Re-humidification time frame

[Skarekrough]

I make no excuses for myself....I neglected the levels on my humidor over the long New England winter and am now paying the price with dry cigars.

I got the levels to 70% about 20 days ago. About 14 days in I was pleased to find the cigars that weren't in the wrapper or cellophane (whichever it's called) were where they needed to be. I had one a few days ago and it smoked as good as I could of hoped.

The ones in the cellophane or wrapper, however, are still dry.

The physics make sense. But I'm wondering how much additional time I need to wait for these cigars (the majority of my stash at this time) to be ready to go?

Is the length of time so much that I'm really better off removing them from the wrappers and maybe seperating them into Tupperware containers with Humid-Eze pucks, getting them to where they need to be, and then re-wrappering them and putting them back into the humidor?

Any help would be appreciated and I promise I won't let this happen ever again...

 

[Brickhouse]

Hmmm, I'm no expert but I don't think it takes THAT much longer to hunmidify the cellophaned ones. I know it takes slightly longer, but I thought it was just a few days, 14 days seems like it would be enough to me.

Let some of the heavy weights weigh in though. I may be full of it.

 

[AVB]

I've found it takes a few months to bring back sticks still wrapped in cello. The extra aging doesn't hurt anyway.

 

[Skarekrough]

I've found it takes a few months to bring back sticks still wrapped in cello. The extra aging doesn't hurt anyway.

Well, sure....

But the problem is that in a few months I'll be on the tail-end of "cigar season" for New England. Yeah, I'm a fair weather fan, I admit it.

The good news is that it was around 3 weeks ago that I started re-humidification of the whole lot. Last Sunday I noticed the problems with the wrappered ones and took a dozen of them or so and put them unwrappered into a Tupperware container with a Humid-Eze puck.

Not sure whether it was the puck, the lead-time previous or the heat/humidity-snap we got yesterday but I checked them about 20 minutes ago and they're definetley back to where they need to be.

The down side is that, as is expected every year, every guitar in my home studio is now all-out wonky due to the increase in humidity. With any luck I'll be able to sneak in a nice smoke in between set-ups!

Thanks for all the help!

 

[Ginseng]

If you are looking to accelerate the rehumidification of the cigars in cello, the by all means, remove them from the cello. You'll be doing them no harm and you'll get them back up to a smokeable state in a few weeks.

Cellophane is highly permeable to moisture as well as oxygen but still, it's substantially more of a barrier than nothing. If you leave them in cello, a minimum of 1-2 months is wise. Laying them out in a single layer will allow them to reabsorb more quickly than if you stacked a bunch of them in a box.

Wilkey