The easiest way to cellar tobacco that is NOT already sealed in a tin, is by sealing it in a mason jar. However, the seal on a mason jar CAN fail! There's no point in storing a jar of baccy for decades, and then finding out all you have left for your effort is a pile of dry tobacco dust.

Firstly, the term "mason jar" is applied to the SCREW TOP jars on this blog. There are also "bail top" mason jars, these have a spring loaded hinged lid that presses down on an almost comically large rubber washer. Bail-tops are NOT ideal for long term storage, they are fine (in fact, great) for short-term use. Their ease of opening makes it a quick task to pop open, load a pipe, and close back up. The wire springs loose tension over time, and the rubber gasket will also distort and could form gaps, allowing air leaks.

The screw-tops are the best for long term cellaring. These lids come in two parts, the LID and the RING. The ring simple tightens down the lid over the mouth of the jar. Most lids have a pop-up "nipple", this is not really a tamper-evident function, but an air-tightness alert. The rubber washer is thin on these lids, and soft. When jammed down, the rubber forms a tight seal by getting distorted and mashed down, effectively filling in all microscopic gaps. Once you open it, this seal starts to deteriorate. While fine for keeping things going as you combust the jar contents, avoid re-using lids. Danged things are less than a buck each - just get new lids (and mostly they come with matching rings)!

The pop-up button will only work when air is evacuated. In "canning" of foodstuff, the jar is boiled or cooked before the lid is put on, this process removes all air. With pipe tobacco we don't really want to cook the precious cargo. One good recommendation is to run the (new) jar through a dishwasher cycle - NO detergent, and with heated dry. Lids should NOT be washed. The dishwasher will wash icky things out of the glass jar, and the heater will dry it out as well as make the glass hot. If you quickly load in the tobacco, not allowing the jar to cool, then put the lid on and tighten - it will cause the popup button to be pulled in as the jar cools, and cools the air within, and reduces its volume thusly. As long as the seal holds, the button stays down. An easy way to judge the health of your cellared tobacco!

It is suggested that you leave a quarter inch or more of space at the top of the jar. Especially if you are packing (loose cut) baccy into the jar, as it will start to expand and could push up against the lid, possibly breaking the seal. And a wee bit of air is necessary for proper aging in any case. Another thing to watch out for are loose strands of baccy that could get between the mouth of the jar and the rubber on the lid. Leaving sufficient air space makes it easier to avoid this simple error, which leaves a nice air leak channel through the rubber seal. Periodically checking your jar collection for up-turned nipples is a good practice.

Cellaring your tobacco collection is pretty simple. Mason jars, or factory sealed tins. Done.

But what about short-term storage of your baccy once you pop the seal after aging it to perfection all those years? If you had it stored in a mason jar, viola, just put the cap back - and open as needed until the contents of the jar are exhausted (or you are exhausted, whichever comes first).

Tins on the other hand, are a different animal. Several different animals really. Round screw on tins like Escudo are pretty good for re-closing. Even though the seal has been popped, you can still keep baccy fresh (while using it) for several weeks - simply by screwing the cap back on tightly. Care must be taken when popping the seal - use a dime or similar sized coin to ease the seal apart (giving the POP). Don't hammer the lid off and bend it, or it will not close back tightly again.

The GL Pease and C&D tins, with the pull off caps, will never seal air-tight with the supplied plastic "hat". Ditto with the rectangular/square tins such as Samuel Gawith. Both these kinds require a little ingenuity, and this idea comes from Greg Pease's posting somewhere, sometime ago.

Take regular kitchen aluminum foil. Tear off a piece that is much more than twice the opening of the tin you have popped. Yes, new foil only. Don't be cheap and try to reuse the foil from roasting your turkey. Fold the foil in half, so now you have a 2-ply sheet that is larger than the opening of the tin. Place this double layer of foil over the open tin, about centered so there is an even amount of slack all around. Take the lid, and jam it on (without tearing the foil). Magic, you just resealed the tin! This can last several weeks while you burn the contents of the tin. Note that each time you open/close this foil seal, you do weaken the foil, and it will become lesser and lesser efficient in locking in your baccy freshness.

Personally I also throw the whole tin into a suitable sized ziplock baggie (genuine ziplock only!) and zipper it shut. It may help keeping moisture from seeping in/out. Ziplocks by themselves are only good for keeping baccy fresh for a few days. But doubled with the foil ploy described above, I have retained opened tins for nearly a year this way without too much drying out occurring. An additional benefit of the ziplock is to protect the tin contents from an accidental "oops, I dropped it". Rather than have to sweep the contents of the tin off the floor (and smoking it anyways) - everything will be neatly collected within the retaining ziplock baggie. Now you can see why I often have twenty or more open tins at any given time!

Tobacco Cellar:
March 2, 2011
"(Useless?) Statistics
Total 300 Members with over 1,800 lbs (0.9 ton) of baccy!"

Mercy! Three hundred of us have almost a metric ton of tobacco cellared (as of now)!

Gotta love that. Well, were do we put it all? Newcomers to this hobby often ask 'do I store my tobacco in the cigar humidor'? And the answer is, NO. Sealed tins are stored as, well, sealed tins. Opened tins, or bulk baccy should be sealed into a nice clean glass mason jar. That's the easy part, but where does one put it? I currently have over 70 lbs (that's over 43 kg for the metric inclined, if my math is correct), and this question is a doozy.

Personally, I just toss tins and jar into large cardboard boxes. Where possible and known, I mark the "Target Year" on each box and stack them in a dark basement closet. And yes, tins to go into the wrong boxes quite often, and I do "lose" tins and jars often, only to rediscover them at a later date. This is not a perfect system, I have to admit. It is a nuisance to manhandle these large boxes, and there are a LOT of them. But a bigger concern that I'm starting to worry about is the "exploding tin" syndrome. Buried in boxes, which are buried under other boxes, there is no way I can visually inspect my cache of tins.

But wherever you put them, just be sure it is in a DRY, COOL and DARK place. Dry because tins may rust, and fall apart eventually. Cool because excess heat could over-ferment the contents and the tin may explode (a bulging bottom is a warning sign). And dark because sunlight and even indoor lighting may expose your precious cargo to heat and/or UV radiation.

A closet is good. But when things scale up to this volume, it will take a large closet. Or two. Or three. Keep that in mind as you build your cellar!

Here is your latest delivery, a stack of tins ye tall. Now what? How does one "age" this tobacco?

Easy, leave the tin alone, in a cool and dark place. Visit as often as you like, but do NOT open the tin (until you are ready to ignite its contents). Easy.

Ah, but what about bulk blends? The kind that comes in giant ziplock baggies. Or the tins that you just HAD to open and sniff thereupon.
For that we need the "mason jar". Or a whole bunch of them, depending on the quantity of tobacco you have. The Ball and Kerr brands are generally recognized as premium canning jars, so I would recommend these two names. Select jar size based on the volume of baccy you intend to store. The half pint jar holds about 2oz to 4oz of baccy, depending on its cut and consistency. Flakes, for example, are compressed, and with some tetris-dexterity one can cram quite a bit of the good leaf into a jar.

Select wide-mouth jars. They are just easier to scoop out from, and cost about the same as regular mouth jars. While I'm all for recycling and reusing, do NOT use a jar that has ever held any kind of foodstuff. Yes you can wash it, disinfect it, sterilize it, but just don't. Danged jars are dirt cheap, spring the nickel.

You can reuse jars that were used for baccy storage, sure. Just rinse with water, don't need no soap. But replace the lids, the rubber gasket gets squished after use and may fail in the future. Lids are dirt cheap, you cheapskate!

The best way to prepare jars is to simply run them through a dishwasher, just the jars (not lids, not bands, not your dinner plate either). Hot water, NO DETERGENT. Set the dishwasher to use the heated dry cycle. When the heater shuts off, you're ready. Do the filling quickly, you want the jars to be hot. Measure in your tobacco, leave like a quarter inch on the top for air space. Add lid, make sure no baccy is on the lip of the jar to compromise the seal area. Tighten band. As the jar cools, the air within also cools and contracts. The lid "nipple" will pop down (may take a day or a month, depending on how much air you left in there), ensuring a secured seal. And done! Easy! Don't forget the labels, with content and date clearly marked. Open after several years, enjoy.