The Basics of Hand Rolled Cigars

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Matthew Driggers and we're here at Cigar Castle in Tampa, Florida and on behalf of Expert Village, this is how to hand roll cigars, smoking tips and techniques. Well I want to tell you a little bit about the cigar itself. Cigar is made up of three main parts; you have the filler, the binder which holds the filler in there, and then you have the wrapper which is the outer part and the cap is a piece of the wrapper. As you might have seen, in, as you might have seen cigar rollers put it together. The strengths of the cigars you have, as far as body goes, you have the between light and full bodied. You have light, light to medium, medium bodied, medium to full bodied, full bodied. The cigar I'm smoking right now is a full bodied cigar. There's a common misconception as far as the body goes that the darker the wrapper the stronger the cigar is. That is incorrect. It's the filler that determines the strength of the cigar. What's on the inside. Just remember, it's what's on the inside that counts. Just for a little cliche there. A couple little terms you should know about cigars. Again, some people will describe a cigar as mild bodied, that's technically incorrect. Mild refers to the flavor, light refers to the body. It's like a wine, you have light to full bodied wines. A couple of cigar smoking terms you might not know. When a cigar is burning unevenly, whereas, where you have a cigar that is burning more on this side than on this side, that is called canoing. You could say it's not even burning, you could say it's canoing. Because, when you picture somebody in a canoe and they're rowing stronger one side than they are on the other, that's why they call it canoing. When a cigar is rolled tightly and your not able to get a good draw out of it, that's called plugged. It's rolled too tight. The term draw refers to the amount of smoke you can pull through it, the amount of air that can be pulled through the cigar when you're smoking it. So, those are your basics about the cigar itself."