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Most questions about cigars have nothing to do with the cigar. Where to smoke it, what to do about the smell, whether to bring one to a friend's house, what to drink, how many is too many. This shelf answers those.
The technique of cutting, lighting, and smoking is on the smoking basics shelf. This one is about fitting the hobby into a life: a house, a family, a job with travel, friends who don't smoke, and a budget. Several pages here are marked as personal takes, because the honest answer to "where do you smoke" is a specific back deck and not a lounge advertisement.
Where and when
- Smoking cigars at home: picking the spot, budgeting the time, and what the smell does and doesn't do outdoors.
- Smoking cigars on work travel: the always-packed bag, the hotel-patio recon, and the skip-it discipline.
- Cold weather cigars: dry winter air is the real threat, plus the wind, the butane, and the acclimation step.
- How often is too often?: what the mortality studies show about frequency, and the three markers that tell you where your line is.
The smell
- How to get cigar smell off you: why it sorbs into skin, hair and beard, and what actually takes it back off.
- Getting cigar smoke out of clothes: airing, the right wash additive, and why the dryer is the mistake.
- Getting cigar smell out of your car: the cabin filter step nobody does, and where ozone actually fits.
Other people
- Cigar etiquette at other people's houses: the don't-bring-it default, and the awkward cases ruled on.
- Cigar lounge etiquette: what the unwritten rules actually are, minus the gatekeeping.
- Hosting a cigar night: headcount math, the staging table, and guests who don't smoke.
- The guest humidor: stocking flavored and infused cigars you'll never smoke, and why they get their own container.
- Cigars as gifts: buying for someone else. Samplers, gift cards, and what to avoid.
- Celebration and wedding cigars: buying for a crowd. Quantities, budgets, and handing them out right.
What to drink
The site's position, stated up front on the first page: pairing is optional, water is a real answer, and a drink changes a cigar less than the charts claim.
- What to drink with a cigar: what a drink actually changes, the case for water, and pairing without the charts.
- Coffee and cigars: a home-roasting coffee nerd on why he still doesn't pair, and what happens when the two meet.
- Beer and cigars: carbonation is the whole mechanism, style by style, and why the IPA habit is the wrong one.
- Rum and cigars: the pairing lives or dies on sugar, the categories straight, and why the label won't tell you.
Buying habits and gear
- Beginner cigar kit: the short list of gear worth buying first, and what to skip.
- Cigar accessories you actually need: the three-item need list, what gets earned later, and the wall you can skip.
- What a local cigar shop is for: what a B&M's markup actually buys, and when online wins anyway.
- Limited edition cigars: genuinely scarce or just a badge, and why the buying window closes before you know.
- Keeping a cigar journal: what to write down, and why "that was a good cigar" is worth nothing later.
The mechanics of buying (where, samplers vs boxes, what a cigar should cost) are on the fundamentals shelf under how to buy cigars.
Keep reading
- Smoking basics: the technique shelf
- Storage: keeping cigars right at home and on the road
- From the Deck: cigars and your family and what a first cigar is actually like, the first-person versions of this shelf