Cigar Storage – Part III

SO, you’ve bought the biggest humidor you can afford.

Now, before you lovingly snuggle your beautiful cigars in for a refreshing slumber – you need to work out how you are going to attain and retain the all-important moisture required within.

A quick recap – cigars will only taste at their best if they are kept within certain environmental parameters. Think of it like this; a banana grown in Basingstoke is going to be a crappy affair. One grown in Barbados, however, is a happy banana.

What we mean by this is that the tobacco leaf – pure, organic material, of course, grown with the aid of God’s good soil, water and sun – will only be kept at the peak of its smoking and storing powers if you bring a little bit of the Caribbean to Croydon. Or Cambridge, or Caerphilly, Carnoustie, Cumbria, Cornwall or Cromer.

We need somewhere near a maximum temperature of about 70 degrees Celsius and relative humidity or somewhere around 70%. How do we achieve this?

In olden days, we would have cavorted around the humidor, cackling and throwing in the odd eye of newt or wing of bat (or, more precisely, bunged in some distilled water or special gel, moisture beads or other, and hoped for the best). Modern technology has helped us achieve a more consistent – and less stressful – way of keeping our smokes ready for that much-anticipated moment when you can sit back, spark up and drift away with the smoke.

These days, unless you like making work for yourself, the most convenient way of doing this is by using modern humidification pouches. These are ingenious sealed sachets of a salt solution, calibrated to put into – and remove, if necessary – exact amounts of humidity into your humidor or cabinet. Quite how they do this is known mainly to the eggheads, but they are marvellous inventions and it is no exaggeration to say that as long as you don’t have huge humidors to contend with, it really is as simple as taking one of these sachets out of their cellophane, chucking it into the old humidor and forgetting about it for a month or two until you need to repeat the process.

There are several different types of these sachets now on the market, but the pioneer and market leader is made by an American firm by the unusual name of Boveda.

Boveda is based in Minnesota and has taken very seriously of making your life as a cigar lover easier and more pleasurable. If you would like to know more about Boveda, its history, outlook and expertise, look no further than Nick Hammond’s Around The World In 80 Cigars – There And Back Again. In it, Nick visits Boveda HQ – and without wishing to spoil your reading pleasure, we can only say that Lake Superior, a portable wood-fired sauna, a bottle of whisky, a hammock strung between two trees and a wheelchair all feature in his account of the trip.

Once you have your storage and humidity up and running – whither next for the new cigar passionado? Let’s see where the journey takes us next…