Humidity for Aging ISOM?

[pittesq]

Newfie,

What exactly are you tossing up for debate?

Is it the issue of aging? Aging at 140+ versus 130-? How to massage wet smokes into smokeability?

Just trying to get a little clarification so I can respond appropriately.

Wilkey

I was told the same thing by someone that stores long-term. He heard this from several BOTLs with indivdual private inventories between 10,000 and 30,000 (or more)sticks. I'm sure I will butcher the sentiment by trying to paraphrase, but to summarize, one of the benefits is that the higher humidity is believed to preserve the oils better for long term storage.

When they want to smoke somthing from the long-term area, they put it in the smoking humi which stays between 60-65% for a few days to dry it out.

 

[Newfie]

1/.
I don't think it's presumptuous to say that aged Habanos are not necessarily better than young Habanos.

Case in point, Cubans and Spaniards prefer, in general, the profile of young Habanos. This should not be construed to suggest that smokers from these cultures are any less "refined" than say, Hong Kong or British Habanophiles.
2/.

I propose that the disparity between Cuban and European storage conditions is in fact a sociocultural artifact and not a consequence of differing conceptions of connoisseurship.

3/.

If what one wants is a cigar with a more blended, rounded character, I have little doubt that with a short term smoking window, higher temperatures and humidities will do the trick. This is nothing more than chemical kinetics at work and the two main parameters which drive chemical kinetics are temperature and concentration. This would be akin to the Cuban aging conditions you found.
4/.
However, if the objective is to achieve this with more subtlety and not at 1 year but at 20+ years, then chemical physical considerations dictate that the conditions must be gentler (i.e. cooler, drier). This would be akin to the "cave" conditions found in European long term storage.
5/.
I still am not confident that I've addressed your points but I do appreciate your raising them so that we can revisit these ideas again.

Wilkey

DOOD, well written and very nicely to the point!!



If I may comment:

1/.

I agree whole-heartedly. Better in my eyes may be crap in yours. Taste is like any other preference. You may like the draw on a Monte Cristo #1 or a RyJ Churchill Tubo and I may prefer the looser draw of a Rubusto.

2/.

Once again, I agree. That was part of my point in the beginning. I highly doubt if there are very many places in Cuba with the access to perfectly controlled climatic conditions where Europe would probably have the access and resources required.

3/.

That was one of the points I was making in the beginning. I was wondering about the long term effects of the conditions on cigars. When they're young, like I suspect the ones I bought are, they feel awesome (but smoke like crap IMHO 'till they're dried out a little), but what would a cigar be like after several years in those conditions? I often wonder about (and looked for) the tell-tale tiny holes in cigars when browsing the shops there last week.

4/.

To me, when I talk of "aging", I'm speaking more in terms from 1-4 years. I neither have the resources (space or money) to worry about aging cigars for 20+ years. Nor do I have any desire to ever have / smoke any.

5/.

I believe you did a fine job of addressing my points and I appreciate the time you took to type it out.

 

[The Volusianator]

GREAT topic, the last few posts were very informative.

 

[jabba]

I'm sure I will butcher the sentiment by trying to paraphrase, but to summarize, one of the benefits is that the higher humidity is believed to preserve the oils better for long term storage.

When they want to smoke somthing from the long-term area, they put it in the smoking humi which stays between 60-65% for a few days to dry it out.

I few individuals I consider knowledgeable have told me the same thing... higher humidity/low temp for super long term aging.

If you want to expedite the aging process first buy thinner ringed cigars (38-42)then ... take the cigars out of the box and take the cello off (if applicable), put them in a spanish cedar desktop and keep them at 70/70... when you are ready to smoke them, transfer them to a 60-65% humidor for 30 days prior to smoking. The higher the temp/humidity and the more breathing the cigars get, the faster they will breakdown and age.

 

[The Volusianator]

put them in a spanish cedar desktop and keep them at 70/70... when you are ready to smoke them, transfer them to a 60-65% humidor for 30 days prior to smoking.

Are there really people who know what they will be smoking in a month? No disrespect intended in anyway, but hell, I don't know what I'm smoking when I get to the lounge tonight and I filled my otterbox just in case. I know some talk about dry boxing for the next days smoke, again, I got no clue what I'm gonna feel like smoking tomorrow or the next. But a lot of my choice decisions are based on time. I don't have a lounge at home or a place for that matter in the colder months that I can smoke at home, so for me it's all about timing, which makes it impossible for me to choose in advance.

 

[jabba]

put them in a spanish cedar desktop and keep them at 70/70... when you are ready to smoke them, transfer them to a 60-65% humidor for 30 days prior to smoking.

Are there really people who know what they will be smoking in a month? No disrespect intended in anyway, but hell, I don't know what I'm smoking when I get to the lounge tonight and I filled my otterbox just in case. I know some talk about dry boxing for the next days smoke, again, I got no clue what I'm gonna feel like smoking tomorrow or the next. But a lot of my choice decisions are based on time. I don't have a lounge at home or a place for that matter in the colder months that I can smoke at home, so for me it's all about timing, which makes it impossible for me to choose in advance.

I didn't mean one cigar! Take out the months supply... what do you think I take out 1 cigar and put it in a box for 30 days... LOL ... if you take out 20 or 30 sticks and put them in a box at 60-65% they aren't gonna expire if you don't smoke them,,, it's not milk

 

[The Volusianator]

if you take out 20 or 30 sticks and put them in a box at 60-65% they aren't gonna expire if you don't smoke them,,, it's not milk

OMG, ROFLMFAO! That's damn funny! I keep my humidors at 65% daily, all my Cubans are 61-62%. The only time I really see issues is if I smoke something right as it comes off the truck sometimes. Otherwise, I've got no burn issues.

 

[jabba]

In my post I was referring to expediting the aging process... under those storage conditions they aren't smokable... hence the other box.

 

[Ginseng]

In my post I was referring to expediting the aging process... under those storage conditions they aren't smokable... hence the other box.

Understood and agreed.

I think that the techniques that are touted are based on several different sources of information. Preeminent among these is individual and shared experience. This in itself is based on a mix of observation, (often) casual experimentation, trial and error, and folklore.

The issue of storage humidity is a complex one. The more I learn, the less I suspect that the difference between 55% and 65% is a major issue. Retarding the evaporation of oils is a factor that is often cited as the reason for keeping humidity up. However, while a likely actor in the entire, complicated process of cigar aging, it is but one factor among several. The other issue that is almost never discussed directly is that of displacement of oils from the leaf. While higher humidities will tend to retard evaporation of oils, more moisture in the leaf will also tend displace oils from the leaf. Thus, these two mechanisms are counteracting each other in some sense. Which one is stronger in the relatively tight range of 55-65% is unknown. It could be a wash. Or it might not be.

But keep in mind, not all the "tasty" compounds in leaf are oils. Furthermore, the reactions that occur do not only involve oily substances. There are a plethora of coumpounds from salts to organic acids that are involved and undoubtedly some of these reactions involve and require the presence of water (or moisture vapor) to happen. It is equally plausible to hypothesize that a lower humidity level (at a given temperature) slows down these reactions resulting in more gradual and graceful aging.

The upshot is that temperature and humidity go hand in hand and that in the absence of an experiment to look at these two factors as intertwined, a true relationship might be missed.

For example, if you store at 70F and 70% this would probably be considered to be suboptimal by most. But what about 50F/70% or 70F/50%? What about 50F/50%? In science, the name for the type of casual experimentation that I would guess is normally conducted is the OFAT or "one factor at a time." Experiments of this type may well miss the interaction of multiple factors such as temperature AND humidity over the range of interest. The fact that two prominent schools of thought espouse the low/low condition and others hew to the low/high condition suggests to me that there may be an interaction or at least the possibility of multiple optimal conditions for different aging objectives.

Wilkey

 

[Mark Twain]

I agree that this is a complex process and humidity is highly involved in the evolution of the cigar as it ages, but the key factor for ageing any cigar IMHO is just like the title of the Guns'n Roses song Patience.

 

[CoventryCat86]

60%

I dunno how in hell some of you got to where you ended up in this thread

He asked a pretty simple question......

 

[The Volusianator]

In my post I was referring to expediting the aging process... under those storage conditions they aren't smokable... hence the other box.

I knew that. It was just a damn funny the way you gave the example!

 

[Big Stick]

Dont look at me, Im just along for the ride

 

[Ginseng]

I agree that this is a complex process and humidity is highly involved in the evolution of the cigar as it ages, but the key factor for ageing any cigar IMHO is just like the title of the Guns'n Roses song Patience.

But of course! Time works its magic one way or another whether our ministrations are wise or foolish.

Wilkey

 

[Wascal]

Perhaps we Americans who are "new" into the aging of Cuban cigars could take a bit of instruction from those European dealers and the caves they use for storage. I have often wondered why we rave about the taste of the cigars we purchase from them, yet when we purchase younger cigars for aging we use different conditions (humidity) and expect the same results?
On a personal note, I have a small cooler with a few cigars stored inside with no humidification at all. They are in my basement where it stays between 55 to 60 degrees and the humidity about the same. The drain plug on the cooler is open and I open the lid once a week just to check on things. The boxes remain closed except for the occasional sample. So far I'm encouraged by the results as the samples smoke very well.

 

[Ginseng]

Perhaps we Americans who are "new" into the aging of Cuban cigars could take a bit of instruction from those European dealers and the caves they use for storage. I have often wondered why we rave about the taste of the cigars we purchase from them, yet when we purchase younger cigars for aging we use different conditions (humidity) and expect the same results?
On a personal note, I have a small cooler with a few cigars stored inside with no humidification at all. They are in my basement where it stays between 55 to 60 degrees and the humidity about the same. The drain plug on the cooler is open and I open the lid once a week just to check on things. The boxes remain closed except for the occasional sample. So far I'm encouraged by the results as the samples smoke very well.

Wascal,

Sounds like your conditions are in the cool/dry (57/57) corner. You've basically got a dryish natural cave from the sounds of it. While it wouldn't work for cheese ripening (which needs 50-ish degrees and 70-90%), it seems to serve Europeans and their cigars well.

Wilkey

 

[jabba]

Perhaps we Americans who are "new" into the aging of Cuban cigars could take a bit of instruction from those European dealers and the caves they use for storage. I have often wondered why we rave about the taste of the cigars we purchase from them, yet when we purchase younger cigars for aging we use different conditions (humidity) and expect the same results?
On a personal note, I have a small cooler with a few cigars stored inside with no humidification at all. They are in my basement where it stays between 55 to 60 degrees and the humidity about the same. The drain plug on the cooler is open and I open the lid once a week just to check on things. The boxes remain closed except for the occasional sample. So far I'm encouraged by the results as the samples smoke very well.

I've read, more than once, of people keeping cigars in their basement for years without humidification devices and the cigars smoking great... it's probably very possible in the right basement. Where I live the basements are heated and cooled so it's not that simple.

In my post I was referring to expediting the aging process... under those storage conditions they aren't smokable... hence the other box.

I knew that. It was just a damn funny the way you gave the example!

I like to inject some dry humor from time to time... thanks Volu

 

[jeht2000]

You can slow down now Wilkey Felt like i was back in school again reading some of your posts.

mid 60's

 

[Sunward]

65%

 

[personal User]

any more recent thoughts to add to this thread?
 
I'm not sure this resolved my thinking as to whether or not to store CC at different temp/RH than I do other cigars. Other than noting that some posters store them a little lower than 65/65