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Learn · StorageThe Sick Period
A new cigar that smells like ammonia or smokes flat and harsh usually isn't a bad cigar... it's a young one, or a travel-shocked one, and two weeks of rest fixes most of what's wrong.
You didn't get a bad cigar
This is the mistake that costs beginners real money: a box arrives, the first stick out of it tastes sour and sharp, and the whole box gets written off... or worse, thrown out. The blend gets blamed for something the calendar and the delivery truck did. Before judging any cigar that just arrived, give it time. The cigar you smoke two weeks from now is not the cigar that came off the truck.
Problem one: the cigar is young
Tobacco spends months in fermentation before rolling, and one of the byproducts is ammonia. Aging rooms let most of it escape, but the process doesn't stop on a schedule... a cigar rolled and shipped on the young side is still off-gassing when it lands on the doorstep. This is the sick period: a window where the cigar smells faintly of ammonia at the foot and smokes bitter, sharp, and muddled, with the flavors refusing to separate.
The test costs nothing. Smell the foot. A clean cigar smells like hay, barnyard, cocoa, raisin... agricultural things. An ammonia edge, anything that reads like cleaning product, means the cigar needs time, not a trash can. Time in a ventilated spot at normal RH lets the ammonia finish leaving, and the flavors that were hiding behind it come forward.
Problem two: the cigar is travel-shocked
Separate issue, same symptom. A shipping box swings through trucks, planes, and loading docks... temperature and humidity ranges no storage setup would allow... and the moisture inside each cigar ends up unevenly distributed. Dry at the foot, fine in the middle, or the reverse. The cigar looks normal and smokes wrong: tight, steamy, harsh, burning crooked. The basics are covered in how long cigars last; the practical point here is that travel shock and the sick period arrive together on the same delivery truck, and rest cures both.
How long to wait
Two weeks minimum in stable storage with a two-way pack... the pack itself is reviewed here: Boveda humidity packs. A useful rule of thumb: rest a cigar at least as long as it spent in transit. If the foot still carries an ammonia note at two weeks, keep waiting and check weekly... a strongly ammoniated cigar can want a month or more, and it will still come around. Every cigar reviewed on this site arrives by mail and rests before it's lit, because a cigar smoked off the truck is a review of the shipping, not the blend.
When it actually is the cigar
Rest fixes chemistry and moisture. It doesn't fix a blend that was never good. A cigar that rested a month at proper RH, smells clean, and still smokes harsh is just answering the question. And fuzz on the wrapper is a different problem entirely... that call is plume versus mold, not patience.
Keep reading
From the humidor I can't point you at one specific cigar that smoked rough and then came around, and there's a reason for that: I have enough cigars that nothing gets lit fresh. Every cigar I review has rested at least two weeks in my humidor first, and most sit a lot longer than that. So I've mostly designed the sick period out of my own smoking without thinking about it. The only time I light something that hasn't rested is on the road, when I didn't bring any or a friend hands me one, and I don't review those. If you're buying online and lighting up the day the box lands, give it two weeks before you judge it... that alone fixes most of the "this was harsh" complaints I see.