Why Your Cigar May Taste Bitter

There is little more annoying than sitting down to enjoy a smoke and discovering that your cigar tastes bitter after you take a puff. Cigars can taste bitter due to a number of reasons, and even the world’s finest cigars can turn in certain conditions.

So how do cigars end up bitter? We take a look at what causes a cigar to have a bitter flavour, how to fix a bitter cigar, and how you can avoid it from happening to your own cigar collection.

What Causes a Cigar to Taste Bitter?

There are a few things that can cause your cigar to taste bitter.

Over-humidified Cigars

In order to prevent your cigars from drying out, it is essential to keep your cigars correctly humidified. The easiest and safest way to do this is to store your cigars in a well-made humidor.

One way you can prevent your cigars from over-humidifying in your humidor is to get a digital hygrometer which monitors the humidity inside your humidor. First, you will need to ensure the hygrometer is properly calibrated before it is used. The optimum humidity level for cigars is at around 65%, though anywhere between 62% and 70% should also be fine.

If high humidity turns out to be the cause of your cigar’s bitterness, then dry-boxing a cigar may be the solution. Dry boxing simply involves taking your cigar out of your humidor and leaving it in a cigar box overnight, leaving it to dry out slowly.

Cigar Hasn’t Been Lit Properly

To light a cigar properly and ensure it is burning in the best possible way, you’ll need to use the right type of flame and technique. Sulphur-free wooden matches, as well as cigar lighters with refined pure butane, work well to get you the right flame.

When lighting the cigar, you should keep the cigar above and near the flame without letting it touch. Rotate it until there is a glowing ring all the way around. Gently blow on the embers to create a completely rounded ash before giving the cigar a quick purge to let it cool down a little.

Cigar Head is Too Wet

Bitterness can also come through as a result of the head of the cigar getting too wet. This often happens when people leave their cigars in their mouths for too long; instead, you should hold your cigar in your hand, or rest it on an ashtray, when you’re not taking a puff.

Sense of Taste

Another reason that you may be experiencing bitter tastes could be to do with your own sense of taste. There may be another factor affecting your taste buds, and these can vary widely.

Rather than there being a fault with your cigar, factors such as eating spicy foods, illness and alcohol consumption can all affect your sense of taste, causing the cigar to seem bitter.

A Bad Cigar

If you’ve exhausted all the other possibilities, you may just have to accept something we all face from time to time: a bad cigar. Bitterness can easily be possible with a low-quality cigar, even if you have been doing everything else right.

It also (rarely) happens with premium cigars, as mistakes can be made even by high-end manufacturers. In the end, we all encounter bad cigars, though they are important in helping you find the perfect cigar to suit your tastes and requirements.

Why Does My Cigar Taste Bitter Halfway Through?

Although many cigar smokers think that you can never smoke a cigar too fast, puffing too frequently can make a cigar too hot. When your cigar gets too hot, it can start to make your cigar taste bitter.

Every time you puff, it makes the flavours in the tobacco caramelise and build up, so as you progress through the cigar, the flavour becomes stronger. If you have puffed too hard or too fast when smoking, the flavour in the latter half of the cigar may become bitter.

Likewise, smoking a cigar too slowly can make a cigar almost go out. This leads many smokers to take back-to-back puffs to get the cigar burning again. This also makes the cigar too hot, leaving a bitter taste.

Slow Down Your Smoking

As a rule of thumb, you should only puff your cigar around once a minute; this should mean you enjoy plenty of the cigar’s flavour without overheating the cigar.

You could also try purging your cigar, which involves putting the cigar in your mouth and blowing air out through and around the cigar. This has a ‘purging’ effect on any tar or ammonia build-up.

Clip the Cigar Cap

Another reason your cigar may start to taste bitter is that the cap has been cut too narrow. A narrow cut doesn’t allow as much smoke to be drawn through the cigar as a wider cut would. If it’s too narrow, you may be puffing too often or hard, which can cause bitterness.

Try clipping off the top of the cap with a double-blade guillotine rather than using a cutter that produces a narrower opening, like a punch cutter or V-cutter.

If you want to experience the incredible tastes of premium cigars, then why not check out the range of Cuban cigars available here at Havana House?