Bad Stick Infection?

[Andy 84]

I started smoking a Private Stock No. 1 yesterday only to find it tasted awful. It was like a sweet earthy horribleness. I also had a Agio half corona in the last week or so that had the same underlying horrible flavour. Now I've had both of these before and thought them okay but now I couldn't smoke them.

I've smoked quite a few Cuban's recently so I don't know if that has anything to do with it, but I can't imagine I ever thought that horrible flavour was okay if it was there before. Is it possible that they went bad in the humidor? If one was bad could it have infected others?

In my humidor I had three more Agio's left which went straight in the bin, and I smoked the last Ambassadrice, which was far too mild for an evening smoke in the first place and no where near strong enough to cover up the awful taste from the Private Stock No. 1. I'm now cigar-less until tomorrow, but I'm wondering whether to air the humidor out just in case there is any of that foulness still in there!

I thought sticks were supposed to get better with age; not worse!

[rascal]

Can you describe the taste better? What rh do you run your humi at? To completely change the humidity of cigars from say 65- 70 rh does not happen in a day or 2 can be months for the cigar to fully acclimatise to the new environment so if cigars smoke great when you put them in the humi and then for the next few weeks but develop badly after a few months it could be the environment. Not all sticks get better with age some are crap to start with and are crap no matter how long you leave them

[Andy 84]

I'm not good at describing tastes, but it was like a light sweet chemical earthiness with a slightly bitter after-taste. The PS No.1 and Agio's were in there for 3 months. They were in the picture I took at the end of June and were next to each other. Everything else in the picture was long gone except for one of the Davidoff's.

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Since then I've switched to using a Boveda 69 and the humidity has been around 68-72%. It's a small singles humidor though so it varies a fair bit with the weather and openings. Most of my orders only last about three weeks so these were in there for much longer than usual.

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