Philosophical/science question: Boxed cigars and humidity

raisindot

Apologies in advance if this has been discussed many times before. Did a search and didn't quite the answer.

Anyhoo, I've recently bought a couple of boxes of cigars. Since a box doesn't have a humidifier in it, I would assume that the RH would probably reflect the environment in which is located, even in the box is sealed, so I immediately moved the cigars into my overly full humidors.

The question is: If humidor crowding is an issue, is it okay to leave cigars in a sealed box for maybe a few weeks or a month if you can't place them in an ideal indoor RH environment, particularly in winter? Or should one transfer them out as soon as possible to make sure they don't dry out?

Would an alternative be to unseal the box and drop in a Humicare pillow for the short-term?

ShadowInTheMoon

I feel like most of the boxes i get are not sealed that well where i would trust to leave them out for a week or 2. I could justify a day but no more then that. As for dropping a humicare in the boxes are not designed to be a compleate seal.

Bob Luken

My guess/opinion is that if the box is left outside of a humidor it will lose moisture slowly and eventually draw moisture from the cigars even if it has the original cello/plastic wrap on it. Even if you put a water pillow in there with them I think that would result in uneven humidification and risk of drying at least some of your cigars and over humidifying others. What I would recommend is try to get an extra large ziplock big enough to stick the whole box/boxes into and use a boveda inside that ziplock. If not a large ziplock, remove cigars from their box and place them in a regular ziplock as singles with boveda packets for humidification. Water pillows are OK short term but Bovedas are SCIENCE BABY!!!!!!

Anybody wanna say "coolidor" yet? (It doesn't have to be a big cooler.)

raisindot

Thanks. I did end up moving them to humidorland as soon as I got them.

As for coolidors, I know that people really like them but I'm really stuck on humidors. I just like that nice, beautiful box and the sweet smell of cedar. The real solution is for me to stop buying more or getting into some serious bombing runs....

Lee.mcglynn

Bob Luken:

My guess/opinion is that if the box is left outside of a humidor it will lose moisture slowly and eventually draw moisture from the cigars even if it has the original cello/plastic wrap on it. Even if you put a water pillow in there with them I think that would result in uneven humidification and risk of drying at least some of your cigars and over humidifying others. What I would recommend is try to get an extra large ziplock big enough to stick the whole box/boxes into and use a boveda inside that ziplock. If not a large ziplock, remove cigars from their box and place them in a regular ziplock as singles with boveda packets for humidification. Water pillows are OK short term but Bovedas are SCIENCE BABY!!!!!!

Anybody wanna say "coolidor" yet? (It doesn't have to be a big cooler.)

agreed I use gallon ziplock freezer bags and bovedas...hasn't failed once

raisindot

Thanks. I did end up moving them to humidorland as soon as I got them.

As for coolidors, I know that people really like them but I'm really stuck on humidors. I just like that nice, beautiful box and the sweet smell of cedar. The real solution is for me to stop buying more or getting into some serious bombing runs....

raisindot

[Doublepost edit]

Darktower007

I met an old man in Nashville once from Cuba who was smoking with me..he looked in his 70's. He claimed he has boxes still wrapped in celo foe years will keep perfect rH at room temp in his closet! He could be nuts don't know.

webmost

raisindot:

Thanks. I did end up moving them to humidorland as soon as I got them.

As for coolidors, I know that people really like them but I'm really stuck on humidors. I just like that nice, beautiful box and the sweet smell of cedar. The real solution is for me to stop buying more or getting into some serious bombing runs....

Best of both worlds: Put boxes in a cooler. I do that with my home rolled. Roll up a batch of 30 of one blend, whatever fills the box, minus room for one digital hygro. Let it settle to a reasonable humidibbity. Then set that box in the cooler. The cooler has a hygro, keeps all boxes inside it just right. That's where they age. Seems pretty stable. I only use boxes which have a clasp and which smell cedary nice. In a couple instances, I have cedar blocks inside the box for an even cedarier effect. When I get a box that has a block to adjust the count, if it smells right, I save it for this purpose. You can tell when a stick has steeped in a cedar box. I score the boxes for a buck apiece at the B&M. These coolidors are remarkably stable, way beyond a humidor.

I should snap a pic for you.

raisindot

webmost:

Best of both worlds: Put boxes in a cooler. I do that with my home rolled. Roll up a batch of 30 of one blend, whatever fills the box, minus room for one digital hygro. Let it settle to a reasonable humidibbity. Then set that box in the cooler. The cooler has a hygro, keeps all boxes inside it just right. That's where they age. Seems pretty stable. I only use boxes which have a clasp and which smell cedary nice. In a couple instances, I have cedar blocks inside the box for an even cedarier effect. When I get a box that has a block to adjust the count, if it smells right, I save it for this purpose. You can tell when a stick has steeped in a cedar box. I score the boxes for a buck apiece at the B&M. These coolidors are remarkably stable, way beyond a humidor.

I should snap a pic for you.

Wait...do you put a separate humidfier in each box of cigars to get them to right humidity before putting the boxes into the cooler? If so, once they're at the right RH do you take the humidifiers out of the boxes and then just put a global humidifier/Bovedas/kitty litter/whatever for the whole cooler full of boxes? I can see how this would work, since I would assume that at a cigar warehouse or store the boxes or stored in a RH-correct environment (since I never go to cigar B&Ms, I'm not up on such things).

I guess I could start re-thinking my resistance to this whole coolidor idea...but the thought of reading through the zillions of threads on this topic here to figure out how to choose and temper the things is a little overwhelming. If I spent a fraction of the time actually smoking the damn things as I do reading and asking questions about them around here....

jgibv

^^^^^
i'm not webmost (obviously) ..... but i do this approach too.

each cigar box gets either a humi-pack (the ones that ship with your order) or one of the small 8 gram boveda packs (these guys: http://www.bovedainc.com/store/tobacco/boveda-medium-8-gram/).
box goes in the cooler and that's it.

got a few containers of beads in there to help regulate everything too so i don't have to do much maintenance.

recharge the humidifiers every few months (more often in the dry winter months) but otherwise it's pretty hands-off.
had this setup for a couple years now and it's worked well. seems to sit right around 67-69, depending on the season.


(this is an older pic but hopefully shows the idea well enough)

Ken Light

Easiest solution: box into large gallon zip-lock w/ boveda pack. repeat as necessary for more boxen. not a permanent solution, but definitely a couple weeks worth of safety.

Just noticed bob said the same thing. the post was so long, I didn't expect the solution to be so simple. XD