LT Cigar Storage at 55F?

[Optic101]

  On 11/13/2014 at 10:58 PM, Baldy said:

X3.14159

Interested to see the equation with Pi.

[PapaDisco]

  On 11/14/2014 at 1:16 AM, Optic101 said:

Interested to see the equation with Pi.

oh man you guys got it all wrong! Pi has nothing to do with the rH . . . Pi is what you eat after the cigar is done. Sheesh.

I'm not worried about the lower temp for storage, just the transition from higher to lower temp and not knowing the predicted increase in humidity. From Optic's experience (which is starting at an even higher temp) it looks like a 5% increase in rH or less, which would allow the Bovedas plenty of time to slowly correct things.

[Optic101]

  On 11/14/2014 at 3:51 AM, PapaDisco said:

oh man you guys got it all wrong! Pi has nothing to do with the rH . . . Pi is what you eat after the cigar is done. Sheesh.

.

Say lah ...

[PigFish]

Here is one for all time! How about this… Try it and find out…

I have read some very interesting assumptions from above. The most accurate that I have read comes from Brother Wilkey.

Gentlemen! Tobacco is not space!

Air has nothing to do with water in space. Air does not hold, nor bond with water. Water does its own thing in space…

Tobacco is not space, so all this correlation with air, water is nothing but speculation. Temperature is what matters… Temperature determines what the actual water content in space will be. Temperature and of course, the presence or absence of free water.

Tobacco and space have one thing in common. They don't create nor destroy water. The water in them enters and leaves via laws of physics, based on temperature and the absence and availability of free water.

Changing temperature does not, in and of itself change water content in cigars. BUT, AND THIS IS AN IMPORTANT BUT, cigars don't live in an actual or rhetorically vacuum. They live in an environment, in space, in space with water….

Water is controlled in space by temperature and water vapor pressure. What water does in space is well known and calculable. We use a system of determining water in space via a 'definition' called relative humidity. rH is a definition… That is all of what it is!

One can use expensive equipment to determine the water activity in hygroscopic products. That is how it is determined by instrument. OR, it is determined empirically via controlled experiment. How many of you do it this way??? Don't all raise your hands at once!!!

Someone discovered that one could predict the amount of water content in hygroscopic material by noting known atmospheric conditions and assuming that the hygroscopic material is in equilibrium in that system. With that knowledge… we all went off to the races!!! He/she did not look at the temperature and rH and make a prediction. He took dried samples, weighed them, saturated them under controlled conditions, measured the weight and charted the percentage moisture content. Theory then provides the generalities, but the scientific process provides the results…

So who has isosteric charts of water content in tobacco? Well, I have a few!

I speak on this then from a position of some knowledge. I am not guessing! But then again, I am not pretending that I have original work on current strains of Cuban tobacco. I also am making some assumptions…! You should know that!

The point of being 'off to the races' was to be able to predict the condition of a hygroscopic product based on measurements that we can make, and based on assumptions of saturation and trust in the laws of physics to determine the amount of water in such a substance.

I would suggest to all of you, for the sake of risking your cigars, don't call win, place and show, until the race is won. You think it is simple…? Well, it is not that tough, but as they say in the casino, "only bet what you want to win (or lose)." Willing to gamble your cigars? Well, then ask a bunch of cigar smokers on the net if you can toss your cigars in a locker and do it the democratic way and follow the crowd.

By the way… The crowd brought you the 60 ring cigar and the belief that if you cut a hair it will come in darker and stronger! I love that one. I always wondered how a hair knew if it was cut or not? I digress…

To the OP…

Brad… I think you know that I am not a bullshitter! If you are going to do this, don't add free water to the system. Forget the Bovida packs. Locking up the known water content in your cigars, assuming that it is right in the first place, and placing them at this temp should do you no harm.

The fact is however, that I don't KNOW!

What I am, is smart enough and insightful enough to understand that I don't know everything AND that I cannot predict everything.

How about this just as an example? WHAT if the temperature does not allow for the rapid adsorption of what free water you have left in your open space?

Lets play a game…

You take your cigars, sealed without the Bovida packs in your car to the locker. It is 80dF that day. That heat takes water out of your cigar and brings it into the free space because that is what heat does to water in space. You toss your cigar in the locker and you think your are home free!

The locker cools the packaging first and some of the water that the cigars cannot take up (this is called hysteresis by the way) is condensed on the packaging or the cigars themselves. As the cigars cool, the rate at which the water is adsorbed by the cigars is slowed due to the energy of water. The water is quite happy bonded with itself in the bag and has a hard time breaking away because it must phase change to vapor to enter the cigar.

There are some mold spores on your cigars. And as a result of the move the wrappers of the cigars are wetter than the inner of the cigars just long enough to get the fuzzy little animals to growing and eating on your cigars.

You come back 3 months later to look at your cigars, curse me and bunch of other for saying it was okay, and find mold on a $1000.00 dollars worth of cigars.

Whose fault is it?

The point of me writing this is just a warning! What you do with your cigars is your business. But give it some thought before you do it. Understand that you are taking a risk. Look at what could happen, not just at what someone who knows little about the topic tells you won't happen.

Best of luck on your experiment!

-Ray

[PapaDisco]

Hey Ray,

I'm not including the Boveda packs because I think the cigars need hydration, I'm only including them because, as they adjust from one temperature down to the other temperature, I don't know what the numerical effect on rH will be, and so the Bovedas are there to absorb most likely.

From some of the random experiences of members though, it looks like going from 65rH/70F down to 55F will not move the rH to excess . . . (maybe 67-68rh?) in which case, like you say, one could eliminate the Bovedas altogether and be just fine.

HOWEVER, this is a wine storage facility . . . near as I can tell they really care about temperature, and are rather loose about humidity. They shouldn't be; wine aficionados care about their corks, but a little rH insurance in the tuperdores and zip locked cigar boxes/cabs would be a nice set of belt AND suspenders!

Pretty ramshackle set up I know, but I needs the room!

[PigFish]

  On 11/15/2014 at 2:15 AM, PapaDisco said:

Hey Ray,

I'm not including the Boveda packs because I think the cigars need hydration, I'm only including them because, as they adjust from one temperature down to the other temperature, I don't know what the numerical effect on rH will be, and so the Bovedas are there to absorb most likely.

From some of the random experiences of members though, it looks like going from 65rH/70F down to 55F will not move the rH to excess . . . (maybe 67-68rh?) in which case, like you say, one could eliminate the Bovedas altogether and be just fine.

HOWEVER, this is a wine storage facility . . . near as I can tell they really care about temperature, and are rather loose about humidity. They shouldn't be; wine aficionados care about their corks, but a little rH insurance in the tuperdores and zip locked cigar boxes/cabs would be a nice set of belt AND suspenders!

Pretty ramshackle set up I know, but I needs the room!

I don't know what is going to happen to your Bovida packs Brad but I can guess. My guess is better than most you will find in cigar circles.

The Bovida pack has to be considered a source of free water.

Well, lets start here instead. If the cigars are conditioned, meaning they have the proper percentage moisture content when entering the cellar, if they are sealed so that no water can leave, they will be the same bringing them out. It is that simple. The temperature itself will not create water.

The Boveda pack is in interesting gadget. It is a semi-permiable membrane around an aqueous salt solution. If you pull up a chart of aqueous salts you will see that they are not perfectly stable, but pretty damn good.

So if the pack provides water to the system to bring the rH to 65 and 65 rH and 55dF no longer provides for (I am going to pick a number out of a hat) 11 percent moisture content, but 16 percent moisture content, AND, water activity in tobacco risks mold growth at 16 percent (again, numbers I am making up) then you have a one way ticket to moldy cigars... I could probably spend a lot of time getting you better data, but I don't have it to spend.

Adding free water to this mix is a bad idea. In this case, a case where 65rH at a lower temperature means wet cigars, I suggest against it.

If you told me you were going to protect your cigars stored at 90dF with a 65rH Bovida pack I would give you the same advice. In this case 65rH and 90dF would lead to dryer cigars, potentially, too dry!

As I said, it is not the 55dF that will kill you. It is the water...

Cheers! -Ray

[Optic101]

Ray, just guessing here...

Would it be an idea for PD to use 60rH Boveda ?

[PigFish]

...at this juncture mate, I would be guessing too. I will guess at a lot of things (with disclosure) but not here... There is too much at stake!

To clarify...

If the cigars have the proper PMC (percent moisture content), bag them airtight, what would change?

You see, the temperature alone is not going to create or destroy water in the cigars. They go in perfect, like freezing, they come out perfect. No worries!

Lets assume the Bovida pack creates a constant equilibrium rH regardless of temperature.

75dF=65rH

70dF=65rH

65dF=65rH... and so on, until we get to 55dF.

We do know that rH and temperature is important to MAINTAINING a certain PMC. We do know that don't we? Yes!

So water phases out of the water source, the Bovida pack until the space reaches 65rH.

Remember! We are not just dealing with space! We are dealing with 3 (for the sake of debate) hygroscopic substances. One is space, two is tobacco, and three is the saline source.

Space does not offer much in the way of comfort for free water at 55dF. Go with what you know here. As the temp drops, the amount of water that space can contain is less than at a higher temp... Right? The space could stay at 65rH but there is a competitive hygroscopic material in this space, and it is a bunch of cigars. Since the space does not want the water, there may be incentive for the water to bond to, and into the tobacco.

I am lecturing now... but you guys have to put up a divider in your heads that tobacco is not empty space. What Wilkey said in few words... Tobacco cannot be directly and linearly correlated to rH and empty space. In this case, you may just find the Bovida packs dry, and your cigars soaking wet.

It all depends on the isosteric performance of the tobacco itself AND the amount of free water that you put into the system (the Bovida packs).

Do you put Bovida packs in the freezer with your cigars? No, you don't! Do you know that tobacco becomes more attractive to free water than space as the temperature drops? Well, I don't know if you know that or not, but I have been attempting to teach it here for years.

Tobacco is not empty space and cannot be correlated to it except via a relationship that is empirically tested and it is certainly not represented by a linear correlation to rH and space.

To sum this up, you may find that the equivalent PMC of tobacco may just be something like 65dF and 80rH rather than the 65dF and 65rH that you are accustomed to. The PMC may be high enough to grow biologics...

That is all the waring that I can give...

If the cigars are conditioned right in the first place, one should never add water and reduce temperature!!! You can add water and increase temperature, because an increase in temperature is going to make space more attractive to water, and your cigars will give it up.

Store a cigar at a higher temperature, and if you want to keep the same PMC, you must increase the equilibrium rH to keep it there. Lower the temp and the opposite is true.

Hope that helps! -R

[Optic101]

Makes sense.

[subiemech]

Let me see if I follow you Piggy. If %rh stays even, say 65%, but I lower temp, my smokes will absorb the water that the cooler air no longer wants to hold?

[headstand]

  On 12/14/2014 at 9:38 PM, subiemech said:

Let me see if I follow you Piggy. If %rh stays even, say 65%, but I lower temp, my smokes will absorb the water that the cooler air no longer wants to hold?

I don't want to put an oink in Piggy's mouth, but that is what he appears to be oinking.

I stored my cigars in my wine cellar for a while with a starting rH at 65, but pulled them out after a few months once I noticed they did not smoke as well - presumably because they were over humidified.

[PigFish]

  On 12/14/2014 at 9:38 PM, subiemech said:

Let me see if I follow you Piggy. If %rh stays even, say 65%, but I lower temp, my smokes will absorb the water that the cooler air no longer wants to hold?

You know, I have been typing for about 15 minutes, and I guess that I just should not be talking rH today, because what I wrote does not even make sense to me....! -LOL

Lets say that your humidor contains water vapor and cigars. If you lower the temperature and change nothing else the rH in the humidor will go up. That number going up, represents the 'affinity' water has for itself and its desire to pool or condense. In a sense it represents a measurement of the "magnetism" (for lack of a better term) of water to water.

In your humidor there exists other water "magnets." We call those hygroscopic materials; your cigars.

As the temperature declines, water vapor may find a more attractive media to bond to than to stay suspended in a vapor state in the open space. In this case it is actually attracted to your cigars. This is not speculation but a fact... Unlike air, tobacco actually bonds to water vapor. It likes it. It likes it based on the energy of water. If the water is too energized (hot) it cannot bond. But if it is cool, it bonds rather readily. Cigars are like a magnet for water vapor. And the fact is, the less energy that the water has, the cooler it is, the more it wants to bond to a substance like tobacco.

So the answer is yes. If you leave the water content in your humidor the same and reduce the temperature, the water will migrate from the space to your cigars even if the rH number remains constant.

Tobacco likes water vapor! How much it will hold depends on how much water you give it (rH) and at what temperature you keep it at. It is that simple really.

Headstand has empirically proven what I already know and try to teach others in my length posts. rH is not alone in the importance of cigar storage. rH without a corresponding temperature is useless information for cigar storage. Saying that I store my cigars at 65rH could mean that your cigars are too wet, or too dry, or just right depending on the temperature you store them at.

Cheers! -Piggy