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What follows is my opinion only. Your mileage may vary (YMMV).
Summary
1. Keep cigars in cello, mostly.
2. Keep cigars in boxes, mostly.
3. Rest your cigars for a year, mostly. Age some for longer.
4. Use a cooler, mostly.
5. Use active humidification with loose cigars without cello, mostly.
6. Use beads, mostly.
7. Fill open air space.
8. Retire the hygrometer, mostly.
1. Cello
Cello does four things:
i. Cello protects the cigar from the inevitable damage from handling;
ii. Cello reduces storage requirements, as cello resists changes in relative humidity (RH), and, if undisturbed, then cello will aid in insulating the cigar from temperature changes;
iii. Cello preserves the cigar; cello minimizes sharing of tastes between cigars (“yellow cello”), and slows aging; and
iv. Cello provides a convenient place for labels.
Take the cello off when storing the cigars in a box to age, and when the box is relatively air-resistant, and when one wants all the cigars in that box to have a consistent taste.
2. Boxes (that cigars come in)
Leaving a box unopened and untouched maximizes the resale value of the box, and offers the slowest aging. However, I’ve had a few non-Cuban boxes recently that weren’t fully aired out after they were made – so inside, the boxes smelled like wood glue. Thus, I open boxes. (I used other boxes to hold those cigars).
The box’s first purpose is usually to help sell the cigar. When aging with cello off, try not to use paper boxes or cartons, or paper-covered boxes (e.g., Cuban ‘dress’ boxes), or boxes with air gaps (e.g., Padron ‘000). There are other types of boxes that are better for aging.
Fully-varnished/fully-painted boxes usually offer the slowest aging/most protection. Boxes with lips generally seal better than boxes that don’t have a lipped rim.
http://www.cigarsmokers.com/attachme...1&d=1326050666
Good for aging: slide-lid cabinet and fully-varnished box
3. Rest and aging
The reasons to store cigars are rest and aging. Unless smoked soon after rolling, most cigars will benefit from a year or so of rest after rolling. Of course, tastes and time from rolling vary, so perhaps try a cigar three or so weeks after purchase. The manufacturer may have rested the cigars for a while before boxing, but the length of time can vary. For example, Fuente sits on rolled Opus and Añejo for one year before packing, but Hemingways get six months (from a CA interview, IIRC).
After this year or so of rest, there will be many cigars that smoke just fine. However, some cigars will benefit greatly from further aging. There are many theories on aging, but the slower the better, although faster can be pretty good. The speed is affected by air circulation – you can buy racks that hold (un-cello’d) cigars like wine bottles in a wine cooler for, one suspects, the fastest aging.
If the box is fully painted or varnished and has a tight seal, then the aging will be very slow, at similar rates to cigars in factory cello. In the wild guess department, if there is no cello, and the cigars are in a partially-finished or unfinished box, then aging could happen twice as fast. Perhaps twice as fast again in boxes with air gaps like Cuban “dress boxes.” For example, three years in a dress box could be equivalent to about five years in a slide-lid box, or eight to ten years in a fully-varnished box.
See Min Ron Nee for recommendations for aging Cuban cigars. I believe he says that the best settings for aging are 55 to 65 degrees F, 60% to 65% RH; that RH over 70 results in lower-quality aging; and for smoking, 72% RH minus 1% RH for each five years of age is the best taste-wise. YMMV.
My experiences with aging have been primarily with Padron and Cuban Bolivar, Montecristo, Partagas, Por Larranaga, and Quintero cigars. For the Havanas:
• Up to around one year from box age – Resting. Some like the ‘punch’ at this age.
• Around one year to around 1.5 – 2.5 years – a nice cigar
• After that up until about 3 years (Monte, PL) or 5 years (Boli, Party, Quint) – the first ‘sick period.’ Forget it. Good but muted near the end of this period.
• About three to five years or about five to eight years – what cigar smoking is all about.
• After that – another sick period starts.
Padron (with cello removed) seems similar except the cigars are fine out-of-the-box, and the first sick period is between about three and five years – not really ‘sick,’ as they’re still okay, but they tasted better before, and will taste even better later.
4. Purpose of a humidor
To keep cigars at a constant temperature and moisture level (1), i.e., insulation, air-tightness, and humidity control.
That’s all one has to worry about unless one has loose cigars without cello. Fill a cooler with boxes (even empty ones, there should minimal open air in a humidor), buy a half-pound of beads, fill a few thin ‘socklets’ or ‘knee-highs,’ aquarium bags, etc. with the beads, and spray them with distilled water – too little is better than too much. Arrange the bead bags mostly at the top, add a layer of closed-foam tape as a gasket for the lid if needed, and you’re done. That is state-of-the-art in passive humidification / temperature control, and works just fine in almost all cases.
If the ambient (room) temperature is constant, then one doesn’t have to worry about insulation. The container can be a Zip-lock freezer bag or a Mason jar. Any reasonably-sealing container will work, from an eBay special to a 10,000-Euro box. Just keep the air space to a minimum, the temperature constant, away from sunlight, and add beads (not needed in Mason jars).
(1) Note: A cigar’s ‘moisture level’ is not the same as relative humidity (RH). Cigars should be moist – about 11% to 13% water by mass. Unfortunately, there is no usable, reasonably accurate, consistent, inexpensive, and non-destructive way to measure a cigar’s moisture level – unless how much the cigar is supposed to weigh is known. Thus, RH is used as a proxy. RH is not the same thing as moisture level, but there is more-or-less a direct relationship. The key difference only matters when the cigar is not in cello:
a) Above 65% RH. The wrapper acts like an imperfect moisture barrier. Moisture enters the filler/binder mostly via the foot of the cigar. If the filler/binder is less moist than the humidor’s RH, then the filler/binder moisture goes up by the equivalent of 1% RH per week. Filler/binder humidification like this can be uneven, and another month may be needed to evenly distribute the moisture within the cigar.
b) Below 65% RH. The wrapper allows moisture to pass to/from the filler/binder. RH is gained and lost relatively quickly – unless the cigar is in a box or in cello.
Cello is an excellent moisture barrier. Yes, it breathes. But very, very, very, very slowly. So it protects. Leave cigars in cello unless you have boxes.
5. The other purpose of a humidor
To quickly recover from changes in temperature and RH.
Quick recovery is only needed when there are loose cigars that are not in cello. If there are a few such cigars, then put them in an old box, and skip to the next section. If not, then consider the worst possible type of humidor, a glass display model. This ’75-count’ humidor has about 40 cigars and 20 (in cello) cigarillos, and is opened every few days to 37% RH in winter, and 90% RH in summer.
http://www.cigarsmokers.com/attachme...1&d=1326050620
Display humidor (beads and cedar sheets not shown)
In winter, once the humidor is opened, everything in the humidor will start to release moisture: unfinished wood, beads, and the forty cigars without cello.
As an aside, this is where ‘gel bead’ polyacrylics and sponge (Credo) humidifiers can be faster than beads – they can release more moisture than beads for the same weight. Cedar sheets – the ones used between layers of cigars in many boxes – are also a fast-releasing moisture source. As needed, one can also use/add gel bead (water pillows), and/or more beads, and/or active humidification.
Active humidification, e.g., Cigar Oasis, Hydra, etc., and/or fans are the best solutions to quickly recover from loss of moisture in a humidor. If active humidification or temperature control is needed, then add them. They work … but sometimes not well enough. For example, Hydra’s have a default of 70% RH after a power outage. I want 65% RH to be the default. Thus, I calibrate the Hydra so it reads 70% when the actual RH is 65%.
http://www.cigarsmokers.com/attachme...1&d=1326050643
Hydra at 65% RH
Get active humidification and/or fans only if there are a lot of loose cigars that aren’t in cello, in a humidor that is regularly opened, or the humidor has a lot of airspace – for example, a display humidor or walk-in. On the other hand, beads (or cedar/mahogany) will still be required to absorb moisture.
