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.

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!