How I Store My Tobacco

I'm not an expert on the subject but I have developed a system that seems to work for me and thought I would share it with anybody bored enough to read this! :-)

First, I have to confess that I am not really a heavy pipe smoker ( blasphemy! ) usually I smoke one bowl a day as a treat or reward, two if I've been especially good!

Second, I am extremely fickle about my tobacco. I like to try different blends in different pipes, I hardly ever smoke the same blend two times in a row.
Because of this I typically have anywhere from 10 to 20 tins open at any given time.

Now combine all those open tins with the one or two bowls a day factor and you will understand why I have to concern myself with tobacco storage.
Because I only smoke a couple of bowls a month out of any given tin it becomes critical that I store the tobacco efficiently.

There was a time when the act of opening my tobacco cabinet was a heady experience.
The aromas of the various tobaccos would flood out and leave a wonderful cloud of scent in the room that would last for several minutes. Unfortunately that wonderful cloud of scent was the proof that my tobacco was deteriorating, the oils and moisture were escaping the tins leaving the tobacco dry and tasteless.

Besides maintaining the condition of the tobacco there are a couple of secondary concerns about storing tins; the ability to find a particular blend easily and the physical constraints of stacking/arranging tins.

Unfortunately there are about a dozen different sizes and shapes of tins, which means that care must be taken to sort the tins into like sizes and shapes just to be able to stack them at all.

In my tobacco cabinet I used to stack the larger round tins in back followed by the smaller round tins, and finally the rectangular/square/oddball tins in front.

As a long term storage method for unopened tins this was fine but for my open tins it meant that every time I wanted tobacco from one of the large round tins I had to drag all of the other tins out first.
Of course if I was in a hurry I would just select one of the tins up front. Well since I am usually in a hurry this meant that those tins in back weren't getting a lot of action!

A typical stack of tins

I won't go into any detail on what I had tried before settling on my current system other than to say that I tried very hard to stick with using the original tins that the tobacco came in.
Eventually I came to the conclusion that it just wasn't practical for me to store the tobacco in the original tin.

I know that the idea of storing tobacco in anything other than the original tin is abhorent to some folks and to those folks I suggest you move on to another webpage!:-)

Once I made the decision to store my tobacco in a second source container I then started to look at what features I wanted those containers to have. Here is what I came up with and why.

Price: yes I'm somewhat thrifty ( or possibly cheap is a better description for my condition! ) since it was obvious that I would need lots of these containers it just didn't seem like a good idea to spend big bucks on each one.

Availability: since I need a lot of them they need to be readily obtainable from a variety of sources.

Airtight: they need to keep that yummy tobacco smell on the inside.

Stackable: since I'm trying to put all of them in a small cabinet they have to be stackable.

Durable: they need to unbreakable in case the stack gets knocked over accidentally.

Size: they need to be big enough to hold a full tin of tobacco ( the small ones anyway ) and they need to have an opening big enough to get at the tobacco easily.

Rather than keep you in suspense any longer what I settled on were the inevitable plastic containers. Specifically I chose the 9 oz. Rubbermaid Servin'Saver.

tobacco stored in containers

Price: 3 for a couple of bucks as I recall.

Availability: These were at my local Wallyworld, I bought 15 initially and went back for a few more a couple of months later.

Airtight: I would have preferred them to be a bit more airtight but they seem to be acceptable.

Stackable: they are sort of a rounded square container and they easily stack 4 to 6 high with no problems.

Size: they hold a full small tin easily as they are about 4 inches square by 2 inches deep. I can readily get my fingers into the container, much easier than some of the pop-top "tins" that come with a plastic lid.

Two additional benefits not on my original list are that they are transparent and that they can easily be labeled or wrote on.
Because they are transparent I can tell how much I have left of a particular tobacco at a glance and the ability to label the containers on their sides makes selection a snap.
( Rather than write on the container with a magic marker or ink pen I use a labelmaker to make a label for each container with the blend name and maker, that way I can peel the label off later and reuse the container for some other blend. )

Of course there are larger containers available for the big tins, I usually just use one of the smaller containers and refill from the big tin as necessary.
I still "cellar" unopened tins of course and I keep a lot of my empty tins in a box in the garage because they are neat to look at occasionally.

I have been using these containers for a couple of years now and have been pretty happy with them.
Since they are food grade containers there hasn't been any noticeable "outgassing" from the plastic that might affect the taste of the tobacco.
I think there are cheaper brands than Rubbermaid out there that do outgas so don't try to save a few pennies at the risk of ruining your tobacco.

As far as keeping the tobacco at the right moisture level I have a system for that as well.

At first I tried using the "disks" that are readily available at most tobacco shops. These worked okay as long as I remembered to re-soak them. Then there was the fact that I need about 30 of them to be able to rotate them regularly.
One thing I don't like about the disks is that occasionally tobacco would stick to them.

What I came up with instead was a home-made version of the disk that consists of a small square of tin foil and a small square of paper towel.
Rather than try to make something that looks like a disk what I do is cut out a square of tin foil just smaller than the opening of my container or tin ( about 3.5 inch square for the Servin'Savers ).

I then take a comparable size piece of clean paper towel and fold it a few times until I have a square about an inch wide.
I then saturate the folded paper towel square with distilled water until it is wet but not dripping.
I then place the unfolded flat tinfoil on top of the tobacco and the wet folded paper towel square on top of the tinfoil.
The paper towel square, being wet, sort of sticks to the tinfoil and does not touch the tobacco.
I then put the lid back on the container and try not to flip the container over on it's side when I put it back in the cabinet.
So far this method seems to work okay. I keep a bottle of clean water in the cabinet and if the paper towel square is completely dry when I open the container it only takes a couple of seconds to wet it down again. About once a month seems to be the average.
As yet I have not had any problems with mold using this system, if I see that my paper towel squares are starting to discolor I replace them with fresh ones.

homemade moisturizer system

Now I don't expect you Bang pipe owners to think much of my tobacco storage system but if you're just an average guy looking for a way to keep your tobacco in good shape long enough to actually smoke it all then you might give my system a try!

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