have tobacco mixed with a hundred different chemicals in that cigarette and you're breathing it into your lungs with cigars you only have a tobacco it's organically grown and you're not breathing that into your lungs so next of course is you don't inhale this is obvious for a lot of different people but some people don't know this you don't inhale you puff it into your mouth and then you just release it through your mouth think of it kind of like wine tasting whenever you do wine tasting you take a sip and then you spit it out you can actually kind of do the same with cigars you can have it there and kind of Swig it around in your mouth and then blow it out my next point is there actually might be benefits to smoking cigars there are psychological benefits and relaxing benefits to just sitting down doing something slow and methodical getting out in nature and just relaxing that can be a huge stress reliever and that might be one of the contributing factors of why some cigar smokers live such a long time because it reduces their stress over time allegedly possibly I'm not a doctor alright now let me get to my pick of the week [Music] now the pick of the week is a kind of ongoing series that I have within videos like this where I talk about a choice that goes really well with the topic at hand and there are three picks that I want to talk about really quick these all are excellent and I think anyone that's into cigars will really find a lot of benefit from these three things the first one is Boda packs Bovada packs are really small packs that control humidity within your system so if you have a humidor or something where you store your cigars you want to keep them humidified Bovada packs keep them perfectly seasoned and humidified at an exact humidity range you can get them in different percentages of humidity you can just throw them in there and not have to worry about it eventually they will dry up and you can just throw them out and get new ones but Boveda excellent must have next is Govi now Govi is a sensor that's a humidity sensor it's not a lot of money it's very inexpensive the battery on it lasts a long time it syncs up through Bluetooth on your phone and has an app on your phone it tells you exactly how much the temperature is and the humidity of where your device is it's easy to just check on your phone to see if something is overly humidified or under you can adjust it from there the last thing is called perfect draw perfect draw is a tool that I think is ingenious it's this little tool that is kind of like an auger if you have a cigar that has a hard draw that is hard to suck air through you can take the tool and just drill into the end just a little bit and pull out a little bit of the end and that will completely open up your cigar making the draw a lot smoother on the intake this is absolutely a game changer and it's also not a lot of money so all three of these are excellent choices for anyone into cigars definitely check out these picks of the week next is a retro hail now when smoking a cigar you normally breathe it in through your mouth and exhale through your mouth but you can also exhale through your nose and this is a retro Hill doing this will give you more flavors different flavors and will kind of enhance the experience but some people can't take it It Might Sting your nose it might burn it might stuff you up and some cigars are super strong and they just hurt so when starting off do it maybe a little bit at a time and see if you like it but if it's too much for you and it stings don't worry about it just enjoy it the way you want next cigars are often smoked in thirds now usually whenever you read a review of a cigar it will talk about the cigar being in thirds cigar blenders will do this to kind of enhance the experience to have it change up over time so you're not having the same thing for the entire smoke next point there really are no rules now there are people that get really dogmatic about any particular topic and cigars are no exception they're going to be people that really are sticklers to certain points I would say there are no rules if something works for you then do it if it doesn't work for you then change it cigars are one of those things that are supposed to be pleasurable and enjoyable so just do it in a way that you find enjoyment from my next point is there is a difference between premium cigars and everything else you find especially at a gas station now typically when talking about cigar smoking it's cigars made with long filler or long leaves they're handmade and those are the cigars that cigar aficionados are talking about now there are alternatives to that there are short filler cigars that are more inexpensive because they're using bits and pieces of the cigars that were chopped up those are much less expensive sometimes you can actually find really good deals on those cigars so they're not bad necessarily so you can find handmade short filler cigars that are also really excellent and then there's machine made cigars machine made cigars also can be good but but they're not as good quality as the handmade premium long filler cigars next let's talk about construction on the outside is the most noticeable part and that's the wrapper the wrapper is what shapes the cigar on the outside and those leaves have to be a very specific type of leaf and that adds a lot of flavor on the inside is the filler and that's the Longleaf tobacco that we were talking about before and that fills up the cigar and those have a certain flavor as well then you have the binder the binder groups everything together and that can also add to the flavor but less so than the filler and the wrapper different parts of the tobacco plant are used for different things too there's different leaves that are used only for binder and only for filler and then there's other leaves they're the prettiest leaves that are used for the wrappers next is the color of the wrapper doesn't always determine the strength now there are many times where this does happen there's different colors for different wrappers there's anything from really light brown pale to anything from really really dark brown some people associate this with light brown being very mild and dark brown being very strong though it does happen a lot it's not always the case so you just have to try things here are some wrapper colors that you might find now there's claro which is very light there's Colorado which is kind of a medium brown there's Maduro which is dark brown then there's oscuro which is really really dark brown like almost black then you'll find Candela which is kind of a greenish color and then sometimes you'll even find barber pole which is used with two colors of wrapper and kind of a barber pole spin my next point is there are a lot of varieties of tobacco now tobacco is a plant and with plants come different varieties and different climates that they're grown in contributes to how the plant turns out each Variety in each climate produces a different flavor in that type of tobacco so there's tobacco is grown in Ecuador Nicaragua Mexico Cameroon Dominican Republic Brazil even Pennsylvania and Connecticut have their own tobaccos like coffee each variety has its own kind of Hallmarks of flavor next there are different styles of cigars now this goes hand in hand kind of with the wrappers and the different varieties of cigars so you will see names like Connecticut which is a Connecticut shade rapper Habano which was a variety that started in Cuba and is now grown in different parts of the world you may see Sun grown you may see Maduro and you may even see Cameroon which is a variety in Cameroon Africa all of these are different styles and kind of genres of cigars my next point is that cigars come in a lot of different varieties and sizes also commonly called vitolas these differ in length and then thickness in America we measure this in inches long and then in ring sizes a ring size is like an actual ring fits over a cigar and determines the thickness of the diameter of the cigar how thick a cigar is will determine the ratio of flavor that you get from the wrapper to the binder to the filler if you have a thicker ring gauge or a larger ring gauge you'll get a lot more of the filler if you have a thinner one you'll get a lot more of the wrapper and these sizes orvitolas are not really standardized you'll find ones Toro is a different one's robusto a Churchill might be seven inches for one company or eight inches for another one a pigtail is something you might see on the Caps of some cigars it's a little it looks like a pigtail on the cap you can actually just take that off and then smoke it right away no cutter required it's almost like having a little Punch If a cigar is made with tobaccos of binder filler and wrapper from the same country then that cigar is called a Puro or Puro and it can offer a kind of slice in how that country develops its tobaccos they make lots of different puros in different countries Nicaragua Dominican Cuba they all have puros you might see a cigar with a Shaggy foot or a naked foot or a brushed foot that's when the wrapper on the end of the cigar is kind of Stripped Away and you see the binder and the filler exposed or in some cases Shaggy my next Point don't smoke a cigar on an empty stomach you might get really sick definitely have food or candy or drink or something nearby so it can kind of counteract the effect the nicotine can have on your stomach because it can make you queasy some cigars are stronger than others so that can vary too my next point is there are lots of flavors that you can get from cigars like people who enjoy wine tasting or coffee tasting and they taste like butterscotch or oak or different things like that you can get a lot of different flavors from cigars just like that you might not be able to do that right away and maybe you might not ever be able to do that but if you're into wine tasting or coffee or if you're into food or that type of thing and you have a pretty good palette or nose then you might really enjoy picking out the notes and Discerning what flavors you're getting from these it's not uncommon to see a cigar with notes of leather or chocolate or coffee or even Citrus or cedar or oak or wood things like that my next point is enjoying cigars is really easy and it really only comes down to four things it's your cigar Choice it's cutting lighting and then storing and that is it first cigar choice there's lots hundreds maybe thousands of different brands out there that make cigars if you're looking for premium cigars and you don't know what to choose a great way that you can find good suggestions is buy a magazine you can also go to a local brick and mortar smoke shop and they'll usually have good suggestions for you there too you can also get Samplers of a lot of these as well different sizes different Origins different companies you can get a lot of different Samplers all right cutting cutting you have a pretty small selection of types of cuts you have your Guillotine cut which is just like it sounds like a guillotine cut that just chops it off like you're chopping off a head just a straight cut you have a v-cut which Cuts things in a V then you have a punch cut punch cut is a little bit different where it slices a circle of the cap off in the end there's really not a better way to cut things it's just whatever you like and whatever you prefer the only real rule when cutting is just to cut the cigar behind the line on the cap if you look at a cigar there's noticeable cap on the end you'll actually see the little line on the back you want to cut it before you get to that line on the cap so it doesn't unravel the whole cigar lighting alright now we're going to get into a couple of things that people are really entrenched in their style of lighting there's a couple of schools of thought with lighting personally I don't think there's anything wrong with any of the ways of lighting but some people are going to think that one is better than the other one first let's talk about matches easy suggestion they just burn out a lot and you're gonna have to use a couple different matches to light your cigar if you want something similar to this you can either get cigar matches which are just longer or you can get Cedar spills Cedar spills are little strips of Cedar you can light the cedar spill and you can have that burn and you can light your cigar with a longer burn time on the cedar spill and that also imparts a little bit of a cedar flavor yellow flame yellow flame is another way of lighting a cigar but with a softer yellow flame similar to like a cigarette lighter or a Zippo lighter which we'll get to that in a second blue flame blue flames are the torch lighters that you see a lot of they're the butane lighters that burn really hot you find them all over the place and they really can toast a cigar really quickly and easily some people think that a butane torch will impart a butane flavor even though butane is supposed to be colorless and odorless and tasteless I don't know some people say that soft flame is better but you want to get a butane soft flame and some people say stay away from Zippo lighters because they use lighter fluid and the lighter fluid can impart a kind of strong fuel taste into the front of the cigar But whichever way you like is the way that's right for you I'll just say that next how do you light a cigar first what you want to do is you want to toast the foot the foot is the end of the cigar you want to hold it at a 45 degree angle turn it while you're toasting it and then wait until it's completely black some people may even blow on the end to see what's lit you can also light it through and puff through the flame as well all right storing you can store things as easily in a tupperware container or in more expensive humidor that's a thousand dollar humidor with digital readout ideally you want to keep your cigars in a humidor so they can stay humidified the humidity is really what keeps your cigar burning and fresh the longest so you want to store them there and you don't want them to dry out because they dry out they'll burn too fast and they'll crack overly humidified has its own problems with mold and tobacco beetles some people swear by the 70 70 rule which is 70 humidity and 70 degrees Fahrenheit for the temperature I think that's more of a rule of thumb that's a good starting point what you don't want is you don't want something under humidified and you don't want something that gets overly humidified and gets really wet humidors people love humidors they look so cool they're nice and Woody they have a beautiful smell and Aroma to them they're usually made of Spanish Cedar on the inside you have to do more upkeep with a wooden humidor and you have to also monitor it to make sure that it has the appropriate humidity range and with humidors you have to season the humidor ahead of time which means that you have to do a process of putting moisture into the wood now this can kind of be kind of complicated but one thing that I really recommend is by Boveda Boveda has a seasoning packet that's really easy you just put packets in there for a few weeks take it out and then it's ready to go but it's important to season your humidor before using it otherwise it will actually suck moisture out of your cigars because wood is porous it wants to hold water so it'll either suck in moisture or give off moisture just like a sponge but because they're Cedar they can also impart a cedar flavor to your cigars as well dry boxing is something you might want to do if you have cigars that are overly humidified and you want to kind of step it down into something that is a little bit drier some people swear by this and it's really good especially for climates that are really humid freezing should you freeze your cigars some people freeze their cigars but it's not really necessary freezing your cigars is something that they already do in the factory they do it to kill any beetles that might show up thankfully they do a really good job at the factory of eliminating these but they freeze the cigars and a very humidified freeze that keeps the cigars from drying out if you put your cigars in a freezer at home it will actually dry out your cigars you don't want to do that plus it's really not necessary my next Point Sello or no cello now if you look at a cigar and how they're packed today usually they're packed with a cellophane on the outside that plastic is actually made of cellulose or cellophane there's inherent benefits to that packaging there if you take the packaging off and you store them in your humidor they will age faster and they'll mellow out a lot quicker so if you're looking to age your cigars you might want to take some of them off but if you want to keep them as fresh as possible you keep them inside the cellophane and it concentrates the flavor and they age at a much slower rate which can be really beneficial especially if you're holding on to a lot of different cigars another thing that's really good is it prevents the spread of mold if one of them becomes moldy and if there's any tobacco beetles that break out it'll contain Tobacco beetle within the cellophane and if you're transporting cigars it will prevent bangs and breaks and scrapes and that kind of thing they can really damage a cigar all right elephant in the room Cuban cigars should you or shouldn't you now Cuban cigars are those cigars that are pretty notorious around the world for being like the king of cigars just because they think it's hard to get they're actually not that hard to get you can actually get them fairly easily it's just more expensive and I would actually suggest people not try to buy Cuban cigars right away because you can find a lot of fakes also I don't necessarily think it's necessary because there's lots of other options that get in the ballpark of Cubans with the type of varieties that are out there that are kind of in the Cuban range like I mentioned before there's different varieties of tobacco including varieties from Havana Cuba which have been transplanted to other places and you can get a kind of similar Havana leaf or Habano type of cigar made in a different place but you don't have to go to Cuba and you can get it at a much better price my next point is that cigars are made really well and it takes a long process of making them Master blenders are the people who actually make these cigars they're the ones that come up with the formula or recipe of the cigars these Master blenders do a lot in making new cigars but also keeping the quality of the cigars the consistent flavor overall from batch to batch because tobaccos are a natural product that have variations in the way they smell and taste Master blenders try to keep the consistency similar from year to year my next Point cigars are made in countries around the world that are pretty economically depressed like Central America but despite that these actually have really good jobs for people who work with these cigar companies many times these workers work with a cigar company for decades they treat them well they pay them well and they train them well for instance rollers have to be trained for six months per vitola just one size in shape and then to master it takes a few years and with that I think I have all my points here that I want to mention was there anything that I missed let me know down in the comments are there any points that you think people should know before getting into cigars let me know all the points down below now with this video I had a lot of help one was my friend Ben Lee from The Smoking Syndicate on YouTube he has a channel that reviews cigars great friend and great Channel he's been into cigars for a long time and it shows he has a great amount of expertise definitely go check out the smoking Syndicate and I also got a lot of help from cigar and Spirits magazine I'm a contributing writer for cigar and Spirits magazine but the magazine itself has been a wealth of information and knowledge for me especially on their cigar reviews the release on newsstands all over the world definitely check them out you might even see me there another huge help was the ultimate cigar book by Richard Carlton hacker this is a book that I highly highly recommend and was a huge help for me in researching this thank you again for watching I'll see you next time I'm Dave with beastmate reviews bye

Channel: BeastMade Reviews

Views: 519,636

Keywords: dave, beast, made, review, reviews, bmr, quality, product, products, men, style, gear, best, goods, made well, What NO ONE TOLD ME about CIGARS! A beginner's guide, cigars, beginners guide to cigars, how to cigars, cigars 101, cigars for beginners, best cigars for beginners, cigar basics, cigar terms, how to light a cigar, how to cut a cigar, best cigar choices, how to store a cigar, how to season a humidor, cigar how to hold, cigar guide

Id: 9xtwBhgG-ao

Length: 19min 42sec (1182 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 20 2023