Cigar Journal Template
Two sheets, because a journal has two rhythms. Provenance is written once per purchase — brand, vitola, box code, source, price paid, which container it went into. Conditions and outcome are written once per session. Bound notebooks merge the two, which is why you end up rewriting the same brand name forty times and quietly stop.
The session sheet includes two columns almost no printed format has: the container a cigar came out of and that container’s relative humidity at the time. Those are what let you answer the question a journal exists for — whether a disappointing cigar was the cigar or the box it sat in. The same stick at 72% and at 62% is a different smoke, so an observation without a reading beside it can’t be compared to anything.
Print it, or take the CSV into a spreadsheet. No account, no email, nothing to sign up for. The reasoning behind each field is in how to keep a cigar journal; if you haven’t checked what your hygrometer actually reads, start with calibrating it so the RH column means something.
Sheet 1 — Collection
One row per purchase. Written once, never rewritten.
| Date in | Brand & line | Vitola | Wrapper | Box code (verbatim) | Source | Qty | Price paid | Container |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Sheet 2 — Session log
One row per session. Container and RH are the columns bound journals omit.
| Date | Brand & line | Vitola | Container | RH % | Flavor | Aroma | Constr. | Draw | Burn | Min | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Or let something else keep the record
Paper never loses your data to a defunct service, which is a real advantage. Its limit is aggregation: answering “what have I actually paid for this line across four purchases” means flipping pages and doing arithmetic, so nobody does it. Cedar keeps the same fields and answers that question directly — and exports everything back out as JSON and CSV whenever you want it.