The do`s and don'ts for humidors

[Lucass111]

Everyone always talks about what storage conditions are the best and how it should be done. After years of reading and trying to figure out the perfect conditions I came to the realization that it all comes down to personal preference. As my collection grows I often sit and wondered how devastating it would be for it to get ruined. I know you could ask 20 people and get 20 different responses as to what they believe is the best RH and Temp. My question that I propose to the forum is what are some surefire ways to ruin your stash or collection. The thought of ruining a humidor full of cigars because of ignorance often comes to my mind.

 

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[WABOOM]

Using tap water with the floral foam pucks.
Don't do it.

[Islandboy]

The only “don’t” I’ve experienced personally that could easily have devastating effects to contents was liquid condensation backing up into a refrigerated wineador. I unplugged them after that scare.

[CooGAR]

DON'T buy really rare cigars and just look at them sitting in your humidor.......smoke'm!   

[TBird55]

Not listening to what your humidor is telling you. When I first received my Aristocrat, I was hell bent on keeping the temperature at 65f and the humidity at 65%. Living on the gulf coast of Alabama, the temperature and humidity are much higher, causing condensation inside my humidor. I  struggled with this for months, simple fix, adjusted temperature to 70f and humidity to 61. Cigars dried out after a few months, smoke great. The only problem, no more plume . ?....?

[joeypots]

Don't expose your cigars to big variations in temperature.

 

[ohbob976]

5 minutes ago, joeypots said:

Don't expose your cigars to big variations in temperature.

 

so i was thinking about making a separate post about this in the watering hole. I live in an apartment that was built in the 80s. it does not have central regulated HVAC. it is almost impossible to keep my cigars at a consistent temperature. Being that I'm not home for the majority of the day 8-5 ish. what would be your ( and others) advice on how to best store/regulate my cigars. especially during the hot summer months. Sometimes my temperature will swing by 5-8 digress. going as high as 74 and as low as 66 when my ac is on, at night. 

[Heatmiser]

51 minutes ago, ohbob976 said:

so i was thinking about making a separate post about this in the watering hole. I live in an apartment that was built in the 80s. it does not have central regulated HVAC. it is almost impossible to keep my cigars at a consistent temperature. Being that I'm not home for the majority of the day 8-5 ish. what would be your ( and others) advice on how to best store/regulate my cigars. especially during the hot summer months. Sometimes my temperature will swing by 5-8 digress. going as high as 74 and as low as 66 when my ac is on, at night. 

Can you install an AC unit in one of your windows?  Use this to cool the room where your humidor is located.  I have done this for the past 15 years.

[BoliDan]

1 hour ago, ohbob976 said:

so i was thinking about making a separate post about this in the watering hole. I live in an apartment that was built in the 80s. it does not have central regulated HVAC. it is almost impossible to keep my cigars at a consistent temperature. Being that I'm not home for the majority of the day 8-5 ish. what would be your ( and others) advice on how to best store/regulate my cigars. especially during the hot summer months. Sometimes my temperature will swing by 5-8 digress. going as high as 74 and as low as 66 when my ac is on, at night. 

Other than fixing the AC problem, the best thing to do is get asome sort of smaller chamber that keeps temps better than your apartment. You can find a decently sized wine cooler for around $200. Some of them only go as high as 66F. That is fine.

[jackupster]

1 hour ago, ohbob976 said:

so i was thinking about making a separate post about this in the watering hole. I live in an apartment that was built in the 80s. it does not have central regulated HVAC. it is almost impossible to keep my cigars at a consistent temperature. Being that I'm not home for the majority of the day 8-5 ish. what would be your ( and others) advice on how to best store/regulate my cigars. especially during the hot summer months. Sometimes my temperature will swing by 5-8 digress. going as high as 74 and as low as 66 when my ac is on, at night. 

74-66 Is perfectly fine! IMHO. As long as the RH stays relatively stable. 

[ohbob976]

Sorry, I should clarify. I have AC units in the bedroom and living room. I guess just depending on the weather it’s difficult to regulate. I guess I can keep all the ac on at all times? It’s just difficult to predict what the weather will be when I’m not home 

[Boogeyman81]

I had run out of room and packed a bunch into a mason jar with a flip top lid that latches. I threw a boveda in there and the humidity never moved, but I am thinking it was causing the cigars to become bland in a way. I don't know if it was due to lack of airflow due to the tight quarters and not much burping but the last 4 or 5 each had a similar lack of punch on the tongue. I moved them out and will revisit those ones next month.

[CaptainQuintero]

Probably the biggest I can think of:

  If you use a wine cooler/fridge never turn turn on unless you have installed a system to remove the excess moisture that will be introduced into your humidor as a by-product of having the cooler/fridge turned on.

  Beads/boveda etc do not count as a removal system!

And:

Changing r/h in your stock takes weeks/months, patience is a big part.

[TheGipper]

2 hours ago, Boogeyman81 said:

I had run out of room and packed a bunch into a mason jar with a flip top lid that latches. I threw a boveda in there and the humidity never moved, but I am thinking it was causing the cigars to become bland in a way. I don't know if it was due to lack of airflow due to the tight quarters and not much burping but the last 4 or 5 each had a similar lack of punch on the tongue. I moved them out and will revisit those ones next month.

This seems similar to vacuum sealing, which I do a lot.  The lack of airflow is fine (and arguably beneficial in the long term).

But I have found that after taking a box out of long term vacuum seal, it will go into a sick period of 6 months or so.  After that, they will be back to normal.  Maybe the same is happening with your jar sealed singles.

[HumidorJuan]

10 hours ago, joeypots said:

Don't expose your cigars to big variations in temperature.

 

What’s your definition of big variations? Mine swings from 71 to 74 degrees in a day. 

[joeypots]

7 hours ago, MaxwellM said:

What’s your definition of big variations? Mine swings from 71 to 74 degrees in a day. 

3 degrees F is nothing, imo.  

[SmokyFontaine]

20 hours ago, CaptainQuintero said:

Probably the biggest I can think of:

  If you use a wine cooler/fridge never turn turn on unless you have installed a system to remove the excess moisture that will be introduced into your humidor as a by-product of having the cooler/fridge turned on.

  Beads/boveda etc do not count as a removal system!

And:

Changing r/h in your stock takes weeks/months, patience is a big part.

I think as is the case with everything cigar-related, there are no absolutes

I run my two for about 3.5 months in the dead of summer when the house can vary from 70-82F or so. Condensation is a problem, and there is some science about amount of moisture the air can hold, combined with difference in interior and exterior temps which I read once and promptly forgot. But with a 10-15 degree difference from external and internal temps, I haven't had any moisture issues in my wineadors for a couple years now. I never plug the drain, and in one I keep my rH a shade below 70, then my more Cuban-heavy one is a steady 65%. I don't have nice cedar drawers, but I do have slats that I cut to fit in the grooves meant for the wire racks so I kinda made poor man's spanish cedar shelves.

I experienced a couple spots of mold exactly one time. When I re-hydrated a Boveda, but a corner of it was apparently still wet when I put it back in touching the cardboard box of a couple of Siglo II's. I noticed quickly, wiped it off, got rid of the cardboard, and not a spot since. 

I wouldn't consider anything to be set it and forget it (plus...they're all so damn beautiful. Every couple months I have to go through my boxes just to stare and plot out what to smoke next!!) so I go through pretty thoroughly with some frequency. 

Anyway, just one more opinion on it. 

[CaptainQuintero]

1 hour ago, SmokyFontaine said:

I think as is the case with everything cigar-related, there are no absolutes

I run my two for about 3.5 months in the dead of summer when the house can vary from 70-82F or so. Condensation is a problem, and there is some science about amount of moisture the air can hold, combined with difference in interior and exterior temps which I read once and promptly forgot. But with a 10-15 degree difference from external and internal temps, I haven't had any moisture issues in my wineadors for a couple years now. I never plug the drain, and in one I keep my rH a shade below 70, then my more Cuban-heavy one is a steady 65%. I don't have nice cedar drawers, but I do have slats that I cut to fit in the grooves meant for the wire racks so I kinda made poor man's spanish cedar shelves.

I experienced a couple spots of mold exactly one time. When I re-hydrated a Boveda, but a corner of it was apparently still wet when I put it back in touching the cardboard box of a couple of Siglo II's. I noticed quickly, wiped it off, got rid of the cardboard, and not a spot since. 

I wouldn't consider anything to be set it and forget it (plus...they're all so damn beautiful. Every couple months I have to go through my boxes just to stare and plot out what to smoke next!!) so I go through pretty thoroughly with some frequency. 

Anyway, just one more opinion on it. 

  I'm not a big expert (or even a small one!) On dew points etc either, you may be running successfully due to the drain not being plugged; the humidors aren't sealed so there is an area for exchange to happen. But that's opening the whole can on should you keep a sealed/open humidor etc

  The water has to go somewhere so I'm guessing that's the spot.

 I know @PigFish can come take a wisdom dump right on my head though 

[Dilligaf]

On 5/29/2019 at 11:55 AM, TBird55 said:

Not listening to what your humidor is telling you. When I first received my Aristocrat, I was hell bent on keeping the temperature at 65f and the humidity at 65%. Living on the gulf coast of Alabama, the temperature and humidity are much higher, causing condensation inside my humidor. I  struggled with this for months, simple fix, adjusted temperature to 70f and humidity to 61. Cigars dried out after a few months, smoke great. The only problem, no more plume . ?....?

I’m just down the road from you on the Ms coast! Just finished seasoning a new cc300 - were you having those issues with your aristocrat inside your house? Or was it somewhere like a garage?

[TBird55]

Just now, Dilligaf said:

I’m just down the road from you on the Ms coast! Just finished seasoning a new cc300 - were you having those issues with your aristocrat inside your house? Or was it somewhere like a garage?

Inside, keep air on 70 inside house. As you know the humidity is thick on the coast.

[PapaDisco]

Ha ha . . . active humidification . . .  . . . <duck and cover>

sort of kidding, and certainly there are some problems that only active can solve, but passive systems with lots of 'mass' for lack of a better word have been working best for me.  Staying away from anything that can mechanically fail, or input very short term spikes in liquid moisture is the biggest safety in my mind.

[Booyaa]

Never bothered too much about humidity, check it every frew months and not had any problems in over 20 years. Absolutely perplexed when I see people going so deep into it for something that is so simple. Cigars are a lot more durable than most give them credit.

[PigFish]

There are unlimited ways to ruin cigars. Cigars live in a rather narrow band of conditions when the whole spectrum of our earthly environment is considered.

A humidor (IMHO) is a boundary, an isolation device for cigars separating them from a hostile external ambient. The more hostile the external ambient, the better the humidor must be at isolation, and therefore control of the "proper humidor, or conditioned space."

There are outliers such as myself that make a study and business of this (when I have the free time). There are laymen, and there are the clueless. Humidors experts (so called) will come in all forms from those truly informed, to those that pose knowing more than they actually know.

A ruined cigar is a broad based term. A terminally ruined cigar is physically damaged beyond revival or repair. A ruined smoking experience is simply one where the neglected cigar is smoked at a time where it is not at its best. Best being the 'ideal' percent moisture content. Not my ideal, but "the smoker/owner's ideal.

I say if you want to trash a bunch of cigars, and a whole lot more smoking experiences, simply take a layman approach to building an actively cooled humidor. That should about sum it up. I mean if you don't really know how to build one, diagnose one, control one... your cigars are likely better off in an ice chest humidor.

Actively controlled micro climates for cigar storage are not really easy to build. But again, it depends on your ambient. Mine, they can run from ambients in the 50's to mid 90's in a 12 hour period. Extreme...? Yes! But I live in a largely desert area. Most actively cooled humidors will show signs of failure (again MHO) when there is a range of temperatures as little as 5 to 7 degrees F. Signs of failure are a personal opinion.

There is a mainstream maker of TE cooled coolers marked as humidors. Owning one is a good way to trash cigars. I believe their product just don't work. Yet there are a lot of cigar smokers, and good number of them here that will rave about them. It is a matter of ambients. It is a matter of knowing. It is a matter of faith.

Sometimes ignorance is bliss!

Cheers! -Piggy

[06Speed6]

I live about 2 miles from the Gulf in Texas, humidity is crazy high here as well. I use a mid size Pelican type (Seahorse) box lined with 1/4" Spanish Cedar as a humidor without any type of humidification and obviously zero airflow through the box. I smoke about 2-3 cigars a month, which is how often it gets opened, takes about 6 months before they are ready to smoke. 

I tried using Bovedas, I never could get the humidity low enough to get a good smoke. Now, with nothing and time, they are perfect.

[CaptainQuintero]

38 minutes ago, 06Speed6 said:

I live about 2 miles from the Gulf in Texas, humidity is crazy high here as well. I use a mid size Pelican type (Seahorse) box lined with 1/4" Spanish Cedar as a humidor without any type of humidification and obviously zero airflow through the box. I smoke about 2-3 cigars a month, which is how often it gets opened, takes about 6 months before they are ready to smoke. 

I tried using Bovedas, I never could get the humidity low enough to get a good smoke. Now, with nothing and time, they are perfect.

 I think you sum it all up perfectly; you take a chunk of the basics/theory and tinker with it until it works for your personal situation/environment