Air Conditioning

[bossman3]

I guess this is where I should've been asking the questions I needed answered. Does the fact that I have my sticks stored in air tight glass jars with 65% boveda packs in them, but they're in a room that has air conditioning.....does that affect them? They're feeling a little light....Thanks

[Colt45]

My uneducated guess: Assuming that the air has not been completely removed from the containers, and that there is moisture within the cigars and humidifying packs, I would think that the containers would be affected by ambient conditions.

The warmer the air, the greater the capacity to hold vapor, the cooler the air, the less so. We have a number of scientifically minded members who should be able to shed greater light on the subject.

[bossman3]

Thanks

[nikesupremedunk]

You keep mentioning it feels light...cigars shouldn't change weight at all. I'm guessing it's more psychological. If you really think they are "getting lighter" then buy a little scale off amazon and weigh them every week. I bet it'll stay the same give or take a few hundredths of a gram if there's a change in the RH.

As for AC affecting the RH, my hygro goes up when the temperature is lowered. I use an air tight see through tupperdor so I can monitor the temp and RH inside without opening it. If the temperature goes up, the RH drops, and if temp goes down then RH goes up. But since the cigars are in an air tight enviorment, it shouldn't have any affect on them.

[bossman3]

Yeah light like a cigar you leave in the ashtray for a couple of hours and go back to.

[cigary43]

My whole house has A/C esp here in Atlanta...otherwise I'd shoot myself in the head as it gets pretty clammy here. As long as your humidor/tupperador/coolerador has the correct RH inside you're good to go.

[bossman3]

Got it.....Thanks all.

[PigFish]

Here are some general points regarding cigars and their associated weights.

As a rule of thumb Cuban cigars are not very weight consistent. I use this 'axiom' in the broadest sense as I do not weight a lot of cigars these days. I used to make a bit of a study of it when exploring the huge inconsistency in the tastes of same vitola, same brand cigars. My findings, using a grain scale (1 grain = 1/7000 of a pound) was that Cuban cigars could and often would vary as much as 30 percent by weight out of a single box of cigars. This explains, I think, much of the inconsistency of the breed.

As cigars are typically boxed based on color, with no real means other than weight to examine content, it is reasonable to focus on weight as a reason for inconsistencey.

Weight of course is a factor of density. While the cigar is measured generally to fit the vitola datum, the cigar itself is never measured for weight by the roller. This is all done by experience and feel. Great rollers will agree or disagree on a perfect feel. As the skill level goes down the chain and since cigars are not packaged by the roller, you can see that cigar weights can rationally vary greatly.

Tobacco weight itself is a factor of the type of plant and type of tobacco and of course the water content. Water, as a percentage wight of our cigars will vary from about 9 percent to say 15 percent depending on a lot of factors. My cigars are dryer and I like them that way.

The Boveda pack in a closed container concerns me. My concern is however based on some ignorance of the product. I thought that I might make that clear. My concern is based on the general lack of knowledge of those that sell cigar accessories about what their products really do. There is a lot of myth and misconception in the cigar world and a large part of it is due to gurus, know-it-alls and marketeers of humidity products. For the lack of a better term, I will lump many into a larger group of charlatans!

I have my doubts about whether the Boveda pack acts as claimed. Someday I will buy one, shove it into a closed container with a data logger and test it out but since I don't use them my interest in the experiment, just to prove or disprove the product of another is not that important to me.

I say, 'be cautious.' Why? Because any source of free water can and will be adsorbed by your cigars in a sealed container. Therefore, if there is no means for the loss of water and the water activity level of the Boveda pack is higher than the cigars inside, the cigars will take the water from them until such time as the water activity level in both substances is the same. This is termed equilibrium relative humidity and it is a law of the physical world, not a charlatan pitch!!!

As a general rule I tell everyone; never close a free source of water into an uncontrolled sealed container with cigars. It is a bad idea!

Cheers -the Pig

[JohnnyO]

Humidors no matter how big/small are meant to breathe some. If your cigar goes through a sick period, it will be releasing gases/vapors that need to get out. Imagine not leaving your hermetically sealed house 1-2 years, you'll be sick after a while. John

[garbandz]

Relative humidity changes with temp.

Why put a Boveda in an air tight jar?

Weight depends on humidity as well as filling.loose packed sticks weigh less,dry sticks weigh less.

Glass is fine,but you gain no benefit from cedar in glass.

[PigFish]

Weight depends on percent moisture content. A blanket assumption that it is relative to humidity is only half right. If you change two parameters such as both temperature and humidity, with rH rising with temperature rising, you may be actually reducing percentage moisture content.

One must remember that tobacco is not air. It posses its own isotherms for water content just like a desiccant. Temperature is as important, if not more important than rH. One cannot be mentioned without the other.

Cheers.

[PigFish]

Are you sure about that first line piggy? Wouldn't "absolute" moisture content be more exact than "percent"?

There is no convention for percent moisture content of tobacco based on temperature like there is water in space. Meaning that water vapor in space can be described as percent moisture content relative to temperature, or just absolute water content per volume of space. It is the understanding that water vapor in space is correlated to temperature in such a fashion that makes the convention convenient to determine the "absolute water content." It is not that one could not define such a representation for tobacco but there does not appear to be much use for it, as one can easily weigh a saturated hygroscopic material, dehydrate it, and weigh it again for percent moisture content numbers. Remember rH, is a convention... a definition that describes a physical property based on the water vapor in space at a given temperature. It is an easy means to take you to "absolute water content" without trying to capture the "space," remove the air and weigh the sample.

rH and temperature together lead us to a precent moisture content. Absolute humidity does not work in reverse and the functions are not commutative. What I mean by this is that absolute moisture content can be derived from rH given the temperature. An absolute water content number, or absolute humidity would represent a function, or a line of corresponding temperatures and humidities that would all generate that absolute moisture content. Absolute humidity does not give us just one number for rH and temperature.

We may be confusing terms when talking water in space verses tobacco. I will give you that. If tobacco were uniform, such as empty space then the convention would be of some value. For that we use an empirical isothermal chart of adsorption of water vapor in tobacco. That is if you can find one for your tobacco! The isothermal chart would represent the percent moisture content based on rH at a given temperature. rH comparisons are just conventions for ease of manipulating data.

Yeah... I am sure! In my answer, percent moisture content means absolute water content as a percentage of the weight of the sample. Perhaps of I wrote that first, I could have saved myself some writing!!! -LOL

Cheers, Ray

[Hunter1974]

My whole house has A/C esp here in Atlanta...otherwise I'd shoot myself in the head as it gets pretty clammy here. As long as your humidor/tupperador/coolerador has the correct RH inside you're good to go.

the same in lower alabama