Aging bulk vs tins

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deepbass9

deepbass9

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So, what's everyone's opinion on aging bulk in jars vs. buying tins to age?

Are the tins just in case of a re-sale down the road?

Do you feel similarly aged bulk tastes as good as tinned? Or is the point so negligible that I probably should never have made this post? :confused:

What say you, oh brethren?
 
It depends on the tobacco. Tobacco in an 8 oz. or 16 oz. tin will age just as well as it will in multiple 2 oz. tins.

If it's un-tinned bulk (like FVF), then jar it as soon as you get it, but it won't be the same as tinned stuff of equivalent age.

Putting bulk up in smaller jars is (all other things being equal) (and they never are) better, since opening one to smoke doesn't affect the rest of it.

:face:
 
I think the answer depends on what day of the week it is or which tobacco authority you ask.

No, I think Yak summed up the matter. Per Vito not even the best biochemist understands tobacco fermentation well enough to state principles.

I think a constant optimum temperature of 60? has more to do with the quality of the aging outcome rather than whether or not the tobacco was sold in tins or in bulk and jarred. In this way the chemical reactions can occur more constantly and with less flux, producing optimum? results. To that end some of the Cuban cigar smokers on The International Cigar Club espouse wrapping closed boxes of cigars.

But the best aging practice as a regulated, steady process is just my logic, and the reality may be different. :face:

To me the best aging is more a matter of its length rather than its conditions.
 
First and foremost, I am by no means an expert. I have, however, been aging cigars for years. In a humidor and keeping the humidity correct, I have some cigars from 1995 that have become stellar smokes, with a dramatic change for the better. I do believe that aging is beneficial. When I started learning about pipe tobacco on the internet, I, very much like yourself, was wondering the same thing. I have seen an abundance of things about aging pipe tobacco, and nothing really consistant. I have seen many, like Yak, however, that say an aged tin is the best. I have taken bulk and jarred them up, and put a vacuum on them with a food saver. The results, I do not know yet. In 4 or 5 years I will let you know! :) . It seems to be about the best option with the opinions I have read. Some say that it should not be vacuumed in bulk and that it needs air, but factory tins are vacuumed and they are supposed to age the best. It is a difficult decision to make when the results will not be apparent for years.
 
I'd go for bulk, though not with absolute confidence. It's hard to compare aged tins and bulk, because they didn't begin as the same things and the taste test is going to be largely sunjective, so I'd go with what suited me and let everyone else do the same. I do have some 10-year-old 965 in tins and some that started out as bulk. I don't think I could tell the diff in a blind test. Maybe someone else can, more power to 'em. I do have a passel of aged tins and live in apprehension that the Female Wireless Alert System will tell my missus what they're selling for on ebay.
 
Storm_Crow":km1wpfmt said:
If I open my 8 oz bag of Stonehaven and I want to jar 4-6 ounces of it, are these http://www.amazon.com/Bormioli-Rocco-Fido-3-Piece-Set/dp/B002IT6X0C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342906888&sr=8-1&keywords=storage+jars sufficient for long term storage as long as I'm not constantly opening and closing them, or do I need to go for ball jars?
Click to expand...
23 dollars for that set when you can spend 7-10 and have a dozen canning jars for future canning also to me would be answer enough. But to my knowledge the jars you linked don't stay sealed well for long term storage and you can smell toby around the rim of them the whole time like they aren't properly sealed. Other may have different results with them but I have read that answer time and again.
 
" If I open my 8 oz bag of Stonehaven and I want to jar 4-6 ounces of it, are these http://www.amazon.com/Bormioli-Rocco-Fido-3-Piece-Set/dp/B002IT6X0C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342906888&sr=8-1&keywords=storage+jars sufficient for long term storage as long as I'm not constantly opening and closing them, or do I need to go for ball jars?"

I've used the "bail" type of jars for everyday storage but if i were transfering from a tin or putting bulk up for long term storage, the "Ball /Mason" type canning jar would be a better choice as many here have used. The difference in price is another reason as well as the canning jars can be securely closed to allow the "aging" process to work correctly. If you consume 8 oz or such of a particular 'bac in a month, that size of bail type jar will keep the 'bac at a good moisture level for daily smoking but long term it would dry out to much. just my limited experience for what its worth :p
 
There's a difference between aging and and storage. If you mean to let a tobacco sit and age, you want a good, tight, verifiable seal which the readily available Mason jars are meant for. If you'd like to store tobacco, I'd still go for the smaller Mason jar, the difference being that I wouldn't insist on an airtight seal, since I'd be tapping what's inside frequently. I use small bail jars for storage and keep my eye out for 'em at flea markets. Stick on labels from office supply stores are handy and cheap.

Is Monbla going soft or what? :roll:
 
I always used Mason jars so I don't know about the efficacy of the jars in the link. When I first started using them the advice was to heat the jar, insert the tobacco and let the cooling of the jar seal it. If the button didn't depress in the process you didn't have a seal and should repeat the process. Then the word was to just screw the lids down very tightly, and that the jar was gradually seal. I did the latter.

I got variable results. I could always smell tobacco through supposedly "sealed" jars. The tobacco I smoked that had dwelt in the jars for years did taste aged. The entry of oxygen into the "sealed" jars was supposed to stop anaerobic aging, make aerobic aging occur once more until all oxygen had been exhausted, and then return to anaerobic aging; which phase was supposed to yield all the aging benefits. But as I could smell tobacco through supposedly sealed jars, couldn't tell which if any jars were truly sealed and got uniformly good aging nonetheless, what really occurred was quite beyond me.

All I know is that I jarred way too much tobacco. I always had a tobacco jones, but I had over 100 pipes when I quit, too. I don't know who I was buying all that tobacco for. I bought and jarred so much tobacco, all the while buying more, that I forgot that I had tobaccos that I had really wanted to smoke; but I became preoccupied with other tobaccos and never got around to smoking the aged tobacco. I had about 8 lbs of Cumberland that was 6 or 7 years old; my favorite. At the end I was smoking, instead, one of C&D's burley flakes when I could have been smoking aged Cumberland. Go figure.
 
I don't consider myself an expert on anything, but I buy tins of tobacco to try new blends and if I like the blend and it's available in bulk, I order in bulk and jar it for later consumption. This allows me to hedge against shortages and inflation, as well as providing samples of aged tobacco.

It is a little confusing to me when I read statements to the effect that "tinned" and "bulk" are not the same. It's like fellows believe that tobacco companies manufacture a blend for tins and then in a different area they manufacture the identical blend in a different process. C'mon guys! These are factories. it's all produced the same way, in the same place, at the same time and then packaged differently.

Given the continuing worries about packaging integrity, expressed on the forums,I don't believe there's a dimes bit of difference between a shipment of tins from a batch and a shipment of bulk, from the same batch. Now flavor and charateristics may vary from batch to batch, but that's the job of the blender to minimize. If the blender doesn't do his/her job, the consistency fails and the following will drop off.

I will say that I have noticed a difference in the moisture content between a tin and a shipment of bulk, but as I tend to smoke Virginias, almost exclusively, this usually means the tin needs to be dried a bit before smoking. I have never received a bulk shipment that was so dried that it required re-hydration and I notice the same sugar crystals forming with enough cellaring to indicate that they still age just fine.

Now the dealers, I am sure would prefer that we ALL buy tins, as it really enhances the sale price we pay...LOL
 
It's long been noted by others (not just yr. obt. svt. here) that tinned and bulk FVF differ very noticeably.

It starts as the same tobacco, but the tinned is tinned within hours of being sliced. That locks in nearly everything it has in it.

Bulk is put up in plastic bags that hold moisture but not the volatile esthers & other good stuff that's dissipating away into the air as it goes on its way from the factory to you. Leaking as it goes. It takes a specially-designed triple-ply foil bag to keep all that goodness in (such as GLP went to for a while).

Jarring it when you receive it saves what's left, but what's left after a couple of months can be a pale shadow of what was there originally.

Storage rule of thumb : "If you can smell it, you're losing it."

:face:
 
And yes, FVF jarred (undisturbed) for years mellows and ripens nicely. Quite good stuff. But do a side-by-side comparison of the jarred & tinned from the same order and the difference is apparent.

:face:
 
Yak":ely1dy6z said:
...a side-by-side comparison of the jarred & tinned from the same order and the difference is apparent.:face:
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This was what I was wondering. Do others feel the same?
 
G. L. Pease":gms9w3yh said:
Even if they were 100% identical in every respect at the point they were manufactured, by the time you get your hands on them, a tinned blend will be different, however slightly, from its bulk equivalent. There are several reasons for this.

When the tins are manufactured, they are partially evacuated to create a tight fitting seal between the rubber gasket around the lid’s circumference and the top of the bottom part of the tin. The tobacco is also packed much more tightly into the tins. This effectively does something similar to pressing the leaf, creating greater contact between the strands of different tobacco types, and the depletion of available oxygen encourages a different type of "aging" process. The tobacco, once produced, spends quite a bit of time in those tins before it finally gets to you, just because of shipping and handling times, so a lot is happening inside those little flat Petri dishes.

The bulk blend, on the other hand, is just bagged and shipped. No evacuation, and the thin films of the bags, though relatively impermeable to water, are less proof against gas exchange, so the internal environment is not as stable as it is within the tins. After as little as a few weeks, the differences can be pronounced, and it’s certain that much more time than that passes before the tins or bags reach you after their manufacture.
Click to expand...
http://pipesmagazine.com/blog/ask-g-l-pease/ask-g-l-pease-march-2012-volume-11/#more-5784

Good enough ?

:face:
 
Yah, but here's the thing. The question isn't so much, Do chemical changes proceed differently in bulk and tinned tobacco?' It's much more subjective and probably Part Deux to the question as stated -- something like, "And do these changes make any difference in smoking, especially in aged tobacco?" To which I'd answer, Not enough to worry about.

My experience is limited to Dunhill English blends (965, EMP) which have been available in tins and bulk. From my experience with those blends, of which I am amply supplied in bulk and tins, I'd say the answer is definitely no. The Vas I've aged in tins aren't available in bulk or I haven't aged them in bulk. Other brands and blends may biffer, but whereof I do not know, thereof I must not speak.

One other relevant point --anyone who has a bunch of aged, sealed tins in a box in a closet knows full well they leak over time. Some of mine are ten years old, and the closet (and my winter coats), smell very good. Yet, when I pop one of these tins, they taste just fine in the pipe. The dimunition of their precious tobacco fluids and gasses, assuming that has occurred, seems to be a non-factor.

And i wholly agree with the comment that aging tobacco leads to amassing a hoard that will outlive the piper. Still, there's something beautifully decadent about puffing tobacco that is selling for $100 for 2 oz. on the Internet. $100 is what? Two tanks of gas. Big deal.

 
Prior to the shortages that have plagued FVF, it was my "go to" smoke on a daily basis. I have smoked tinned in one pipe, followed by jarred bulk in an identical pipe and never noticed any difference in taste or smoking charateristics.

Perhaps, my palate is just not sophisticated enough to discern the differences, but IF the differences are as substantial as some claim, there should be some hardscience to explain the differences. I have never seen any, only opinions of various smokers. I don't say that they are wrong, I just say that in my opinion and experience, I have never noticed it, even when smoking samples one after the other in identical and even the same pipe.

It really doesn't matter which is true, I guess. The real goal is for each of us to enjoy our smokes to the fullest. In this effort I would recommend buying tins to try new blends. If you like them, try to buy in bulk to save the money in the additional cost of tins and to counter inflation/tax increases, etc. This is the process I have chosen to follow and I still have jars of ALL the tobaccos that have recently been in short supply and will have for the forseeable future.
 
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