Humidor Care & Maintenance

If you are starting to accumulate a sizable cigar collection, a humidor is going to become all but necessary if you don’t want your sticks to dry out. However, it isn’t as simple as dumping your smokes in the humidor and forgetting about them. We’ve laid out some humidor maintenance pointers for folks who want to optimize their cigar storage.

Seasoning the Humidor

The first thing you have to do after getting your humidor is season it. No, this doesn’t involve oregano or paprika—seasoning is simply the process of moistening the interior of the humidor to create the proper humidity. Use a clean rag to evenly apply distilled water or a propylene glycol solution to all of the humidor’s interior surfaces. Remember, you just want to wet the wood, not saturate it. For ideal results, you’ll want to do this once a day for two days before using the humidor. Alternately, you can just place a Boveda seasoning pack in the humidor, but this will have to be left in for 10 to 14 days.

Checking the Seal

No matter how perfectly balanced you keep the humidity inside your humidor, it won’t matter much if it all leaks out of the edges. Even if your humidor had a flawless seal when you first bought it, that can change as the wood warps over time. Every month or so, you should conduct a simple test to ensure your humidor is firmly sealed. Place a dollar bill half in and half out of your humidor and close the lid on it. Now carefully tug on the bill. If it slides right out, it means that your humidor isn’t sealing as it should be.

Recalibrating Your Hygrometer

Whether you use a digital or analog hygrometer, you always want it to measure your humidity accurately. After some time, your hygrometer can become increasingly inaccurate. Luckily, there’s a simple trick to recalibrate it that you can do right at home. All you have to do is place a teaspoon of salt on a small plate or other surface that will fit in a sealable bag. Mix a few drops of water into the salt—just enough to create a paste rather than dissolve the salt. Now place this mixture into a sealable bag with your hygrometer overnight. When you check in the morning, the hygrometer should read exactly 75%. If it’s off, adjust it by however many percentage points it’s off by.

Keep It Half Full

In order for humidity levels to stay regulated, you have to have a certain number of cigars in the humidor. The general rule of thumb is to keep it at least half full at all times. If your humidor can hold 100 cigars and you have less than 50, look at it as a good excuse to buy some new cigars!

Now that you know how to properly care for a humidor, you can get great deals on the humidor accessories you need from Best Cigar Prices. We also have an extensive selection of humidors themselves, ranging from desktop models to commercial humidors.