Beetles - Freezing vs. Extreme Freezing?

[garilla]

OK all you wanna-be coleopterists, here's a question for you.

I've seen the charts regarding how much time it would take at specific temperatures to kill beetles. However, most documentation I've found regarding how long at at certain temps are a little too high. I've got access to some rather extreme deep freezers.

Anyone know how long it would take to perform a beetle exorcisim when placed in a freezer that is at -20 to -30 F (-28 to -34 C)?

The other question is would temperatures that low seriously damage a cigar? If your answer to this is yes, then I'm wondering how do guys in Alaska get cigars delivered between the months of September and May?

(Yes, I lived in North Pole, AK for three years, so I know first-hand how cold your mail and packages can get.)

Thanks for the feedback.

- Garilla

[kjjm4]

It's an interesting question. One possible issue I can think of at extreme cold is drying. At such low temperatures, things get really dry.

[KASR]

Test it out on ONE cigar and see what happens.

[No1der]

I don't know the specific answer to your question but I'll tell you this much based on freezing another consumable product.

If you freeze strawberries in a regular freezer and then thaw them out you're going to get a lot of mushy strawberries as well as a lot of berry juice in the bag/container.

If you freeze the same berries using dry ice (which is much much much below freezing) and then thaw them the berries will be just fine. They will be just like they were befor freezing.

The reason is that slow, higher temp freezing, causes much larger ice crystals to form in the cell structure. The larger the ice crystal the more damage it does to the cell of bio matter. As is the case with the strawberries and the freezer.

The super low temperature of dry ice causes the cells to freeze much faster and thus the ice crystals are much smaller and don't damage the cells themselves nearly as much.

Now, as far as killing beatles and their eggs, I suppose that larger ice crystals will destroy them by exploding their cells but at the same time the larger crystals can potentially damage the cells of the tobacco as well. Does that change the taste? I don't know.

So, I would hazard a well educated guess that fast frozen cigars will not be as affected as it pertains to the integrity of the cigar. So it should be very much the same as it was before freezing using this method.

Will fast freezing with dry ice kill beatles and their eggs? Most likely. After all, most animals and living things die when they are frozen no matter the method.

So that's all I can contribute to this discussion. Hope it helps.