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6. Lighting Your Cigar

When you smoke a cigar, you want to enjoy the taste of the tobacco. Therefore you should never use a lighting devise that will mix with the flavor of the cigar. These include gasoline lighters, paper matches, wax coated matches, candles, oil lambs, etc. These will all affect the taste and aroma of your cigar. The only lighting devices which should be used are non-coated wooden matches or butane lighters.

When using a wooden match, let it burn a second or two to burn away the sulfur before bring it close to your cigar. Special, long, slow burning matches are available and are best for cigar lighting. Those made from cedar wood are even better.

Butane lighters are good because they have no aroma or taste in their fuel.

However, one should just stick a flame to the foot of a cigar and light up. First of all, the flame should never touch the cigar. The cigar should first be held away from your face at a 45 degree angle and the foot toasted just above, but not touching, the flame tip, while rotating the cigar. Only after you've toasted the foot, take it to the mouth, and again with the flame under the cigar foot but not touching, light the cigar, again rotating the cigar as it is lit and drawing slowly. Be sure the whole foot is lit, as an even burn is very important to the draw and flavor of the cigar.

Certain Cigars burn uneven for a reason,so........

Leave the ligero alone!

One of the causes of an uneven burning cigar comes from ligero leaf that wound up a little too much on one side of the cigar when it was rolled. Since ligero has a lot of oils (which contribute to its rich flavor), it is also the slowest burning leaf in the blend. For that reason it is normally placed in the middle of the bunch when rolled and helps form a conical shape when the cigar is ashed. As the cigar begins to burn unevenly, I have seen cigar smokers take their lighter and run the flame back and forth along the trouble side of the cigar. This is an attempt to dry it up a bit in the hope that doing so will rectify the situation. Actually, they’re making the situation worse. In addition to the risk of scorching your cigar and ruining it altogether, by adding more heat, more oils are released making the ligero burn even slower - and quite possibly turning it bitter, too. The best solution is to let the cigar go out and cool down, clip it behind the ash and start with an even foot, then relight the cigar as evenly as possible.

Totw: Famous Smoke - Cigar Advisor 7/13/09

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