Esoterica Bloom

I've never had tobacco stored long enough to see any bloom. Does it make much of a difference, in your opinion?

The plume that develops on a fine aged cigar looks like a fine white powder. Pipe tobacco plume looks more like sugar crystals....definitely adds a bit of sweetness 👌👍👍. Plume is not mold.

I recently opened a 4 years old tin of Penzance and it was saturated with mold within two days. I envy your bloom. I threw out some Bob's Chocolate Flake a while back because I believed it was molded, but I think now it was bloom.

Plume, bloom, schmoom. Really, what's in a name? It's all good. What it's not, is sugar crystals. It's just mineral content in the leaf that leaches to the surface over time. I can see where some blenders products can develop more plume/bloom than others, based on the different sources for leaf, Empire vs American, and the different processes involved. I can't recall anyone talking about the amazing bloom/plume/schoom on a ribbon cut. The manifestation always involves flakes. None of the vintage McClelland flakes that I've opened has shown any Plume/Schoom/Bloom. Maybe the acid they used as a mold inhibitor also inhibits the formation of schmoom/plume/bloom?

That was my initial thought, that they aged in house longer. Not sure but I am sure someone knows here on the patch.

This tin was soaking wet. I believe that the mold was already started and just waiting for a bit of oxygen to explode. It was a solid cake. The first bowl was fine, but 2 days later it was shot through with mold.
It made me think of Poe's "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar"

Finding it on the Margate with that type of cut was surprising, which is what led me to posting. Its not like a flake where the plume is really obvious on the flat surfaces but when you look closely at the strands you can see it all over. I'll see if I can take some pics when I get home tonight. Oh and I am back to calling it plume since the guy in the video above calls it plume. 

Yeah, the cigar guys like to call it that! But, if it's on a video, it must be definitive. I may get to the point of not caring what it's called.

Esotericas I've had all come in at over 90% RH at 70º, way wetter than any others I've tried.

I find the esterica blends seem to have shipped with more age than most

About cigar plume: Act as though it doesn't exist. There's a popular Australian cigar site that wanted to analyze plume, so they sent several plumed cigars to a lab - the results were that in all cases it was actually mold. So they issued a challenge: Send us plumed cigars, we'll test them and if they are actually plumed we'll give you $250. They tested about a dozen of the most promising samples and in all cases they were either mold or bacterial growth.

Now I'm not saying that cigar plume definitively doesn't exist, but if it does, it's so rare and it's so easy to mistake mold or bacteria for plume, that for practical purposes you should just assume that any plumed cigar you see is actually growing microbes and don't buy it or smoke it. The BS that retailers will feed you, wanting to sell you their cigars even though they're moldy - even respected shops like this one: www.cgarsltd.co.uk/cigar-library/plume_or_mould.html (that was written by one of the most respected tobacconists in the UK and the photos are clearly of moldy cigars) - makes it difficult enough. I've been told "if it's white it's plume" by clerks at more than one well respected shop and one time the clerk got backed up by a guy who told me he was an expert because he has 3,000 cigars at home, most have plume, it makes them taste better, he knows it's plume because it's white spots all over the sticks, and I'm an idiot.

Just make it easy on yourself by staying away from cigars with white shite on them (unless it's bits off the band, which happens sometimes and is obvious when you look at it closely).

Pipe tobacco plume is another story, that's minerals and sugars crystallizing as the moisture in the leaf evaporates and is reabsorbed when the temperature changes, mostly where the leaf was cut. You see it more on flakes, where most of the exposed surface area is stacked cut edges.

That's good news.

And never worry about brining up old threads. Our resident gravedigger, qmechanics will thank you.

That's a close-up picture of a tree.

Even though mostly unsmokable, it is Penzance.

It looks just fine. 

And, yes, your disdain for P is noted.