Lighting Your Cigar - The Cigar Diary

How To Light Your Cigar

By:
Miss Elaine Eos

The lighting of premium tobacco is a sudden and abrupt process involving not only severe temperature changes, but also strong chemical changes forced quickly onto an organic substance. You can imagine how, as you smoke a cigar down, the tobacco further up the cigar feels first the warmth of the smoke flowing past it, then a slight warmth as the flame approaches, then a gradually increasing warmth as the flame draws near, until finally this portion of the cigar ignites from the previously smoked portion.

You're probably also familiar with the phenomenon of puffing too strongly, too frequently on a cigar, and subjecting the tobacco to all sorts of unpleasantness, and its attempt to fight back by sending some of that unpleasantness your way.

The object of toasting, as I understand it, is to slowly aclimate the tobacco to the rigors of lighting, in much the way that a slowly enjoyed cigar's first inch slowly aclimates the 2nd inch to its fate. In that context, I toast my cigars thusly:

Light the lighter/torch/match/whatever and hold it steady. (It's easier to move a cigar accurately than a flame.)
Slowly move the foot of the cigar toward the flame until you sense that it is beginning to warm. Think in terms of lightly roasting a marshmallow -- you don't jam it into the hottest part of the coals, but neither does holding it 3' off the fire do any good.(Folks who like charred marshmallows: I can't help you -- you're on your own ;)
Slowly dance the foot of the cigar into and out of the flame, rotating the cigar and moving it from side to side, to get a nice, even toasting (see marshmallow analogy, above :)
Make it a matter of personal pride to impart just a "toasting" but not a "burning" to a slight ring around the foot of the wrapper. When properly done, you will have a slight band of darker wrapper at the foot, and the end of the cigar will be slightly darker, to match, but nowhere will there be any charred or black tobacco. (Ok, I'm getting off into ju-ju land -- but I told you up front that this was MY system.)

At this point, you have a nicely toasted foot. Before it cools, place the cigar in your mouth and, holding the lighter flame AWAY from the cigar, slowly draw the flame onto the toasted end, while rotating the cigar for an even light.

Allow the cigar a moment of rest as you put away your lighter, or tray your match. Take a deep breath to still your mind and enjoy the aroma of the slight waft of smoke you imparted into the room.

Take one long, slow, steady draw (see if you can slowly draw on it for 20-30 seconds), and check that you have a complete light.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy :)

Miss Elaine Eos

http://www.playnaked.com/


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