New smoker clueless about humidors.
Hookshot12
Posts: 2
in Cigar 101
Hey everyone, I'm new to this site, and rather new to smoking cigars.
Recently I have started looking into buying a humidor, but I really
don't understand them. I don't know what the parts are in them, or
what they are used for, and also don't understand what exactly
"seasoning" is, what it's for, and how it's done. If someone could
explain all of this to me, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!
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Comments
To season a humidor is to essentially replace moisture in the wood that was likely lost while it was in storage. To season a humidor, you can take several approaches, probably one of the most common, and my preferred method is to charge up your humidification device with distilled water, only ever distilled water, no tap water, and put a small bowl of distilled water in the bottom of the humidor and let it sit for 2-3 days with the lid closed. What will happen over this time period is the water will evaporate and be absorbed by the spanish cedar lining your humidor, thus creating a properly humidified environment for your cigars. It is recommended that you purchase a digital hygrometer and have it set in the humidor while you season it, this way you will be able to tell when it has stabilized . After your humidity has stabilized, hopefully around 68-70%, your humidor is seasoned and you can remove the bowl of water and place your cigars in it. From this point on, you will need to check on it I'd say once a week or so to make sure your humidity is staying in the desired range and recharge the humidifier if necessary.
Hope I answered your questions adequately. Welcome to the addiction, enjoy your stay.
Joe
1. Humidor is a box lined with Cedar to help maintain not only a certain humidity level (some say anywhere between 65-70% depending on personal preference) and keep your cigars in a state that they will flourish and also "Rest" (which means your cigars can get BETTER with time over a period of many months!)
2. Humidors one more element before use. Once you've picked your perfect humidor box you then need to "Season" it. All this means is that you need to take the factory direct bone-dry cedar that came to you with the humidor and make it able to support a certain humidity (if you put your 'gars in the humi right away the cedar will suck all the moisture out of them) Seasoning can be done many ways, but the trick is TAKE YOUR TIME! You can use a dish/shot glass of DISTILLED WATER ONLY and just let that sit for a week to moisten the wood or there are "Seasoning" kits sold on the internet
3. Now that you've Seasoned the Humi you need to figure out how to get the best Humidity possible and you need to measure it. That is called a Hygrometer which is what tells you what your level is. There are two kinds, digital and analog. Digital is recommended and Analog is what usually comes WITH a humidor. The only Caveat is make sure you calibrate it and you can google how to do that, or once again, you can buy a calibrating kit to do the work for you
4. Next is you need to keep adding humidity to your humidor (because you will be in there all the time to grab more and more cigars! and that comes in many ways. The usual suspect is the green sponge-y thing that comes with most humidors and that's the cheapest but most time cosuming method. There are also Gels and such to help you and the best way is to use "HEARTFELT BEADS" if you google them you will find an almost space-age tool that will put out moisture when needed OR take it away when not needed!
The commonalities of Humidors is the general rule of thumb is 70/70 (70% humidity at 70 degrees fahrenheit) Try to stay as close to this as possible and you can't go wrong
Another thing with humidors is BUY BIG!!! Cigars are best when rested for many months or "aged" for many years and that means in the beginning buy lots of 'em so you can smoke some now and then smoke some many months or a year down the road to see how they've opened up.
There is much more that can go on with humidors and what makes them tick, but these are the basics... and like I said earlier, I've been at this Three WEEKS! That means just read the Cigar 101 forums and you will be up to speed very quick, these forums are the BEST!
HAPPY SMOKING!!!!
-Nate
A good thing to do when purchasing any hygrometer, digital (preferably adjustable) or analog, is to measure its accuracy using a salt test.
1) Take a teaspoon of salt, put it in a small dish (a juice bottle cap, for instance) and add just enough water to get it evenly damp (not soaking wet).
2) Seal this in a container with your hygrometer. I personally use a piece of tupperware sealed inside a plastic bag, with the lid on the outside. This both gives a very tightly sealed environment, and makes sure (assuming the tupperware dish is deeper than the bottle cap) that the salt/water mix is exposed to the air allowing it to properly affect the reading of the hygrometer.
3) Let sit for about 24 hours or so.
4) Humidity reading should be 75% dead on (I think... google "hygrometer salt test" to verify), if it isn't make note of the discrepancy and/or adjust your hygrometer accordingly if you have the option.
5) Repeat every 6 months or so to ensure you're consistently getting accurate readings.
Good luck!!!
i was thinking of building a humidor. I have a strange set of ideas that i want in it and i love to work with wood (my other hobby is building electric guitars) so i think it would be a great project.
If i did that i would install a peltier device in there. mmmm temperature regulation......
for those of you not familiar with the peltier device:
http://www.peltier-info.com/
good stuff
Maybe that could be a woodworking project for you. Make a million dollars and whatnot.
Every time I've checked it, though, it reads in the 77-79% range. I've tried the matchstick trick, but when I do that, the Oasis just kicks on and runs until it's back up in that range.
Right now, I've got the Oasis off and the lid standing open to let things dry out for a few hours. I'll close it up and turn the Oasis back on before I go to bed, and recheck it tomorrow.
Anybody have any suggestions?
maybe madurofan will stop by soon... he knows more about the oasis than I do.
To answer your question, no, my adjustable digital hygro won't arrive till Wed., along with a new, bigger humi (yay!) and some beads. I was hoping to have my old humi sorted out by now so I could put the cigars I got last week in it. Then I was going to use the oasis in the new one, to slowly recondition some old cigars I let dry out, at the same time it seasoned the new humi. Obviously, that means the new humi won't really be ready to use for a month or more, as I slowly bring the humidity up, but that's okay; my old humi is big enough for the non-dried out cigars I have right now.
If I can get its humidity level sorted out, that is.