My Poor Neglected Cigars

[rkadow]

With a change in career and chasing after my toddler there is never any time to sit and enjoy a smoke. Unfortunately my humidors have had no attention in what must be close to a year, at least since the summer. I was hoping for some advice on how and if I can save my sticks and get my humidors back into shape.

Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated.

Ryan

 

[strife]

I'd chuck them into a large tupperware with a bunch of Boveda packs and let them sit for a month or two while you re-season your humidor.

 

[Craig Mac]

Close to a year? Not sure they will be any good or even worth saving. All the oils have probably dried up and your sticks will likely taste flat as hell! As far as the humidors you just need to reseason them here's a great thread for that http://www.botl.org/community/forums/showthread.php?t=3277

Never thought it was much work keeping a humidor going.....

 

[SailorAg]

Don't rehumidify them too quickly or you'll risk damaging the foot. I found this out first hand about three weeks ago. This usually shouldn't affect the taste, but it could affect the burn.

 

[dpricenator]

you need to take it really slow. Maybe you can get some 60% boveda packs, or beads and start slow. Make sure your humi is seasoned, but I would recondition your cigars in a tupperware, with the mediums mentioned above. This may take a few months. How many cigars do you have?

first put all smoke in a tupperware with a small amount of room for air, along with a hygrometer. See where you sticks are to start with. If they are only at 50% you do not have too much work to do. If they are at 30% rh, then you may have a longer road in front of you. Then place a 60% boveda pack in there. by using a lower Percentage pack, you reduce the risk of over humidty happeneing too fast. That would split the wrappers. I would use less packs than you normally would in roder to make sure this process is slow. after a couple of weeks see if they have dried out that boveda pack, and if so, add 1-2 more. and again take this slowly.


Your humidor will only take a few weeks to reseason itself. Place a bowl of water in there, and then don't open it for 2 weeks at least. Check the RH, in the humi, get it to 75% or 80%, remove the bowl of water, then let the humi come down to 70%. at that point put what ever type of humidification you are going to use, and let it sit in wait for your re-conditioned cigars.

 

[rkadow]

I'd have to count but I think that there are probably 40 to 50 sticks in total. More than I would feel comfortable throwing away not to mention so rather unique ones that have been collected from abroad.

 

[sonarman]

Whats the RH at man? If its not that low you might be ok. I can imagine not that much attention has to be paid if you had a good seal and never opened it, going on the assumption that you were using a good device to keep humidity. I can feel your pain life can get busy and knock cigars off the big list. I went over a year without smoking and several months at a shot without opening my coolidors. I had beads and plenty of them and the RH never went below 65% the entire time. The big plus was after I got back into it the cigars were all rested and perfectly adjusted to the environment, they all smoked like a dream.

 

[Jwrussell]

Sonarman hit on the most important question. What conditions are we talking about? Just because your sticks were left alone for a year doesn't necessarily mean that all is lost or even that you are in that difficult of a position. If you had a good humidification device in a humidor with a tightly fitting lid, you may be just fine or at the worst, in need of a bit of humidification.

Details my brother, details!

What's the RH at? Is your hygro calibrated (digital I hope) and how long since it's been calibrated? What humidification device are you using: beads, PG and foam, something else? You say "Humidors", how many are we talking and were they all being used or are you asking about bringing some humidors that have been sitting dry with no sticks in them back to life? Were the humidors mostly full of sticks, half full, mostly empty? I know you mention 40-50 sticks, but I don't know how many humidors or what size they are.

You've got some great suggestions above (especially Dprice's), but to really know how to nudge you in the right direction we need more data. Good luck!

 

[rkadow]

Ok,

So I finally had a chance to look at the humi's. The larger one has approx 30 sticks in it and is sitting at bang on 50%.

The smaller humi has 10 sticks in it and is at 48%.

So as far as I can tell it's not too bad.

I would think my best plan of action is to transfer everything into a plastic container and add some humidi packs.

Any thoughts?

 

[orangedog]

Ok,

So I finally had a chance to look at the humi's. The larger one has approx 30 sticks in it and is sitting at bang on 50%.

The smaller humi has 10 sticks in it and is at 48%.

So as far as I can tell it's not too bad.

I would think my best plan of action is to transfer everything into a plastic container and add some humidi packs.

Any thoughts?

I would still stick with dprice's recommendation... but at 50% these may recover to be acceptable smokes.

 

[cmhicksusmc]

trust me! it takes time to revive them like a true Cigar Necromancer!

 

[Thecatch83]

I would start over......buy a couple samplers, discount bundles of some quality smokes, re-season your humidor, buy a digital hygrometer and some 65% beads for 50 bucks and move on with your life!

 

[Robban]

I don't think 48-50%rh is that bad. Buy some boveda 60% packs and chuck them in. After two weeks put in some 65%beads(more than usually required). A month or two later the should be smokeable. For the more expensive sticks I would wait six months before smoking.
Good luck!

 

[rkadow]

Please forgive my ignorance on this one but what is the difference between a water pillow and a Boveda pack.

I have several water pillows from past online orders. Would this have the same results?

 

[MiamiE]

50% is fine. Just re-season your humidor and rehydrate your humidification device and you should be fine.

 

[Jwrussell]

Please forgive my ignorance on this one but what is the difference between a water pillow and a Boveda pack.

I have several water pillows from past online orders. Would this have the same results?

I don't know much about water pillows, but I'm going to say no. As far as I can tell, they won't be anywhere near accurate enough. At 48-50% RH, I have to agree with OrangeDog, they will most likely never come back to what they were. That doesn't mean un-smokeable, but they will not be what they would have been had they been kept at the correct RH. You have probably lost quite a few if not most of the oils which translate to flavors in the cigar. Robban has it correct, get yourself some 60% Boveda packs and give it a few weeks before moving back up to 65%. Take it SLOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW and you'll end up with some properly humidified sticks that can be smoked. No guarantee on whether or not they'll be any good, unfortunately.

 

[strife]

Actually years ago the desired RH was closer to 50% in England. I'm sure that I read somewhere the belief was that there was more tobacco flavor with less "water". I'm sure it also had something to do with the costs of shipping. Less moisture equals less weight. I'll have to see if I can find where I read that.

 

[Jwrussell]

Mike, that may be the case, but my guess is there wasn't as much knowledge about cigars and what makes them "tick" at that point. It's possible that 50% is still high enough to preserve the essential oils in the tobacco, but I would have to imagine that there would be much more evaporation than at 60%+ (a note that I'm assuming a temp in the 65% range +/- 5%...a significantly different temperature would have some affect on what we are talking about).

 

[rkadow]

The temp in the humi has been around 70. There aren't a lot of temp changes where I keep them.

I've got the humi re-seasoning and the sticks are in a plastic container with a gel pack.

I went into the local B&M and that is what he suggested for getting things back into shape.

 

[strife]

Mike, that may be the case, but my guess is there wasn't as much knowledge about cigars and what makes them "tick" at that point. It's possible that 50% is still high enough to preserve the essential oils in the tobacco, but I would have to imagine that there would be much more evaporation than at 60%+ (a note that I'm assuming a temp in the 65% range +/- 5%...a significantly different temperature would have some affect on what we are talking about).

Agreed, I much prefer a higher RH, closer to 70% for flavor but unfortunately the burn and draw issues don't make it worth the trouble for me so I keep them at 65%. I think the extra moisture in the tobacco allows the oils to be released a little deeper into the cigar, further from the ember, kind of like preheating the leaf. FWIW I'm probably just imagining the difference.