Colour of ash - what is the cigar telling us

[misterbulgarin]

Second scientific thread of the day.

During my smoking tenure, I've had 'The brilliant white' ash and the 'musky grey' ash. Is there a reason for this? I would hazard a guess that a darker grey ash is the result of a slightly rushed, higher temperature lighting, and the brilliant white ash is the result of a careful, timely lighting of the cigar.

Lit up an RC today and got a dark grey ash, had to adjust side burn from time to time (burning the uneven wrapper over a flame), the ash was strong and had a good 1.5 - 2 inch ash, so it's not affecting the actual cigar's ash formation. I've had a nice white ash with the RC before so maybe not all cigars are the same (well, evidently!)

any cigar scientists care to elaborate on this important matter?!

[cohibaIV]

Going from the subject a tad, I find the darker the wrapper the lighter the ash...

[larrysputnik]

I have noticed that maduros tend to give whiter ash, as cohibaIV just said, but I've also only ever noticed solid white ash in NCs. I have yet to smoke a CC that yields white ash to the degree that I have experienced before in NCs.

An interesting question that I have also asked myself. Just as the length of the ash speaks to the construction, I'm sure the the color of the ash speaks to the care taken of the leaves during the fermentation process.

[misterbulgarin]

I've had a couple of conneticuts (george reserve) which yielded amazing white and solid as a brick ash, but have also had the same cigar brand yield a muddy grey. strange!

[kingcohiba]

i have found that my ash is different in color no matter what cigar i am smoking. dark ones white and light ones dark or the other way around. i just dont even think about it anymore! i would like to know why. dont know if i will ever find out though. speaking of ash though....check out this ash i have going on this gurkha. its approaching 2 inches right now so i think its time to knock it off! pretty white though.

[larrysputnik]

Come to think of it, I might be comparing the color of the ash to the wrapper color sometimes. That is, maybe the ash appears whiter when the wrapper is darker simply because of the color contrast. I can say that the Hoyo Dark Sumatra cigars I smoke always seem to have the whitest ash, but they are also the blackest wrappers of any cigar I've ever smoked. Maybe a relative thing?

[MaledettoToscano]

For anyone who has the patience here is an old patent application with some quite interesting information on ash (in cigarettes).

Just by reading the introduction, it would seem that white is not the "natural" colour of tobacco ash and that you get that through treatment or if the leaf contains a high percentage of alkali salts. Could that be the reason why maduro wrappers, where the leaf has longer time to mature and maybe accumulate salts, give whiter ash?

[SmokinHaggis]

Found this interesting page which sheds some light:-http://www.cuban-cigars-store.com/ash.html

[El Catador]

Apparently the mineral and chemical content of the soil where the plant is grown plays a large part in determining the colour of the ash produced by the cigar, and so therefore can be particularly helpful when trying to spot fake Cubans (cigars not people).

As a typical example, Cohibas only use tobacco grown in the Vuelta Abajo region and the ash they produce is almost always a dark grey. The knock-offs tend to use wrappers and filler from outside this growing area (cheaper), and so tend to have much lighter ash (often glaring so).

As someone who's encountered more than the odd fake Cohiba over the years, this tip has served me well and saved me more than a few quid, although like anything to do with the Cuban trade in 'copies', it's not totally infallible, I've still seen cigars that were clearly fake but still burned dark grey, though they're usually pretty good copies.

[Stevieboy]

...helpful when trying to spot fake Cubans (cigars not people).

LOL!!!!