Issues after moving to Whynter CHC-120S
Smokindog
Posts: 12 ✭
Since it's my first post, I'm going to be "less brief" 
Skip right to the QUESTION if completely not interested in my setup.
SETUP & BACKGROUND
I've had a desktop humidor that has served me well for almost 25 years. Every couple weeks a few drops of distilled water into the "puck" and it kept a pretty stable 70%
In early December my bride bought me a Whynter CHC 120S as an early Christmas present.
https://www.whynter.com/product/whynter-stainless-steel-1-2-cu-ft-cigar-humidor/
I took my time and followed a LOT of advice getting the thing ready and finally got everything to stabilize at about 60 deg +/-2 at 68% +/-2. Even though the unit is set to 66, the room itself stays pretty much 66-68 @ 35% this time of year so the unit never really reaches 66 degree. I just accept it as a quirk of this particular product. All their tech support can offer up is a reset procedure which I've not yet done but will.
I put the sender unit for this Acurite in the cooler (upstairs) and keep the display on my desk in my office (downstairs). Works pretty well IMO.
I've now got it full of cigars but I seem to have a couple issues....
QUESTION
I realize that there can be quality control issues and it seems each year they get more prevalent but I'm experiencing a lot more uneven burn and/or tunneling on my cigars since I've moved over to the cooler from the desktop box.
I have recently switched to buying MORE which means a switch to more online purchases than brick and mortar so that too could be a factor. I'm not going to mention the retailer. I've been buying Rocky Patel, Padron, Montecristo, R&J, and other high quality brands and smokes that I've enjoyed all along.
The problems are more prevalent in the larger ring gauge smokes.
In my limited research it would seem that taking a cigar directly from the cooler and smoking it may be part of my issue. Many seem to recommend at least a few hours and more like a full day at room temp before smoking cigars stored as I have them.
Looking for thoughts on this. I hate having to "babysit" a cigar as I smoke it.
Is it my source, manufacturer quality control, my storage or all of the above?
THANKS IN ADVANCE!
Comments
Boveda for humidity. Get two of the extra large ones (65% is my preference). Dump the puck asap. If the temps are low I'd also unplug it and let it settle to ambient temperature. Plug it back in when it gets hot. No sense in running it if the ambient temperature is within desired range.
I’ve always found when I run the cooling element during the summer if I pull a cigar and go right to smoking it I might get a slight uneven burn but nothing crazy. Maybe it’s just me but I find Wineadors are great for long term storage but I usually move ones I’m going to smoke into a wooden or a Rubbermaid Brilliance with a 65rh at room temp.
So you are in the camp that says "acclimate" first??? I still keep my desktop humidor "ready" and based on the type of feedback I received my plan was to put "likely to be smoked soon" in the desktop from the cooler!!!
For the most part. Like I said. Have a secondary wooden or tuppador for what’s on deck for the next week or so.
I don't use the puck in my cooler. However it did work fine for 25 years. And while I understand your comment on unplugging the unit, that would also stop the constant circulation. I may as well just buy more desktops and ditch the cooler
My question is about the uneven burn and tunneling I'm seeing more and more after storage in the cooler.
I only use the cooling element in the summer and have been running mine for 9 years. You’ll still want to “burp” it (open for about 5 seconds then close) every few days to add fresh air. Circulation of stale air is still stale air. Just remember it’s rolled up leaves with a cute band on it and not a 16th century painting. Now that I think of it I’ve never plugged in my “boxes” Wineador ever..... 🤔
Relative Humidity is only Relative to Temp and Dew Point. Maybe the cigars are running higher towards the wrapper then the Filler. @VegasFrank you have any nerdy experiments on this?
I was actually thinking along these lines and it's why the "acclimate" theory makes a lot of sense to allow the temp and humidity to balance out within the cigar itself.
It gets opened at least a couple times per week to grab a smoke
Cigars in cello take a long while to get fully and evenly humidified. Take a few of the ones you've been having trouble with out of the cellos and leave them naked for two weeks. If they then smoke fine, problem solved. A lot of B&M's and even online Etailers store cigars overhumidified. It may be as simple as the cigars are a bit wet.
The cellos are great for protecting the cigars and also retaining the oils since they allow the cigars to age much more slowly but the drawback is that cigars that are a bit wet (5%-10%) over ideal humidity, take quite a while to acclimate from head to foot. That's why most folks (besides Frank) don't smoke recently acquired cigars for a few weeks to a month. This problem is compounded in the summer with heat and travel (steaming soggy cigars).
If you want to smoke a few new acquisitions, storing a few naked will greatly speed up the process. Much greater area for air exchange vs a tiny slit in the cello that must work from foot to head.
I sure do. I experienced this a lot recently with my 20 count traveldor. Finally figured out that I had a 72% boveda in there And the sticks I put in the day before were dryer on the inside then on the outside. They weren't so much tunneling as much as they were just burning a little quicker on the inside than they were on the outside. A tunnel to me is completely different where there is a steep conical shape That is a couple of inches lower than the burn line of the wrapper. I found that dry boxing these things for a half an hour outside of the cellophane fixed the issue perfectly.
The real key, and this is going to sound funny coming from me, is to keep them in there for enough time so that your humidity is the same throughout the stick, both from head to foot and from wrapper to filler. Naturally, it is intuitive that the outside wrapper adjusts moisture first. The fillers close to the foot adjust More quickly than they do near the head.
I have also found, funny enough, that I let these humidors live and breathe at any humidity that they seem to like, as long as its somewhere between 59 and 70. My audew likes to sit at 65. My wynter I was always at 62 no matter how many boveda I use. My wood tower is near the high 60s at the bottom and near the low 60s at the top. My desktop fluctuates the most, but I won't mess with it until I see a 58 or 69. If I try to adjust boveda or I try to increase humidification, I get wild swings and very rarely the result I'm looking for.
A lot of people like to say the places like cbid sell dried out sticks but that is a bunch of bs also. My little nerdy stick analyzer showed that the last five pack I got from CI, who owns cbid, came in at 74% humidity. That was over the summer. The fiver of norteno that I got from CP came in at 66%. My sticks from small batch came in in the 70s. I suspect that those room 101s I bought from the H store were probably in the high 80s given the amount of mold that was on them. Never had anything shipped to me that was lower than 62.
My best advice to you is to put in a bunch of sticks that you don't plan on smoking for a few weeks. Then after a few weeks, take one out and smoke it. If you have an issues, reduce your humidity a little bit in the box. In the meantime, dry box it for a half an hour and see if that helps.
I'm also going to offer this piece of Zen advice to you. all of my problems cleared up when I stopped obsessing over all of my problems. I open up all of my humidors a lot. I try not to make it a habit of keeping them open for a super long time, but sometimes I want something in a box that's on the bottom in the back. Sometimes I am looking for a particular stick and I don't know which piece of plastic it's in, on which shelf, or in what drawer. I don't worry about the humidity and I don't think about what it's doing to the sticks.
The point is that cigars are way more resilient than your cigar collecting psyche is. The wild fluctuations of the ambient air inside your humidor affects these cigars very little to none. To illustrate, One time over the summer I left my 40-count desktop open all day after taking a stick out in the morning. When I came back from work in the afternoon, the hygrometer inside was reading 39%. I smoked a cigar out of it because it was the one I wanted to smoke. Guess what? It smoked just fine. It had a San Andres wrapper (never would have tried this with a Connecticut) but it was inside the cello all day. It smoked good, tasted good, didn't crack or split.
Nick doesn't use hygrometers. I don't use them in most of my wine coolers. My only real hygrometer in my wynter is to squeeze the bovedas. If they're crunchy, I know it's below 65 on that shelf. If they're fat and puffy, I know it's above 65 on that shelf. I'll swap them between shelves and then move on.
They weren't so much tunneling as much as they were just burning a little quicker on the inside than they were on the outside. A tunnel to me is completely different where there is a steep conical shape That is a couple of inches lower than the burn line of the wrapper. I found that dry boxing these things for a half an hour outside of the cellophane fixed the issue perfectly.
Your description is what I was calling tunneling.
Great write up and thanks! I think I'll use my now empty desktop and my "near term" storage and smoke from there instead of directly from the cooler.
On the other points, are people seeing a decrease in quality from the "big brands" more recently? In many industries we see a depletion in talent as the population ages and less and less "new blood" enters the profession.
AN ACROSS THE BOARD THANKS TO ALL RESPONDERS IN THIS THREAD!
I don't want to split hairs with you and what you call tunneling is probably technically tunneling. And I know it's a pain in the ass and I hate it too. let them sit outside the cello for a half hour and see if that helps you out.
Oh, and stick around! Introduce yourself in the newbie thread and show us what you're smoking. We have a good virtual herf through zoom that is active most nights and even some afternoons and an occasional morning! Pretty cool crew here, me excluded of course!
On this I couldn't agree more. I'm trying not to obsess but address an issue that is too regular after I changed storage!
Like I said, I basically "ignored" my desktop over the years but did try to peek at the humidity every couple weeks or so and all was fine by adding a few drops of water, rarely a bad smoke came out of that box.
My concern rose when I was getting much more frequent incidents of problem smokes.
AGAIN, THANKS and keep the knowledge coming!
@VegasFrank
I did create a short in the new members!
Here are some shots of a couple recent smokes and a purchase delivered a few days ago. The purchase before was mostly Padron and Monecristo
I've also got a number of R&J and then the "try it you may like it" that I many times add to an order to get beyond the "free ship" limit.
This was my "necessity/invention" moment. I couldn't locate my punch so I had to think what I had in the right size. Well the neck of a 223 is roughly 6.5 mm and with the help of a cone grinding wheel in a Dremel and a honing stone, poof, perfect punch! The second picture is my upstairs "tree house smoking porch" as my friend calls it.
Nice outdoor lounge. My brother uses a .22 magnum casing.
Trapped in the People's Communist Republic of Massachusetts.
Dry box a full day outside the whynter. When I was smoking out of my whynter directly I had a lot of tunneling issues.
-- Winston Churchill
"LET'S GO FRANCIS" Peter
He ↑ lives in florida. Proceed with caution in other environments.