In our part of the world where winter is long and cold, the mid-winter trip to Cuba has become a must for everyone and freezing cigars is a must step when you come back home. A lot of cigar smokers take advantage of this to bring back some cigars from the various La Casa del Habano shop there. Unfortunately, on rare occasion, some cigars from Cuba directly might have tobacco beetles in them when they are brought back but don’t worry that can be handled easily. This is because any cigars that are exported out of Cuba are flash frozen before being shipped but not the ones sold locally. It is part of the joy of getting your cigars at the source.

It is important to take these steps to insure that they do not spread to all of your collection. Here are the steps to freezing cigars and keeping them safe:

Put your cigars in a freezer type ziplock bag

Place them in your fridge for 24h

From the fridge put them into your freezer for 72 hours

From the freezer, put them back into the fridge for another 24h

Take them out of the fridge, open the bag and let them sit in open air in the same room your humidor is in for 4-6 hours

Place them in your humidor

The reason for this fridge-freezer process is to insure your cigars are free of any tobacco beetles and it does so with slow changes in the temperature. Remember that cigars hate drastic changes. This is only true for cigars that are purchased in Cuba directly as they are frozen before being exported out of the island. You do not want to end up with this problem:

Enjoy your vacation, smoke one for us in the sun and don’t forget to be freezing your cigars!

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