BOTL Plugged Cigar Review Update 1

[JDog]

Introduction
In late November 2012, jolietilfire requested the help of the BOTL community to participate in a cigar survey. The purpose of the survey is to categorize the draw characteristics of the cigars smoked by its participants in 2013. The below link will take you to that original request:

http://www.botl.org/community/forums/showthread.php/64242-Botl-Plugged-Cigar-Review-Panel

After 5 months of data collection and the participants entering over 2,000 cigars, we felt it was appropriate to give the BOTL community an update.

In the thread, jolietilfire defined a plugged cigar:

A plugged cigar will be any cigar that has no or very little draw. It will also mean any cigar that will need some form of fixing in order for the smoker to enjoy it, i.e. draw poker, cutting extra off the head, or constantly rolling the fingers at the time of smoking.

Jolietilfire defined a tight cigar:

A tight cigar is any cigar that is smokable but has less then optimal draw. If a tight cigar becomes unsmokable at any time and is either fixed or tossed, it should actually be categorized as a plugged cigar.

Along with each cigar’s draw characters, year, marca, vitola, cigar line, and tobacco origin is also captured. A lot of information and data will be presented along with each participant's observations and thoughts at the end.

Participant Data

Participants included CO Smokes, icehog3, Ecks, JDog, jolietilfire, orangedog, Red Raider, Sean, Surprise MVP, Vitty, and W.B..

The below graphic illustrates the smoking profile of the participants. Each data point represents a smoker. The vertical axis represents the number of cigars that were smoked for the first 5 months of the survey and each data point is labeled with that value. The horizontal axis shows the percentage breakdown of what was smoked: CC or NC. For example, the middle of the horizontal axis is a 1:1 ratio of CCs to NCs cigars smoked by a participant.

Region & Draw Data
Region characterizes the tobacco origin and not necessarily the country where it is manufactured. The region of “Other” is a cigar that has tobacco from multiply countries. If a cigar has a region of “Nicaraguan” or “Dominican,” it does not necessarily mean that it is made completely with tobacco from the same country or that it is a puro. If the majority of the tobacco in the filler, binder, or wrapper are from a particular country then it is given that classification.

Size & Draw Data

Top 5 Marca by Region & Draw Data
The participants smoked 140 different marcas to-date: 37 “Cuban,” 21 “Dominican,” 47 “Nicaraguan,” and 35 “Other.” Due to the size of the list, the top 5 marcas are listed by region.

Age & Draw Data

Participant Observations & Thoughts

I am VERY surprised that 98% have been acceptable so far. I was expecting the number to be closer to about 90% or so. Its also been pretty cool tracking all of my cigars smoked and seeing how my tastes change from month to month. Overall its definitely been a fun experience!

I was happy to see the low numbers for plugged cigars in both the Cuban and non-Cuban categories, and the almost negligible difference between those. Just over 2% for the Cubans, while I've heard from so many non-Cuban smokers over the years how poorly Cuban cigars are constructed. While the numbers bear out that the NCs have a better overall "success" rate, I can certainly live with 2 plugged cigars per 100 (and my numbers were much lower than that, only 1 plugged cigar so far in 2013, a decades old Ramon Allones Belvideres).

I would like to express appreciation to the smokers who kept track of their numbers, and Jonathan for all his hard work crunching the data...interesting and enlightening for me.

• Fuente, Tatuaje, and Drew Estate brands represent a significant percentage of overall cigars smoked. We seem to be comparing the performance of CC factories to primarily 3 to 4 NC factories.
• 3 of the tight draw cigars were Custom Rolled CCs, which skewed the figures slightly for CCs.
• Logging actual factory data did cross my mind, but there are nearly 140 different brands and countless vitolas… the “unknown” category would be significant. Regardless of the hours to compile and validate its input, I’m almost tempted to log and run a pivot on that variable.
• Overall, I liked the process of logging every smoke. Referring my past data reminded me to try a few new cigars and to mix it up more. And I appreciate everyone taking the time to log their own cigars. The compiled statistics is extremely interesting.

Even before seeing the results from the last 6 months I've hade a few questions that I wonder if we really could answer with the data sample we obtained. When we started with this idea it was to prove once a for all a few things. And maybe even to put to rest a few of the cigar "wives tales".

Are cigars generally plugged from one part of the world over many others?

Do certain marcas or vitola pose a certain plug rate higher then others?

Can humidty(higher) in ones humidor change the plug rate on cigars. Even at industry expecepted levels (67%-70%)

Can it really be true that the CCs have not only a high plug rate but MUCH higher than any other country rolling cigars?

Do we have a big enough panel here at botl to provide a big enough sample surver to show exactly what (data) we were looking for?

• First let’s start with the panel. Jon and Vitty THANK YOU for taking COUNTLESS hours to do all of this leg work!!!! I can almost guarantee nothing has been done like this before on the boards. 10 guys for 6 months smoking 2k cigars is not too shabby. Could it have been bigger counts and more beneficial data? Absolutely. But I as well as a few others have had life throw them a curve ball and smoking is just not in the daily routine right now. 2k Congrats guys!

• Second I'm at 60%NC and 40% CC. Take that to all the guys stating I'm a CC whore!!!!!!!!

• Tight cigars and humidity. IT'S IMPORTANT TO KNOW THAT guys were instructed to dry box their cigar for 2-3 days if they had a very tight or unacceptable draw. I myself only had two cigars that were tight past acceptable. One opened up much better after a few days dryboxed and the other (both CCs) was a tent peg. I really wish I would have had a few more to prove a theory I follow. That higher R.H.s on CCs will make them tight. But maybe later in the year with more data!!!!!!!!

• Avg year of a NC 1 year, Avg year of a CC 4 yrs or > (just thought that was interesting) And btw holy Tats batman! (Hey this is still Botl!)

• For whatever reason guys don’t smoke many older NCs. Take years 06,07,08,09 combined and they are still less than 2011 and on. (Also no NC was older than 2006 that we know of)

• It also doesn't seem like a certain Marca or Vitola posed a greater threat over another for plugged and tight. Most cigars are just acceptable on drawing!

• IN THE END the biggest thing I would point out is the very very marginal percentage of plugged, tight for ALL countries. IMO it's just not that much of a difference and we really shouldn't allow that thinking as board to not enjoy cigars from every country being produced!!!!!!!

• I'm surprised to see that the users are split into two groups: ~20 cigars per month or less and ~60 cigars per month or more... no real middle ground
• Intuitively I feel like I've coincidentally had a good run of CCs - that combined with the low number in total group-wide of plugged/tight cigars makes me wonder if we need a notably larger sample size
• This is especially true for Cubans in the '00 and '01 year... need more samples there
• Disconcerting that so many of the "tight" CCs are from '10-'12... disproportionate to what was smoked. Maybe there is something to what Suckling is saying about rollers getting older, new rollers coming in, and quality starting to drop
• Interesting that Cohiba and RyJ have the worst tight rates for CCs... two flagship brands (again, maybe low sample size skews it, also sad that LGC has the worst plug rate)

And I feel bad for those with bad Monsdales... such a good cigar to not enjoy...

I am shocked at just how few tight cigars there are and extremely shocked that there are only 7 cigars out of 2162 that were plugged. If you were to ask me how prevalent plugged cigars were prior to this study, I would have said that Cuban cigars have a high plugged ratio and NC's have a relatively low (albeit much higher than our 0.31% rate). I would have probably guessed a 8-10% plugged/tight ratio for Cubans and 3-5% for NC's. I would have been way off.

We also seem to be bucking the industry trend of larger ring cigars. Petite coronas and robustos are by far and away what we smoke most often.

It is also nice to see that the two most hyped cigars on this Forum, Tatuaje and Drew Estates both have stellar ratings in our tests. This would indicate that their value lies not only in their marketing machine and popularity, but in their overall quality as well.

There is a difference of what cigar smokers (at least on this panel) find acceptable concerning draw between Cuban and Non-Cuban cigars; slightly less than 1.5%. I found it a bit surprising that the difference was so small; as well surprising that so many were acceptable. I feel that there may be a misconception that Cuban cigars are rolled with inferior quality. While it is true they do offer a less acceptable draw, it would only be an exaggeration to state it in a way that the Cuban cigars are poorly made.

 

[W.B.]

Great write up Jonathan. I've become accustomed to you always delivering well developed and thoughtful posts; I've come to expect nothing less and look forward to them. Thanks my friend.

 

[Fitze55]

Love the statistical data. Like CO Smokes I would have thought the plugged rate to be a tad bit higher, especially among CC's.

Thanks for all the work, it is fantastic.

James

 

[thejavaman]

Awesome job, Jonathan!

 

[bluearmy]

I love seeing all that data. Thanks for the interesting read this morning, I really appreciate all the hard work that went into this!

 

[cvm4]

Great work compiling all this data JDog :thumbsup: Sometimes it's just best to have statistical data to prove a point rather than hearsay that's been passed down over the years.

 

[Craig Mac]

Great work compiling all this data JDog :thumbsup: Sometimes it's just best to have statistical data to prove a point rather than hearsay that's been passed down over the years.

Here we go....

I know you love your CC's Cliff and that is what you mean by that. The percentage isn't astounding but Cuba still had more plugged and tight draws than any other country

 

[cvm4]

Great work compiling all this data JDog :thumbsup: Sometimes it's just best to have statistical data to prove a point rather than hearsay that's been passed down over the years.

Here we go....

I know you love your CC's Cliff and that is what you mean by that. The percentage isn't astounding but Cuba still had more plugged and tight draws than any other country

I'm just getting in line before Jfire :rofl:

 

[pbibby]

Great write up! Awesome data that seems to suggest that overall construction of cigars is really good! Thanks guys!

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S3 using Tapatalk 2 because, you know, I love Tapatalk 2.

 

[SurpriseMVP]

Great work compiling all this data JDog :thumbsup: Sometimes it's just best to have statistical data to prove a point rather than hearsay that's been passed down over the years.

Here we go....

I know you love your CC's Cliff and that is what you mean by that. The percentage isn't astounding but Cuba still had more plugged and tight draws than any other country

In defense of Cliff, I'm the lonely guy to the far right of the cc chart. I did smoke one Fuente. It was underfilled so I'm just going to stick with cc :blush:

 

[Agentskull]

Awesome work guys. I'll have something very interesting to read while drinking my coffee this morning.

Sent from my HTC One V using Tapatalk 2

 

[D Quintero]

Super savvy work here !

To summarize one casual observation-
2012's freeworld nc discrepancies synch about evenly right with the tad tighter cc free labor product.

Some insight - I personally have gravitated to the lesser cc handrolled market and experience alot more variance on the other end of the roll spectrum.

Thanks !

 

[YodisMatt]

Wow great write up guys and really cool you all took the time out to do this research.

 

[JDog]

To summarize one casual observation-
2012's freeworld nc discrepancies synch about evenly right with the tad tighter cc free labor product.

Great point! Although it's important to the note the following: 199 CCs were smoked that were rolled in 2012 out of the 899 total smoked or approximately 22%. For NCs rolled in 2012, 677 were smoked out of 1,263 total smoked or approximately 54%. Even though NCs and CCs had nearly as many "tight" cigars in 2012, a lot more NCs were smoked...

Some insight - I personally have gravitated to the lesser cc handrolled market and experience alot more variance on the other end of the roll spectrum.

When you say "lesser cc" are you referring to the Jose Piedra and Quintero marcas and have you experienced more draw problems with them? The participants only smoked 4 cigars from these marcas to-date, but none of them had draw issues.

 

[StogieNinja]

This is amazing!

 

[Ecks]

The info that I find fascinating is the vitola chart. Robustos and PCs for daaaaays.

 

[D Quintero]

Jdog
of about the 10 jlp/quintero boxes ive blazed thru, loose rolls/draws are a common issue.
but at @$50 a box, its kinda understandably not a, "problem" per se.

 

[JDog]

Jdog
of about the 10 jlp/quintero boxes ive blazed thru, loose rolls/draws are a common issue.
but at @$50 a box, its kinda understandably not a, "problem" per se.

Thank you for sharing that information bro! Very interesting...

 

[Red Raider]

Great job Jdog and thank you for all of your coordination efforts and time invested for this cause. You are doing an outstanding job and this is very interesting data.

I am on the far left of the chart with respect to CC's, so my personal conclusion is:
1. I need to smoke more cigars and make time to do so.
2. I need to get more involved with CC's. I would hate to skew the data due to my lack of involvement in that category.

None the less, great job, slightly surprising results, some of you guys are true ballers with what you are smoking, and interesting experiment.

Thank you!

Phil

 

[sean]

This has been really fun, and I'm glad to have been a part of it so far. It has been a great experience that helped reflexively position myself and see where I want to go with this hobby.

Thanks to Jfire and Jonathan for making this happen!

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