Propylene Glycol. WTH?

[AdamJoshua]

First rule of smoking cigars: 70 is a BS number! Store at 60!!!

Is this where I say that 60 is BS and store at 62%?

I would suggest whatever smokes best for you, I like a dyer stick and 60 is borderline too low for me personally. To each their own, opinions and factual statements are two totally different things.

 

[Oreo]

It's at 71%rh this morning.

 

[jmartins]

Ok so now you need to air a little allow the sponge to dry a little and then test the RH. This is very very time consuming.

 

[Oreo]

You keep saying time consuming. I'm not seeing it yet.

As the water evaporates from the pg solution the equilibrium rh will drift. That much we know already. How long it takes to evaporate enough water from the solution to move the equilibrium rh to an unacceptable level will be dependent on how airtight the container is and what the ambient temp/rh is.

For this first test I did not use foam. I just put the 68% pg solution in a small cup. I'll try using the foam today to check for anything unexpected and then to test my suggested recharge method.

 

[Headbanger]

Spinning tires will get you no where fast. Here is my take for a tuperdor, toss the PG and go with 65% RH beveda packs or 2 oz tube of 65% RH beads, done. I am a simple man and do not try to recreate what has worked perfectly for so many brothers before and after me. Good luck and happy smoking Oreo.

 

[Oreo]

I am a simple man and do not try to recreate what has worked perfectly for so many brothers before and after me. Good luck and happy smoking Oreo.

You didn't read the thread, did you?

Besides that, I find it a little ironic how you say to not reinvent the wheel. Yet pg has been used to do this long before kl, beads, gel, or bovedas. I get the impression this new conventional wisdom is long on marketing and misinformation and short on fact.

There's a [video=youtube;0WPqKLkBLFU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WPqKLkBLFU&feature=youtube_gdata_player[/video] put out by Boveda putting beads, gel, pg solution and Boveda in head-to-head competition. Of course Bovedas performed perfectly, its their video. The rest pegged the hygrometers right off the scale at 100%rh. That's not helpful info, its marketing, and its dishonest. If I misuse a boveda pack I bet I can get it to peg a hygrometer at 100%rh too. It was this video that inspired my own quest to understand Propylene Glycol.

 

[jmartins]

When add back to the sponge if that's the approach you take spray distilled water onto it not more PG. I remember when I first did this it was a royal pain in my ass to get to 65 RH. You can get there.

Another small tip is you can't open the container to often or you will lose RH and that is it. You'll be back to adding solution.

Pg was used in large humidors not so much little ones. It provides a great environment on resting cigars. If these are everyday smokes the PG solution does not work nearly as well.

I speak solely from experience and there are a lot of brothers here who know what I went through to get perfection.

If you have any questions shoot lol.

 

[3/5King]

I read every post.. Use Heartfelt beads. That is all.

 

[Oreo]

jmartens, that's interesting. I'll have to search your old posts to see if I can learn from your experience.

 

[jmartins]

Enjoy it is a horrible process. Also I did a lot of PM'ing with daVe, Rob, and a few other brothers. If you have any questions just let me know. I am fairly active so I will usually check in when I get a few.

 

[Oreo]

Thank you. I'll let ya know.

 

[Headbanger]

Yes I read all the posts. Good luck with the tuperdor.

 

[Oreo]

Ok, the foam block test is underway. Initially, I just want to verify that it will actually achieve a stable 70%rh. Then I will go about desiccating the foam and recharging it with the precise amount of di water that was lost and retest to verify that the recharge procedure actually works.

This time I did a 70% pg solution instead of 68%, so Im expecting the equilibrium point to be a little lower then 70%rh.

 

[Oreo]

The foam block test appears to have stabilized at 73%rh. I'm curious why its a few points higher when I expected a couple points lower. I'll give it till tomorrow and then put the foam block in the fridge to dry it out a bit for the recharge test.

 

[jmartins]

When you recharge lower the amount of PG and up the DW

 

[Oreo]

I think you mean up the pg and lower the dw. Or, just recharge with less dw. But that would be changing more then one variable at a time. 73%rh is fine for this test as long as it is stable and repeatable after recharge.

 

[jmartins]

Sure as long as that's the goal your going for.

 

[Oreo]

So I left the foam block out for a few days and when I weighed it again it was approximately two grams (milliliters) lighter then when originally charged. (It was only 16 grams fully charged. Small piece of foam.) I recharged with distilled water back to the original weight and placed the foam block back into the test container. It returned to 70%rh within a few hours. I was not perfectly careful with the recharge measure of water. I rushed it and made it just close enough.

Granted, I lack real long-term experience with the pg/water/foam units, but it appears to me they ought to work very well when used (charged and recharged) correctly.