Thread: Fire Ash II

Originally Posted by Seraphim

My own ignorant and uninformed opinion would be that cigarettes contain all sorts of additives (tar, etc.) to help with produce an even burning product.
Cigars are more "all natural" just rolled up tobacco leaves, yes?

So I would think cigar ash will be cleaner than cigarette ash?

Sounds good enough to me.

Besides, cigarette ash seems a little less dignified than a good cigar's powdery remains.

Originally Posted by Seraphim

My own ignorant and uninformed opinion would be that cigarettes contain all sorts of additives (tar, etc.) to help with produce an even burning product.
Cigars are more "all natural" just rolled up tobacco leaves, yes?

So I would think cigar ash will be cleaner than cigarette ash?

I don't think tar is added to cigarettes; rather it's produced during combustion from the lighter vegetable oils naturally present in the tobacco. The manufacturing processes for cigars are designed to increase the oil content of the leaf, so cigars seem likely produce more tar. The importance of cigarette tar is that cigarette smoke is inhaled so the tar is deposited in the lungs where it stays; cigars aren't inhaled so this isn't as much of a problem.

OTOH cigarettes do have chemicals added to encourage them to easily light and stay lit, but as these also encourage a very complete burn this might mean that cigarette ash might be of a finer and more consistent quality that is more comparable to fireplace ashes. And the extra oil in cigar leaf seems to make them reluctant to burn cleanly; I've noticed that really oily cigars tend to produce a darker and coarser ash. I mentioned in an earlier thread that I had poor results with cigar ash; the cigar in question was a particularly oily specimen, and produced a very dark gray ash that was probably full of coarse partially-combusted charcoal and tar. In retrospect I probably should have tried a Macanudo.

I used to attend a weekly cards game, and Punch was my cigar of choice as well.

OK, so to begin with, let's have a little backround music for this thread, I think this fits the bill about right: