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!

From my Escudo tin date thread on Puff:

Escudo date code left of barcode

On the left of the barcode on the backside of the tin, the series of number is:
YEAR DATE MONTH (and four digits of gibberish) this fine tin appears have been born on July 9th 2008.

The "old" Escudo tins were made by Copes, they have a white painted lid (not a sticker). Some still live on fleabay, so if you hit the lottery, pick one up. There are reports of date codes since 2001 versions. But if its a painted lid then you got something really old, regardless!

From my other Escudo thread on puff:
The "oldest" Escudo tin I have seen is the A&C Petersen made batches, apparently from 2006 onward.


Newer tin labels changed the wording from "Fine Tobacco" to "Pipe Tobacco" around 2009. By my guess, July 11th 2009 was among the last batches of ACP made Escudo tins. New production has a red dragon like logo and is made by Scandinavian Tobacco Group (also in Denmark). All bear the same date code formats.