Sam Gawith tobaccos, no longer vacuum sealed?

[Kentos]

I would love to know just how long it takes a jar of tobacco to move from aerobic to anaerobic. If it takes 3 months and you are dipping into it every 3 months it will never age, only ferment. If it takes a year that would suck. I have had tobacco improve considerably in a small canning jar over a 6 month period so I know it’s not a year.

 

[AimlessWanderer]

I'd imagine it depends on the amount of air, so less air would be better... although...

There's more air in a tin of flake, than a tin of rubbed, and yet flake ages better. I need to stop thinking about stuff like this. It seems to make me more stupid instead of wiser

 

[Kentos]

GL Pease, or some other tobacco guru did an experiment where he jarred tobacco under the closest he could get to a total vaccum and I believe improvement was minimal. So he conjectured that the aerobic activity was integral to the aging process, perhaps the anaerobes use the byproducts from the aerobic breakdown. Shrug. All I know is I like aged tobacco, I want to smoke a lot of it when I retire, and my bank account had suffered for it!!

 

[AimlessWanderer]

I know older Virginia seems to taste better than younger Virginia.

I know I've enjoyed a number of mild English and lightly topped blends, whether young or old.

I know some blends are too robust and need slapping down a bit.

I know I prefer basic teas and fancy tobaccos, to basic tobaccos and fancy teas.

I know I don't really know much, beyond what I like and what I don't

 

[Kentos]

Did you wake up early or did you stay up all night, it’s the wee hour of the morning over there .

 

[AimlessWanderer]

Free floating body clock.

Some days are 30+ hours long, and others less than 15 hours. It's all part of my very complex cocktail of neurological challenges. "Yesterday" ended at noon on Tuesday, and "today" started at 7pm on Tuesday.

As for the rest of the cocktail. An inner ear disorder, as yet still unidentified (thanks Covid) appears to have evolved into chronic migraines (not always with headaches), and a Functional Neurological Disorder, which leaves my brainstem scrambling signals that pass through it. In short, my body does not trust it's own sensory inputs, and often gets them all wrong. It also scrambles the outward signals from brain to body.

Blurred vision, double vision (monocular AND binocular), balance disorder, Vertigo attacks, impaired spatial awareness, occasional cognitive impairment, and communication difficulties, plus fight or flight kicking in for no reason... or not at all, when it probably should. Obscure random bodily sensations, and uncoordinated/uncalibrated movements too.

Pick a random selection of all those symptoms, then spontaneously switch do a different random selection at any time of day or night... or stick with the same ones for four days.

Every day is a new adventure

 

[Kentos]

At least you have your pipes and baccy. Glad you are able to keep your sense of humor and optimism.

 

[Rachel]

Just to clarify every single tin leaving the factory is vacuum sealed. The plastic heat wrapper is an anti-tamper device.
We have newly designed and manufactured tins which seal well.
However, if you are ageing tobacco then we always advise you place it in another container. We do not produce tobacco for ageing and so cannot guarantee tins will remain sealed months, years etc after purchase. Even with the best will in the world, seals will leak slightly over time.

 

[AimlessWanderer]

Just to clarify every single tin leaving the factory is vacuum sealed. The plastic heat wrapper is an anti-tamper device.
We have newly designed and manufactured tins which seal well.
However, if you are ageing tobacco then we always advise you place it in another container. We do not produce tobacco for ageing and so cannot guarantee tins will remain sealed months, years etc after purchase. Even with the best will in the world, seals will leak slightly over time.

Thanks for the clarification, Rachel. I did have a couple of tins last year which weren't vacuum sealed, (I could just lift the lid off) but it was clear from the concavity on the bottom of the tin that they WERE originally vac sealed when they left Kendal.

I only discovered that they weren't sealed in October '21, and going by your date codes, one had been packaged Feb '19, and the other Sept '19. To be honest, I have no idea when the seals failed, as I hadn't tried popping the lid off by hand to test the seal before. I'd owned them less than a year I think, so they might have even been at the shop long enough for air to seep in (probably GQ, Greens or Mysmokingshop). Thankfully, the contents were salvageable, with a bit of rehydration.

I immediately transferred the contents of all my other tins to Mylar pouches and heat sealed them. I'll be sure to do the same with future tins as soon as I get them, which will also let me check that they're still sealed when I get my mitts on them, in case they were slow moving stock.

The upside to that fiasco, was that having discover Mylar bags, I could lay away the tobbacos of yours I bought loose too... either online, or from the local newsagents. There's a few in Rotherham who have your green drums on the shelf.

Thanks again for your input. Glad to have someone on the forum to field questions. Nice to see your website is finally being given an overhaul too.

 

[luvmysuper]

For the math challenged, here's a spreadsheet in PDF format that shows the Kendal dating code meaning.
First two digits are the day of the month, the last three digits account for a specific month in a specific year.
So for example a code of 21277 = 21 December 2018.