Saturday night I smoked an excellent cigar from a cab that has been nothing but pleasure. A spicy little number that always treats me right. A real dark beauty, aged from 2001.
The cigar tasted like a cross between a bad cigarette and nothing. All I could taste was the heat.
But I made the mistake of smoking it when I had a mild cold. I had no sense of taste. I couldn't have tasted a roast beef dinner. I had coddled, stored, monitored, and aged this cigar in ideal conditions. I cut and lit it with my choice of premium instruments specifically designed for the task. Given the history of the cab, it was probably a great-tasting cigar. But I couldn't taste a thing, and put it down after a few puffs.
It got me to thinking. Sometimes this hobby is a little like the hi-fi audio hobby, on which I also spend too much money. People who are heavily invested in hi-fi spend thousands on minor tweaks that offer a barely-perceptible difference, if it all. For example:
-drawing on your CDs with a green felt tip marker to enhance clarity
-special isolator feet for stereo components to reduce vibration transfer
-third-party replacement power cables (to replace the detachable one that comes for free)
A lot of people say that they can hear the difference with tweaks like those above, but it is a placebo effect in most cases. Experts never reliably detect improvements from the tweaks above in a double-blind test. Most "experts" won't even agree to a double-blind test, so they can preserve the illusion. A lot of tweaks make such a subtle difference that the human ear can't even hear it, so what is the point? For many, the point is that they have the best gear and the maximum theoretical *potential* audio reproduction, whether they can hear it or not.
Cigar smoking is somewhat the same, in that we are limited by the fidelity of our sense of smell and taste. And yet, we also have our own tweaks:
-keeping our cigars at 65% versus 67% (or whatever)
-keeping our cigars at an exact temperature
-method of lighting cigars (soft flame versus torch, etc)
-method of cuting cigars
-buying certain box codes
-etc...
Now I know the above are all deadly serious business to us, but just like you laugh at some of the hi-fi tweaks above, others would laugh at our efforts, because we spend big money above and beyond the cost of our cigars themselves for sometimes minimal gains.
On this board, we have much discussion about our humidity preferences. I don't know if I can taste the difference between a cigar that has been kept at 65% or 67% percent humidity? Can you? Really? Wow. MRN suggests that temperature affects the aging process. If you smoked 5 identical cigars, and four of them were aged 10 years at 60 degrees and one of them was aged 10 years at 65 degrees, could you pick out the one aged at 65 degrees? Really? Wow.
In other words, a system only has the fidelity of its weakest component, and the weakest component might be us.
Does the quality of your senses, and more obviously, the day to day fluctuations in the fidelity of your senses, mask most of the results of your cigar-related efforts?
Like hi-fi enthusiasts, do you believe you can taste all the money and effort you expend? Do you think you benefit from a placebo effect? Or do you expend money and effort simply to achieve the maximum theoretical *potential* of a cigar?
JK
The cigar tasted like a cross between a bad cigarette and nothing. All I could taste was the heat.
But I made the mistake of smoking it when I had a mild cold. I had no sense of taste. I couldn't have tasted a roast beef dinner. I had coddled, stored, monitored, and aged this cigar in ideal conditions. I cut and lit it with my choice of premium instruments specifically designed for the task. Given the history of the cab, it was probably a great-tasting cigar. But I couldn't taste a thing, and put it down after a few puffs.
It got me to thinking. Sometimes this hobby is a little like the hi-fi audio hobby, on which I also spend too much money. People who are heavily invested in hi-fi spend thousands on minor tweaks that offer a barely-perceptible difference, if it all. For example:
-drawing on your CDs with a green felt tip marker to enhance clarity
-special isolator feet for stereo components to reduce vibration transfer
-third-party replacement power cables (to replace the detachable one that comes for free)
A lot of people say that they can hear the difference with tweaks like those above, but it is a placebo effect in most cases. Experts never reliably detect improvements from the tweaks above in a double-blind test. Most "experts" won't even agree to a double-blind test, so they can preserve the illusion. A lot of tweaks make such a subtle difference that the human ear can't even hear it, so what is the point? For many, the point is that they have the best gear and the maximum theoretical *potential* audio reproduction, whether they can hear it or not.
Cigar smoking is somewhat the same, in that we are limited by the fidelity of our sense of smell and taste. And yet, we also have our own tweaks:
-keeping our cigars at 65% versus 67% (or whatever)
-keeping our cigars at an exact temperature
-method of lighting cigars (soft flame versus torch, etc)
-method of cuting cigars
-buying certain box codes
-etc...
Now I know the above are all deadly serious business to us, but just like you laugh at some of the hi-fi tweaks above, others would laugh at our efforts, because we spend big money above and beyond the cost of our cigars themselves for sometimes minimal gains.
On this board, we have much discussion about our humidity preferences. I don't know if I can taste the difference between a cigar that has been kept at 65% or 67% percent humidity? Can you? Really? Wow. MRN suggests that temperature affects the aging process. If you smoked 5 identical cigars, and four of them were aged 10 years at 60 degrees and one of them was aged 10 years at 65 degrees, could you pick out the one aged at 65 degrees? Really? Wow.
In other words, a system only has the fidelity of its weakest component, and the weakest component might be us.
Does the quality of your senses, and more obviously, the day to day fluctuations in the fidelity of your senses, mask most of the results of your cigar-related efforts?
Like hi-fi enthusiasts, do you believe you can taste all the money and effort you expend? Do you think you benefit from a placebo effect? Or do you expend money and effort simply to achieve the maximum theoretical *potential* of a cigar?
JK
