Plume or Bloom vs. Mold

[cmitch]

I found this thread interesting and thought it deserved a bump.
I've run into this discussion with my local B&M shop. I pretty much had my head took off for even suggesting that there was mold on their cigars. But, as demonstrated here, I was right. Mold is fuzzy looking while plume is crystalline. It was definitely mold I seen on their sticks though some of them were plume, as well.

[issues]

Originally Posted by cmitch

I found this thread interesting and thought it deserved a bump.
I've run into this discussion with my local B&M shop. I pretty much had my head took off for even suggesting that there was mold on their cigars. But, as demonstrated here, I was right. Mold is fuzzy looking while plume is crystalline. It was definitely mold I seen on their sticks though some of them were plume, as well.

Had the same thing happen to me recently. I went to a B&M I don't go into often and saw a bunch of La Riqueza covered in nice round mold blooms. I told the guy at the counter that he may want to get those out of the case so customers don't see it but he insisted that it was plume and not mold...

He even told me he had one of them tested chemically to see if it was mold and it came back negative.

[cmitch]

Originally Posted by issues

Had the same thing happen to me recently. I went to a B&M I don't go into often and saw a bunch of La Riqueza covered in nice round mold blooms. I told the guy at the counter that he may want to get those out of the case so customers don't see it but he insisted that it was plume and not mold...

He even told me he had one of them tested chemically to see if it was mold and it came back negative.

That's funny. There is no 'chemical' test you can do unless the mold has spored and become toxic. Even Stachybotrys is harmless until it reaches the 'toxicity' stage. The sure way to tell is to grow a culture. Not hard to do if you have sterile petri dishes to grow it in a humid environment. As I said, I reached the same resistance from them when I suggested they get them out of the humidor. I think the present manager will be more vigilant since he is very knowledgeable about these things. He did get rid of them.