Catfish: How to season or reaseason a humidor using Kitty Litter or Beads
I have had several people with humidity issues and new humi's contact me regarding seasoning and reseasoning humidors. I figured starting a thread would make this a bit easier for anyone interested, and I won't have to explain myself over and over. I came up with this method while using multiple humi's after having stability issues. I will post pictures and season an old humi for this project. For now it is drying out. I do not claim to be the end all be all of cigar knowledge, but this has worked for me and several other people with great success. The only time it did not, gel was used, which is why I recommend beads or Kitty Litter.
FYI...I am not here to debate whose method is better, which one works best, which one you should use and I do not recommend this for cooler's or wineadors. I am not an expert, just a guys whose helped a few people.
Rule number 1: DO NOT WIPE! Every person I've ever talked to that had fluctuation issues, employed this method. It can warp the wood, it is not consistent, and might lead to mold. If you wiped, let it dry out....
Rule number 2: Be patient and don't put your damn smokes in there!!!!
What you need:
1. Kitty litter or beads, I use Exquisicat and have used Heartfelt beads in the past with this method. I do not recommend using gel. More is better...start at one lb, work up to two lbs for larger humi's. I have not seasoned a cabinet in this method so I cannot say it works, but I cannot imagine it would not.
2. Brand new sponge and a dish to put it on
3. Distilled water
4. Xikar digital hygrometer-$15 and they work great. If they break, you get a new one...
Day one: Place the sponge soaked in distilled water on dish and place it in the humi. Close your humi for two days. Don't open it. I know you will, you probably want to...but don't. Now wait until day three and forget about the humi
Day three: place dry beads in the humi, do not pull sponge. Leave this for 24 hours, beads will soak up excess moisture and charge
Day four: Pull the sponge, put your hygro in there, chances are rh should be higher then 70, probably 80ish, wait for two days and leave it closed. This is the stabilization period where the beads soak up excess moisture and stabilize internal rh.
Day six: by now your rh should be stable at 70-75 and will drop once you fill it with cigars. Do not fill it with cigars. If rh is too low or high...see below
Day 7-10: if the rh is stable, fill it with cigars.
Day six-part two: If for some reason your rh drops too low, then the humi has not soaked up enough moisture. If that is the case, go back to day three and put the sponge in if the beads are fully charged. If the beads are not fully charged, you can spray them as well. In the past, I have sprayed the beads a little bit to bring rh up to 65 if that is what I wanted, or 70 if that is what you want. If it is too high, which in my case the last time was 69, i jsut added some more dry beads and waited a day and it went to 65. This may take another day or two to get your rh stable. I normally wait for one extra day at the desired rh before I put cigars in.
Unstable rh is not good for your wrappers and can cause cracking. By seasoning properly in this fashion, I have found my humi's fluctuate much less. I normally spray my beads once a month. Some people like Boveda, I like spending $20 on enough beads to last a lifetime via kitty litter. Since I am in my humi's regularly, once a month is not much to ask for management. Having patience is the key to seasoning. There is nothing wrong with waiting and taking your time. I actually know cabinet owners who just use cups of distilled water once seasoned properly with very little beads. If you have any questions, feel free to ask here. I will be posting pictures of a reseason starting tomorrow as well. I have found regulating 3 humi's can be a pain in the rear and have had to reseason multiple times until I figured this out. Every time someone has an issue, my first question is did you wipe? The answer is always yes. If your humi does not hold rh after this, you probably need more beads or may have a bad seal. You might also need to extend day 1-3 into a five day period or use multiple dishes with distilled water. It;s not rocket science, it's getting wood to absorb moisture and beads to regulate it.
My own personal experience is I have used this 5 times now and seasoned humi's for high rh at 69-70 for aging or conny's, as well as low rh for maddy's and ISOM at 62rh, or 65rh for regular stock. I perfected this because I wanted to experiment storing cigars at different rh's and determining the differences.
