How long to season?

asolomon

I got a CCOM 20 ct about a month ago (maybe a little longer) and only seasoned for a couple of days before the hygro read 70% and I put my sticks in. It seems like a couple of sticks on the bottom were a little dry and since I didn't season for long, I figured maybe the wood didn't soak all the humidity in even though the humidity in the air read 70%. So I took the sticks out, put them in a ziploc with a Drymistat tube, and have been seasoning since Monday or Tuesday by putting a shot glass (well actually the bottom bit of a Solo cup :P) with distilled water in there, and I haven't opened it up since. With a humi of that size, how long is a good amount of time to wait before I can safely assume the wood has soaked in the moisture and won't be sucking it out of my cigars?

camgfs

I'm sure you will get many different answers, but one way to check is to take the water out and see if the humitiy level stays the same or if it drops after a couple of days. Keep in mind that different times of year may affect the humidity in y our home, and that may affect the humi a bit from time to time. My guess for time would be a week or 2 before it's ready for cigars.

xmacro

Gotta disagree a bit with camgfs - most humi's take about a week; a 20 count should take a few days at most. If humidity is reading 70% and your cigars are dry, first thing I'd do is check your hygrometer, not the humi - either do a salt test or use a Boveda pack.

asolomon

Well, the thing is the only ones which I've noticed problems with - and there may have been other mitigating factors here - were the ones on the bottom. Those on top were fine. This makes me think that the humidity was normal (my hygro is digital and seems reasonable) in the air but the wood wasn't entirely seasoned, so it sucked some humidity out of the cigars. Just a theory!

xmacro

Humid air rises; in a 300 count, this results in a 2% difference between the bottom and the top, so I'm not sure if your humi is large enough for this to matter. You might try putting the hygro on the bottom of the humi to see what it reads

asolomon

It read less but not unreasonably so - it was 60-65% at the bottom instead of 65-70% as it was near the top. But it also read less further away from the puck so I figure that was at least part of the reason. Any other suggestions for when it'll be safe to put the sticks back in?

xmacro

Asolomon, you have a PM. If you use a large, shallow dish of distilled water, it'll season faster than a shot glass - more surface area means more water can evaporate at a time. Other than that, seasoning is something you just gotta play by ear.

If your humi doesn't have the tightest of seals and the room it's sitting in is very dry, seasoning will take quite a while; if you live in a humid climate, seasoning is shorter because not as much moisture is being sucked out of the humi. I live in Florida, and the humidity in my room is around 40% in winter, 57% in summer, so your results may be different, but it usually takes me anywhere from 3 days to a week to season a new humi.