What, if anything, am I doing wrong?
I've read a bunch of posts here, and other sources, about how to set up and maintain humidors, and I am, more or less, following what I think is the consensus. Also, I haven't been experiencing and particular patterns of problems with my sticks. Nonetheless, I welcome any advice.
First a few points:
I've read a bunch of posts here, and other sources, about how to set up and maintain humidors, and I am, more or less, following what I think is the consensus. Also, I haven't been experiencing and particular patterns of problems with my sticks. Nonetheless, I welcome any advice.
First a few points:
- My humidor is, I think, an Adorini Chianti. Criticize it all you wish, but it was a gift from my wife on my last birthday so any suggestions to swap it for something else are ill-advised. It is small, but pretty. (Like my wife.)
- I live in a condo, and space is at a premium. I might, one day, decide to go the wineador route (we currently have a wine refrigerator in the kitchen, but it is full of wine), but a coolidor is probably not in the cards. (No place to put it where it wouldn't look awful.) That said, I fairly quickly ran out of space (surprise, surprise) and this weekend I grabbed an Oxo food storage container to contain the overflow. Now that's full.
- My humidor is in a walk-in closet. There is a HVAC vent in the ceiling of the closet that gets a good flow of air when the AC is on. (Over the past year the heat has only been on twice. Miami, you see...)
- The instructions that came with the humidor were to wipe the inside with a clean sponge wetted with distilled water. I followed the instructions, using a brand-new sponge, not knowing at the time about preferable methods. It also came with some sort of humidification devices - plastic with some absorbent material inside. I used these for a couple months until I learned of Boveda packs.
- I haven't yet calibrated my hygrometer, but a Boveda calibration kit is enroute from Amazon. Thus far I have been assuming it is accurate. The humidor keeps a pretty consistent 65% RH.
- You can see in the photo below that the temperature in the Oxo container is too high. I have already moved it from the top shelf to the floor. The temperature in the closet is generally not that warm.