When lighting your cigar it’s best to use a butane lighter such as a jet flame lighter or a wooden match stick. Try to stay away from ‘gasoline’ type lighters as the odours are absorbed by the cigar and the flavour tainted. Also try to avoid matches containing wax, such as paper matches, or matches with high sulphur content. Take your time when lighting your cigar as a badly lit cigar will definitely spoil your experience! Initially hold the cigar horizontally in direct contact with the lighter flame, and slowly revolve it until the end is evenly charred all over.

Put the cigar between your lips, hold the flame about half an inch away from the end, and draw slowly while rotating the cigar. Its end should now ignite. You can check if the cigar is fully lit by gently blowing on the burning end. Unlike a cigarette, a cigar will go out if left unattended. If your cigar does goes out, remove any ash by tapping the cigar and blow through the cigar to clear away any stale smoke. Then re-light as described above. As long as the cigar has not been out for too long, the flavour will not be affected too much. Continuous re-lighting of the cigar will eventually affect the flavour, and if a cigar is allowed to cool, then on re-lighting the tastes can become quite unpleasant due to condensation of the smoke in the remaining part of the cigar.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 at 10:23 pm by David and is filed under Cigar Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.