The scientific case against plume

Spider webs and green should not be seen . Specks of little white is alright .

Very interesting article.

papipeguy, I also think (hope!) the stuff on flakes like FFV and 1792 is sugar crystals. It's even slightly reflective in the light.

Then there's Blackpool. I think that stuff is dried casing of some kind. I sent a sample to a scientist on PSF (DWaugh) and he was going to check it out under a microscope but I guess he never got around to it.

I have had a bit of mold on cigars and just wiped it off, and it was fine. That's apparently pretty standard practice. If it gets into the foot, though, I've read your'e supposed to toss it.

trailboss - that guy should not be in business! Even in small low-res images that's clearly mold.

Most of these look decidedly hairy or web-like, though a couple do look like mineral crystals. Quite thought provoking. There is one solution for mold, which is soaking the tobacco in an alcohol bath, followed by a thorough washing and drying. But the result will be tobacco with much reduced flavor. The best solution is the trash.

There are also studies and chemical analyses out there specific to bloomed pipe tobacco and macro shots of what looks like microscopic snowflakes. It was tested to be some several types of chemical oxidation and breakdowns of the organic compoundsin tobacco leaf, oils, sacharides or something. Philofumo/misterlowercase has taken some good macro shots of true crystallization, and many of my aged McClelland and SG/GH flakes have been examined closely to be either dried crystallization of casings or naturally occurring. Mold is mold under a magnifying glass and all of those cigar examples do look like molds. However, I've seen many passing moldy Aspergillus covered cigars as plume or bloom. Whole wrapper leaf is easily susceptible to this and as I've stated many places, much of our tobacco as whole leaf before it's been processed does for a fact get molds like these. They simply wipe the mold off with damp cloths and thrash and process it. Mold is in everything. When you don't see mold on your bread or cake after a couple days it's because it's laced with Mycoban and other antifungal treatments. Don't blatantly smoke growing molds, but your tobaccos do commonly get mold growth on them while barn curing and aging. No big deal. You do breath it all day, like the dry molds that grow on us, in our houses, and the spore content in every breath you breathe is a certain PPM. We are covered in hundreds of growing bacterias. To the Earth, humans are bacterias. Life.

Yep. Swipe dust off your tv, drop a dropper of distilled water on it in a Petri dish and stick it in your closet for a week. All those cultures that grow are blowing around your house and you're eating and breathing them deep into your lungs.

I'm not an avid cigar smoker but, I've smoked my share years ago. Now as far as Plume I have a simple way of telling the difference on pipe tobacco, if it's crystalian, it's plume, if it's soft and fuzzy and I get sick, it's mold.
See! Easy Peasey Japanesey!

Whatever it is that happens to Blackpool was my first experience with bloom. I thought it was mold at first. But after I finally saw actual mold on tobacco i could see the differences. And I've since seen non-Blackpool bloom on some aged tobacco and those little crystals are very sparkly. Mold doesn't sparkle.

Don't beat yourself up over it, you're not the only old person that has trouble with computers.