Hygrometers on a Plane

[PapaDisco]

Subtitle for this post should be: "Things to Do When You're Bored Silly on a Long Flight."

I was curious about the conditions we subject our sticks to when we fly, and so on my current trans-pacific trip I brought along one of my little digital hygrometers. The usual Humi hygrometer, so no real space-age, synthetic hair accuracy, just something to sample with.

I packed the hygrometer in a Hefty ziplock back with three cardboard boxed robustos and one tubo robusto. No Boveda, no damp towel. Just the sticks straight out of my 65% humidor and the hygrometer inside the bag. Not double bagged either (which is of interest since plastic baggies are not perfect vapor barriers).

Not surprisingly, the hygro read an adjusted 65% right off the bat. Just what it was reading in the Humi. Surprisingly however, was that 6 hours into the 12 hour flight (and 16 hours after being packed: first flight canceled, ugh) the hygrometer was still reading 65%!

At the 6 hour point, I opened the bag a wee bit, and took out the hygrometer just to see how bad the humidity levels were in the plane. I zipped the bag closed and let the hygrometer settle down over a couple of minutes. No surprise here, it pegged at zero rH in the plane cabin. Ugh!

Put the hygrometer back in the bag and it slowly returned, but now only to 58%, so just the act of letting out the bagged air dropped the rH very quickly. After a couple of hours the rH was still at 58% so the cigars themselves are unable to rehumidify the bag with any speed.

At my layover in Incheon, I added a couple of drops of bottled water on a napkin, inserted it into the bag (the rH in the Asiana lounge, air conditioned of course, was in the 40's) and quickly brought the bagged rH up to 72%rH, that's with just the tiniest bit of moisture, so you can see how the damp napkin trick can quickly over humidify. Left the napkin in for a half hour, took it out, and the bag rH settled back to 63% for the remainder of the trip, including a 6 hour leg to Hanoi.

So, there you have it! Terribly unscientific, and Piggy will be pulling his hair out over this lackadaisical experiment, but those baggies work better than expected. And as Nino alway says, the sticks themselves have adequate humidity to do some of this work. But don't let a pinhole get in your bag or things will dry out fast!

Interestingly, from time to time when I get a new box I pull out a couple of sticks to make room in the box, throw in the hygrometer and bag the box for an hour just to get a "baseline" humidity on a new shipment. I always get a reading from low to mid 60's when it's a box that the Czar crew have wrapped and shipped, which says something about how well all that plastic and tape is doing its job!

[TheDistrictJP]

Awesome experiment and documentation!

[LordAnubis]

Hahahh wow you really were bored!! What did your seat mates think about you pulling out a plastic bag with cigars and reading digital outputs etc? If it was me doing it i would have had the on board air marshall asking me questions i'm sure. "standard procedure" ofcourse.

[CUBANO]

Glad you enjoyed the experiment, and kept yourself busy. I would have not worried about dried cigars on a 12 hr trip.

[StingMeadery]

Thanks for taking the time to share. Now to get my air hostess friend to ziplock all my boxes as she brings them in

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[OkieJoe]

good stuff

[subport]

brilliant.

thanks for sharing your experiement with us.

never really worried before but now that slightly nerve thing is just gone...

cheers

[OkieJoe]

Hahahh wow you really were bored!! What did your seat mates think about you pulling out a plastic bag with cigars and reading digital outputs etc? If it was me doing it i would have had the on board air marshall asking me questions i'm sure. "standard procedure" ofcourse.

sometimes a handfull of cigars and a hygrometer looks like this, Mus.

[fookite]

sometimes a handfull of cigars and a hygrometer looks like this, Mus.

cigar dynamite.jpg

Those look like cracker RyJs.

[PapaDisco]

sometimes a handfull of cigars and a hygrometer looks like this, Mus.

cigar dynamite.jpg

So THAT's why security strip searched me . . .

[Maplepie]

Nice little experiment there PapaDisco

i do have a reason why it read 58% after you plopped it back in, though:

As pressure increases and drops, it messes with the Hygrometric Equilibrium. That is, the equilibrium between Liquid Water and Gaseous Water (RH) in a closed container. This is why water evaporates: it's because the equilibrium is not satisfied and the air needs to be a certain humidity for water to stop evaporating. constant air flow causes dry air to go ontop of the liquid water thus not making it a closed system.

But anyways, enough science lesson. Pressure will affect how much the equilibrium changes and therefore: how effective the Boveda pack is in the plane with lower pressure. it's good that you brought a digital hygrometer because synthetic hair hygros and metal coil hygros work on the expansion and contraction of an item. this expansion and contraction would change it EVEN MORE if you were up there.

In other words, the RH could've very well been 65% despite the hygrometer reading 58%

[Optic101]

Good work. Gives a pice of mind.

I always travel with my cigars in ziplock and tupperware.

Thanks for sharing.

[SaintLuis]

The biggest trouble I have when travelling is the different humidity whereever i land.

I took some cigars with me to TX recently, where it was warm and humid (compared to the very dry, cold climate here), and the thing tunneled like crazy. I got 2" of enjoyment out of the cigar before I had to start fixing it (burning back the wrapper to catch up), and had to toss it about halfway through.

I didn't have the sticks in a zip lock, which probably contributed (they were just in my travel case, which isn't air tight), but it makes me wonder if there's a smart way to prep cigars for travel to a different climate, say on vacation, that will obviate the humidity difference and tunneling.

Smoking inside in controlled environs is just so much better. That's the real solution.

[PigFish]

No, I did not pull my hair out!!! -LOL I am bald!… It is gone already from trying to debunk guru junk science!!!

Never put wet objects in with sealed cigars! That is a really bad idea. The small amount of water vapor that you lost in the opening of the bag was not enough to change the cigars. You can do the psychrometrics on this yourself and find you only lost a few grains of water from that bag.

You have observed some great lessons. The small amount of water to create the 58rH is from the wrapper and outer layers of your cigar. The diffusion of water from inside the cigar would take many hours if not days to reflect. This teaches us some lessons about hygroscopic material as a humidity buffer! Left in the bag long enough your hygrometer would return to 65rH. As a source of water, if you heated the bag some you might find that the rH moves considerably higher than 65rH. While this seem counterintuitive, one must understand that tobacco is not the same as water vapor in space. As you increase temperature, and agitate water, it weakens the bonds of water in tobacco and lets it loose to the environment, your closed bag! Frankly this is why I don't like 'bagged' storage.

Your cigar is a water source to the sealed environment. And while the water content is constant, you can move water around in there by changing the temperature and actually cause condensation and water damage to your cigar! This is of course another reason that I insist on constant temperature…

This teaches some great lessons on topics such as dry boxing, equilibrium rH and the hysteresis of water and tobacco.

The answer lies in the proper conditioning of your cigars in the first place and the time necessary for the acclimatization of the rolled cigar over time. It also teaches us some valuable lessons about temperature and what changes in temperature can do to effect water content in the cigar itself.

Thanks for sharing! -Piggy

[Nino]

Great experiment and I can see you being bored on such a long flight and using the time productively....

From my experience, the humidity level in an a/c cabin is not much higher than 35% on average ( depending on how many packs the airline is using in maintaining a nice & humid cabin atmosphere ) so I am surprised that the thing read 58% and not lower.

Pressure might be a factor ( the cabin pressure is maintained at ca. 7000 feet/ 2400 metres throughout the flight ) as commented earlier.

I've never had any problems taking sticks with me or noticed any sharp change after a flight.

But I never did much care as long as they tasted good after landing

[PapaDisco]

Hi Nino,

The 58% reading was from inside the cigar baggie after it had been opened once. So that humidity was coming from the cigars replacing the water to the dry cabin air that got into the bag.

When I left the Hygrometer out on my tray table it quickly settled at zero. This was a 747-400 we were flying. 35% humidity would be a major improvement over 0% and would come close to replicating many air conditioned office environments. I'm sure you know what you're talking about when you say cabin humidity would typically be 35%rH, but it sure never feels like that to me when I fly. I wonder if we're talking about the same number?

The other thing about Hygrometers of course is that they're inaccurate as we all know, and the Hygrometers that I've experienced have an inaccuracy that grows exponentially the farther the reading goes from it's test point. So I can expect my Hygrometer to read a corrected level accurately, but only right around the salt calibration point. If I get way beyond that (say 20-30% rH) then the calibration is way off and in an unknown direction.

[JohnnyO]

I have tested this before on shorter Caribbean flights to the island and we might get 10% RH. However, adding drinking water to that cigar might not have been a good idea. If you don't smoke it on your trip and put it in your humi back home you might not like what you see after a while. John

[Nino]

Hi Nino,

The 58% reading was from inside the cigar baggie after it had been opened once. So that humidity was coming from the cigars replacing the water to the dry cabin air that got into the bag.

When I left the Hygrometer out on my tray table it quickly settled at zero. This was a 747-400 we were flying. 35% humidity would be a major improvement over 0% and would come close to replicating many air conditioned office environments. I'm sure you know what you're talking about when you say cabin humidity would typically be 35%rH, but it sure never feels like that to me when I fly. I wonder if we're talking about the same number?

The other thing about Hygrometers of course is that they're inaccurate as we all know, and the Hygrometers that I've experienced have an inaccuracy that grows exponentially the farther the reading goes from it's test point. So I can expect my Hygrometer to read a corrected level accurately, but only right around the salt calibration point. If I get way beyond that (say 20-30% rH) then the calibration is way off and in an unknown direction.

Actually I was being optimistic in those 35% for airline's sake - say 25% being the norm and it might hit the mark.

Certainly not 0%.

[PapaDisco]

Actually I was being optimistic in those 35% for airline's sake - say 25% being the norm and it might hit the mark.

Certainly not 0%.

I Googled the subject a little bit and as it turns out (at least according to the all-knowing, all-trustworthy web) . . . y'all in the 'front office' of some types (747-400 for example) got the benefit of an installed humidifier! The rest of us schlubs in the back had to suffer with "typical humidity levels of 2-23%!" Ouch!

Anyway, I think the moral of the story is that it doesn't take much, just a plane old baggie, to protect your smokes when you fly. Just make sure that the ziplock is sealed and without perforations or that bone dry cabin air will suck the water right out of them!

[Nino]

I Googled the subject a little bit and as it turns out (at least according to the all-knowing, all-trustworthy web) . . . y'all in the 'front office' of some types (747-400 for example) got the benefit of an installed humidifier! The rest of us schlubs in the back had to suffer with "typical humidity levels of 2-23%!" Ouch!

Anyway, I think the moral of the story is that it doesn't take much, just a plane old baggie, to protect your smokes when you fly. Just make sure that the ziplock is sealed and without perforations or that bone dry cabin air will suck the water right out of them!

Good idea to protect the sticks, well done.

As for the humidity level, yeah, that's more like it, still bone dry like the Sahara back in the suburbs ............