What's Happening to my Tatuajes?

[WatchesAndCigars]

Help. I purchasd two boxes of Tatuajes - Cojonu 2003s, and Tainos. Great smokes. I was keeping them at 70/70 and experienced the burn problems that many people report. I then changed out the beads in my humidor to 65% humidity, and the humidor gradually came down to that point over the course of about 2 weeks. Now the humidor is stable at 70/65, but I notice that the foot of about half of the Tatuajes are starting to split (really just the wrapper, not the whole smoke). What's going on??? Any guidance appreciated!

 

[Devil Doc]

You over humidified them and then reaclimated them to quickly. I can't stress enough the importance of keeping cigars blended with corojo and criollo tobacco at 62%RH. Cigars such as Tat's and Cabaiguans, Don Pepin Garcia, and most ISOM's are like little sponges in your humidor and at 70%RH absorb way too much water.

Doc.

 

[Desert Rat]

Sorry to hear about your Tat's. I got a box of RJ 21 about a year old, and so far so good.

What happened was too fast a change in humidity. The moisture leaves the wrapper first and it shrinks, while the filler/binder takes longer to adjust. Then what follows is a split at the part of the wrapper (the foot) where the shrinking causes a "shear" stress. There was a thread somewhere explaining how the stress of a shrinking wrapper runs lengthwise of a cigar.

No big deal if the splits are small, leave em alone and they should equalize.

 

[WatchesAndCigars]

Thanks everyone. Clearly that's what happened. The good news is that the splits really are small and didnt occur on the majority of the sticks. A good lesson learned for next time. THANKS

 

[fetterjohn]

That same thing happened to a couple of my Unicos. I just used some of the wrapper repair glue and they smoked just fine.

-Fetter