Happy Thursday, amigos! 

Recently, someone wrote in about a cigar that had a very open draw. This can be a frustrating experience, albeit better than the opposite which is a draw that is too restricted. 

Why is this a problem? Well, without the appropriate resistance, you’re unable to draw as much smoke as you’d like – and, more importantly, it can create additional burn issues that further exacerbate the situation. What ends up happening is that your cigar burns too fast, too uneven, may go out unexpectedly just like a plugged cigar, and can taste all the worse for it. 

What causes a loose draw in a cigar? 

Whereas very bad tunnels can be the culprit, the usual smoking gun is an underfilled cigar in a properly humidified environment. An underfilled cigar can be identified with your fingers before lighting it and will manifest itself in soft spots throughout the length of the cigar. 

If you’ve identified that your cigar is soft or squishy, go ahead and fast forward to what you can do about it before cutting or lighting it. 

Why are box-pressed cigars more open than traditional cigar shapes? 

To create the box-pressed shape, cigars are underfilled on purpose. They then place the cigars in their molds and literally press them into the rectangular or square shape that we’ve come to know and love. This is why box-pressed cigars are very rarely plugged or have restricted airflow. 

Conversely, sometimes a box-pressed cigar can have too little resistance and be a nuisance. For the most part, this comes down to personal preference. I’ve heard from some folks that a box-pressed Padron is too open, whereas others have said that the effortless draw is what they’ve come to love most about Padron cigars. 

I’d say it’s only around 5% of cigars mentioned in the ‘Too Open’ category that actually affect the ability to smoke them. But – we’re in the business of extracting the most out of our smoking experiences! So, let’s see what we can do to remedy the issue.

What can I do to get the most out of my cigar with a loose draw?

There are three things that greatly affect the airflow of your cigar: the bunch, humidity, and the cut. Since we can only affect two of those actions, let’s start there. 

Tobacco leaves absorb and release moisture, and these leaves change size according to their absolute humidity. I believe most factories shoots for around 13% absolute humidity before they ship to the U.S., so we’ll use that as a baseline. From there, if more humidity is introduced the leaves will expand, and if our cigar’s humidity evaporates the leaves will contract. If you know that you have cigars that are too open, you can place them in a separate storage environment with higher humidity. I wouldn’t recommend this for long periods of time because of mold, but 2-4 weeks should be plenty of time to restrict some of the draw. 

A quicker solution is to adjust the cut. A traditional guillotine cutter will offer the most surface area at the head of the cigar, and therefore the least resistant draw. There are some caveats to that with a large V-cutter since it bites so deep, but for this problem let’s look to the shallow V-cutter and a punch cutter. 

Both of these cuts will remove minimal tobacco from the head of the cigar, thereby restricting the airflow. My personal favorite is the shallow V-cutter because it’s practically caveman proof. It also has less of a tendency to cause problems with novice use, such as trying to punch cut a Padron that has a single cap – that’s a no go! 

To recap, if you’ve identified cigars that are too open, don’t lose hope! Most of the time you can place them in a short term, higher humidity storage environment or use a punch or V-cutter for maximum enjoyment. 

If you don’t happen to have either of these cutters, take a look at the pictures below. I used my fingernail in the first picture to simulate a smaller cut, and a razor blade in the second picture. Both of these restricted the airflow to my personal satisfaction. 

Why bother fixing loose cigars? 

It was brought to my attention that this is a solution to a symptom and not the root problem. And I completely understand that point of view. Cigars aren’t cheap, and we have expectations when making a purchase. 

But – premium cigars are a manmade product. I can barely sign my name the same way five times in a row, much less imagine someone crafting between 100-500 perfect cigars each day. Sometimes we’ll get a cigar that behaves differently than the rest of our boxes. And sometimes we’ll get a box of cigars that perform differently than others. 

Like we mentioned earlier, we’re all about maximizing the enjoyment of our favorite hobby. Hopefully this article can you help you get just a little bit more out of a cigar that’s giving you trouble or prepare you in case you see it in the future.