There are very few wrong ways to store your precious aged pipe tobacco. Over the decades I’ve listened to grizzled old veterans as they extolled their methods that have worked well, and debated with others (in a gentlemanly fashion, of course), the reasons why I think their aging methods are a little off kilter. As an example, one fellow says he opens his tins, puts the leaf in Mason Jars and then sprinkles them generously with distilled water before closing the jar. He said that the addition of the water will keep the tobacco moist. And he’s right. BUT, blenders know what they are doing when adding moisture to their blends before tinning. Many blends don’t even need additional watering. And if a blend does need a little added humidity, they use as little water as possible because a lot of moisture in a blend dummies down the flavor presentation as the water mixes in with the flavor building natural oils that the leaf itself produces. If you are going to transfer a fresh tin of tobacco to a Mason Jar, I strongly suggest that you don’t add any water and keep the jars in a dark, cool and dry location for best long term results. And though it will take up extra space, you may consider using the smaller two ounce jars for best results. Why? Because every time you open a Mason Jar to get some tobacco out, you’ve actually halted the aging process as the tobacco’s flavor enhancing gasses will escape, and all you’ve done is allowed fresh air into the jar when you re-seal. That forces a re-start with the aging process from the point when you opened the jar. With smaller jars, you’ll open those far fewer times than you would a large eight ounce or one pound jar before the tobacco within is completely consumed.
Are factory sealed tins or Mason Jars the best way to store your tobacco? The oldest Mason Jars full of tobacco that I have are from the 1980’s, and by keeping them in cool, dry and dark locations, I’ve never had a problem with dried out tobacco. But, the same holds true for all almost all of my tins of factory sealed tinned tobaccos that are from the 1960’s and 1970’s. A few have gone bad over the years but that was mostly due to inferior gaskets used under the lids, or rust bleeding through a few tins of lower quality metal. I prefer to keep my own personal collection of pipe tobaccos in their original containers. Not because I don’t trust the Mason Jar method but because there will be no real collector’s value in even the rarest of tobaccos once they are removed from their original packaging. A few years back, I had a collector email me to ask if I would sell his twenty-five 8oz Mason Jars that he filled with Penzance from bags he had purchased. While factory sealed 8oz bags of Penzance are worth a minimum of $325 per bag these days on my website; laws in most states – Texas, where I live, included – don’t even allow licensed vendors like myself to sell after-market packaged tobacco of any kind. And I’m sure that most collectors would not pay the big bucks for after-market jarred or packaged Penzance either. So, I lost out on a nice commission and the owner lost out on being able to sell what would have been worth more than $8,000 because he had his tobacco in after-market packaging. Most of us don’t set out to purchase pipe tobacco to resell – although I know that some do – and the investment loses the majority of its value if not in its original state.
Even when doing all the right things and storing your stash of great old tobacco properly, stuff still happens that is not pleasant. Not often fortunately, but on rare occasions, I get tins from consignors delivered to me that either I can’t sell due to problems with the tin, or that I have to issue a refund to the buyer because there was a problem that I did not see when I sold the tin. As an example; A consignor sent me a two decades old 100g tin of McClelland’s Dark Star (factory date stamped to 2000) to sell. As most of you know, Dark Star is a flake tobacco and in tins with some air rather than vacuum sealed, it’s difficult to tell whether there’s an issue because all air filled tins of flake tobacco have some shake. One of the things I do is chart the weight of literally hundreds of different blends so that I can weigh them if I am suspicious. As an example, a solid 100g tin of Dark Star should weigh approximately 5.7 ounces. This dried out tin of Dark Star weighed 4.6 ounces.
Tins with dark outer wrap such as the Dark Star, cause additional problems because you can’t see the rust bleed through like you can with a light colored wrap. And with rust, that stuff is kind of like the chicken pox, once the rusting process begins it spreads fast!
With this bad tin of Dark Star, I could see the problem immediately when I took off the outer plastic lid. In this photo you will notice there is a crease along the inner seam that had opened. That’s where the air got in, dried out the tobacco and allowed the rusting process to begin which went on for no telling how many years.
I then took a photo of the inner walls with the dried out tobacco chunks still inside. After dumping the very dry contents into a trash can I took another photo of the empty tin after removing a couple of pieces of the inner wall lining which was very brittle due to all the rust. Not a pretty sight!
I did debate whether to mention the Dark Star issue in this blog. After all, while this situation was an anomaly, I don’t want my Dark Star tin sales to go into the tank, but thought it would be interesting to share.
Rehydrating tobacco
I’ve tried all the ways known to mankind regarding rehydrating tobacco because I love smoking old tobacco that I otherwise never would have gotten a shot at in the good old days. I’m really not sure that one way is better than any other. If the tobacco is rock solid but dry, I just pack the pipe as I normally would and then put my mouth over the top of the bowl and slowly breathe down through the bowl and stem. One or two breaths like that usually perfectly rehydrates the tobacco.
For super dry tobacco, I take a paper towel, soak it in distilled water, wring it out as hard as I can with my hands, spread it out, put no more than 2 ounces of tobacco in the center of the paper towel, wrap it back up over the tobacco and put it in a mason jar. Seal the jar and wait 24 hours. Then, simply open the paper towel tobacco filled Mason jar, pour the contents from the paper towel back into the jar and reseal it. The tobacco should be perfectly rehumidified. If it is a little too moist, just leave it in the jar with the lid off and every 15-minutes or so, check the contents. When the moisture level is where you want it, just reseal the jar and you are in business. It’s sort of a trial and error thing, but after a short while, you will get a good feel for it. There is a downside as the flavor presentation of rehydrated tobacco – at least according to my own taste buds – is never quite as tasty as it was when it came out of its original packaging.
Good smokes to all!
Steve
