LT Cigar Storage at 55F?

[PapaDisco]

I'm going to take a locker at a local wine storage place for my cigar storage until I get my own cellar properly outfitted. The stogies will likely be there for a couple of years.

The wine place keeps it's temps at 55-57F, which is lower than many of our target temps. I currently aim for 65/65 at home, but struggle with temperature stability.

I can't see any harm in storing cigars at 55F other than the rise in stogie humidity as they transition to their new state (lower temp). I don't want any soggy stogies, so will dry box them in a big tupperdore before putting them to rest in the LT locker, with each box in it's own ziplock and collected in tupperdores for ease of logistics.

Should be pretty straightforward. Anything else I should be worried about? Anyone else have experience using wine storage for cigars?

[bradbrennan]

Should be interesting question...what humidity level are they keeping?

[Skyfall]

I prefer my long term storage conditions colder than my usual 65F and with absolute minimal air exchange.

[CUBANO]

55 F is too cold for me, make sure the cigars don't dry out.

[Skyfall]

There have been several threads here over the years citing famous London Cigar shops who prefer to keep their prized aged stock and long term aging stock in the 50'sF. Even at an assumed relative humidity, it's still really wet, and the theory is to decrease the natural decomposition time. Thank about a paper towel that is 50% wet, some freak out about anything under 65%, but even 50%, is still pretty damn wet!!!

[potpest]

55 F is too cold for me, make sure the cigars don't dry out.

Do cigars not have a higher percentage water content if the temperature is lowered and RH is kept constant?

[Ginseng]

There have been several threads here over the years citing famous London Cigar shops who prefer to keep their prized aged stock and long term aging stock in the 50'sF. Even at an assumed relative humidity, it's still really wet, and the theory is to decrease the natural decomposition time. Thank about a paper towel that is 50% wet, some freak out about anything under 65%, but even 50%, is still pretty damn wet!!!

Looking for Sir Piggy to step in. The RH in the ambient air, numerically is far from the moisture content in the tobacco.

Wilkey

[tjohn7]

Isn't the OLH kept at 57F and 65RH? You should be fine.

[Hafner32]

I'm interested in the responses as well. I just moved my coolers into the basement and they are currently sitting at 55'-57'F and 61' Humidity. I did a bunch of searching on the forum earlier today and while there were several threads discussing the relationship of humidity and temperature, I couldn't find any that discussed what would be considered the acceptable low temperature range for storing cigars.

[polarbear]

I'm no Pigfish but from what I recall a storage temp of 55F should not be a problem for your cigars provided they are humidified at a lower percentage than you would normally

I'm not sure of a conversion for temp-RH but I would imagine if you kept the RH around the 60% mark they would be fine

With cool air being more dense than warm air, the amount of water contained in air a 65F would be less than air at 55F even if both samples maintain a stable RH of 65%

I've met a few cigar guys who keep their long term aging (10 years, minimum) humidors at 60/60 before returning them to a 65/65 humidor right before smoking them.

[Brah]

Relative humidity can only be measured once actual humidity is known. The actual amount of humidity in the air. Once that info is obtained you can calculate relative humidity based on a storage temp of 55.

[PapaDisco]

The rH of this facility is 60 at 55F, so rH is not an issue imho. For their smaller lockers (4ft x4ft x 4ft) they stack them so one would want the upper box rather than the one on the floor, but I doubt even that would be much of an issue.

"Relative humidity" is (in my humble understanding) "relative" to dewpoint, and that's why temperature matters. As temperature drops, rH goes up (in the air) even though no extra water is added to it. As some others alluded to on this thread, that cooler air will tend to dry out if there are other materials (cigars, wood boxes, shelves, walls) that want to absorb the moisture from the air as it approaches dew point. Once dew point is reached then the air solves its own problem by raining or snowing

So our cigar storage problem is one of taking 1,000 cigars from a warmer, higher rH and sticking them in a cooler, lower rH. If I merely take my tuperdores over there and slide them into storage 10F cooler then the rH goes up in the tupers and the cigars soak that agua up and increase my risk of mold (maybe . . . it's possible that 10F is not a big enough change to 65/65 to cause a mold loving environment . . . only Piggy knows the secret of the mathematics to predict this! ).

So . . . I get the sticks a wee bit dryer, or depend on the bovedas in their tupers, and stick each one in a ziplock (Skyfall's point about minimal air exchange, and Nino's too except he shrink wraps which is even better), and put the ziplocked boxes and cabs back in the tuperdores with bovedas and the whole set of tupers goes in the storage bin. Seems foolproof to me, but then I've not done this before . . .

I'm currently using 65rH bovedas and would like to continue using those inside the tuperdores. It will be so close to ambient that I expect them to last 6 months or more.

[Optic101]

In an closed enviroment, lets say an air sealed box the RH is going up if you lower the temperature as mentioned before.

For sure someone can calculate the % if all the conditions are know. This would be not to difficult I guess for and empty air seald box.

But now we have some tobaco, some wood inside. Trust this would be "fun" to calculate and make a scientific statement.

From expierience:

I store my boxes at 64-65 F.

My ambient temp is 80-82 F.

As for preperation I reduce the RH at 82F to about 60%. Seal the boxes in Ziplock, press most of the air out and move them to my storage.

In the beginning I added a digital hygrometer inside the Ziplock and checked frequently (I know a Data Logger would be much better).

I did not see any "big" swings (for sure the measurment system is too simple to be precise), final RH is about 64%.

But most important, I did not have any negative impact on the cigars. No mold, no wet cigars, and smoking well.

Did this testing over a period of 3 month with multiple boxes.

Edit:

Forgot to mention that TIME play another important role.

As slower the cooling process happens as more time the system has to adapt.

I try to reduce the time factor by placing 4-5 cigar boxes each packed in Ziplock in a airtight container.

This "onion" system is reduce the impack of cooling and slows the sytem down.

[ha1fway]

With cool air being more dense than warm air, the amount of water contained in air a 65F would be less than air at 55F even if both samples maintain a stable RH of 65%

Backwards, warm air can hold more moisture than cold air, that's why you get condensation on a cold glass in the summer. Warm moist air is cooled down below the dew point.

[Skyfall]

Looking for Sir Piggy to step in. The RH in the ambient air, numerically is far from the moisture content in the tobacco.

Wilkey

I understand completely how the science of RH works.

[dangolf18]

I believe the Davidoff shop in London keeps their aged stock at around 55. See below video.

http://www.jamessuckling.com/sahakian-suckling-davidoff-shop.html

[ArtemusGordon]

I am very curious about this as well. Looking to do the same thing

[Mckucci]

As long as the humidity is regulated, having your cigars at a cooler temperature will not make a difference... Lots of people use "cooladors" and keep their cigars between 56-60 degrees....

[ArtemusGordon]

So how would something like a 65 boveda perform in a Tupperware sealed bin with a few boxes going from 65F to 55F?

[Optic101]

Given we start at around RH 65. As the RH will go up the Boveda will start to absorb moisture. As from experience there will be a delay which means a RH peak. If you have enough Boveda with enough capacity the system will swing into balance somewhen.

[ArtemusGordon]

Gotcha. Yes its very interesting to see the video dangolf18 posted (link below) about davidoff in london keeping their cigar temps that low. I really want to start doing that with my boxes that are currently 65/65 and putting them into my offsite wine locker but I am concerned about the mold issue

http://www.jamessuckling.com/sahakian-suckling-davidoff-shop.html

[knickerbocker]

55 degrees is no problem. I keep my long term cigar cabinet at between 55-58F. I check my cigars once per quarter so that cabinet literally is only opened 10 times per year (the other times are when I'm adding new boxes). The cigars always feel fine, they are not dried out and its not a problem.

[sw15825]

Backwards, warm air can hold more moisture than cold air, that's why you get condensation on a cold glass in the summer. Warm moist air is cooled down below the dew point.

This is what I thought. My cigars are much wetter in cooleradoors when the humidity level stays constant at 65 % rh at 70 F than at 65% / 65 F. Now in summer I have to try to get the humidity down to 62 % in the warmer weather for mine to be where I like them for smoking.

As far as long term storage/aging, I guess they feel they age more slowly and gracefully at lower temps and % s.,over a long period of time. Makes sense to me as the moisture/water acts as the catalyst to change the tabacco in fermentation so also in aging, but in different way. Just a thought from my studies but I'm no expert.

[aes8]

You guys are really overthinking this. Set it and forget it. Smoke at least a stick a month directly out of the humi to make sure everything is ok. (i.e. no cracked wrappers or no soggy sticks).

You are not storing the Mona Lisa. You are eventually set everything on fire, correct?

[Baldy]

You guys are really overthinking this. Set it and forget it. Smoke at least a stick a month directly out of the humi to make sure everything is ok. (i.e. no cracked wrappers or no soggy sticks).

You are not storing the Mona Lisa. You are eventually set everything on fire, correct?

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