In the box or out

[hunterbeav]

In an effort to get more cigars in my wineador I have elected to store cigars out of their boxes...

 

Is this good...bad...or indifferent...thanks for your input..... Jim

 

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[Derboesekoenig]

in an effort to save space, if it's a box of 25 and I have 6 or less left, I'm tossing the box. If it's a box of 10 and there are 4-5 left, I'll most likely be doing the same. That way you can buy more boxes lol

[hunterbeav]

in an effort to save space, if it's a box of 25 and I have 6 or less left, I'm tossing the box. If it's a box of 10 and there are 4-5 left, I'll most likely be doing the same. That way you can buy more boxes lol

I actually take a full box and empty them into my wineador......so I can buy more lol.

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[wineguy]

14 minutes ago, hunterbeav said:

I actually take a full box and empty them into my wineador......so I can buy more lol.

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I would be a little concerned about long  term condition of them and damage.  Maybe a coolidor or tuppadore as an alternative for extra long term storage boxes.  If I only have a few as referenced above I will remove and put in the drawer and pitch the box.....

[stogieluver]

I know of no downside to storing them that way, barring any shuffling around you may do causing damage to the wrappers.  I may have a different opinion if you're talking long term storage for aging purposes, though.

[hunterbeav]

I know of no downside to storing them that way, barring any shuffling around you may do causing damage to the wrappers.  I may have a different opinion if you're talking long term storage for aging purposes, though.

Thanks Stogie....when you say long term storage how long do you consider long term...more then 2 years?

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[stogieluver]

1 hour ago, hunterbeav said:

Thanks Stogie....when you say long term storage how long do you consider long term...more then 2 years?

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Five or more years.

[TBird55]

19 hours ago, stogieluver said:

Five or more years.

That's good to know. As you know, like you, my Aristocrat is dangerously close to being packed.  I have some boxes just sitting in the drawer. I figure, there is room for another 7 or 8 boxes, if I take them out of their box. That will just about give me the room I need for what's on the way.  Put what I plan to smoke in the next few months in the drawer, problem solved, until the next 24 24.  ?

[Derboesekoenig]

13 minutes ago, TBird55 said:

That's good to know. As you know, like you, my Aristocrat is dangerously close to being packed.  I have some boxes just sitting in the drawer. I figure, there is room for another 7 or 8 boxes, if I take them out of their box. That will just about give me the room I need for what's on the way.  Put what I plan to smoke in the next few months in the drawer, problem solved, until the next 24 24.  ?

I think you know what that means! wink wink haha

[PigFish]

It does not make a damn bit of difference if your humidor works! Yes, I am off on that tangent again!

A working humidor is a stable one. The problem with many when addressing the working of a humidor is one of perception. Many people don't really know what working and not working really means until after it has cost them something.

In a refrigerated or temperature controlled humidor, I would not suggest taking your cigars out of the boxes. Yes, I do it all the time but this is one of my humidors working....

... middle of August, in my shop that can easily get 95F this time of year.

That is a 14 second sample rate data log. Late day is the hottest in the shop typically but it really does not matter. The chart looks the same, day after day...

If you sample inside a box, you will see that the box is not immune to changes. But they are muted and damped from the outside of the box humidor conditions.

Depending on your ambient and how much your humidor cycles, you might find that your cigars show signs of conditioning problems based on direct exposure to the cycles.

Take it for what it is worth. The box adds some protection.

Cheers! -Piggy

[hunterbeav]

It does not make a damn bit of difference if your humidor works! Yes, I am off on that tangent again!
A working humidor is a stable one. The problem with many when addressing the working of a humidor is one of perception. Many people don't really know what working and not working really means until after it has cost them something.
In a refrigerated or temperature controlled humidor, I would not suggest taking your cigars out of the boxes. Yes, I do it all the time but this is one of my humidors working....
... middle of August, in my shop that can easily get 95F this time of year.

That is a 14 second sample rate data log. Late day is the hottest in the shop typically but it really does not matter. The chart looks the same, day after day...
If you sample inside a box, you will see that the box is not immune to changes. But they are muted and damped from the outside of the box humidor conditions.
Depending on your ambient and how much your humidor cycles, you might find that your cigars show signs of conditioning problems based on direct exposure to the cycles.
Take it for what it is worth. The box adds some protection.
Cheers! -Piggy

So piggy for you the magic numbers are 70df at 62% rh.....

I've got mine at 68df at 65%rh...
I'm still searching for Nirvana lol...

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[vidast]

4 minutes ago, hunterbeav said:

So piggy for you the magic numbers are 70df at 62% rh.....

I've got mine at 68df at 65%rh...
I'm still searching for Nirvana lol...

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I'm even farther off lol. I am at 69% and 75df in one of my humidors....

[Derboesekoenig]

8 minutes ago, vidast said:

I'm even farther off lol. I am at 69% and 75df in one of my humidors....

And you don't have any issues while smoking?

[PigFish]

It is based on personal taste and the ability to measure accurately. I never assume accuracy. Accuracy is just another pit that you throw money into. I pay up for accurate stuff, but every sensor has drift. A lot of sensors are actually really good. It seems when they go bad, they are really bad... -LOL

I am more about precision and repeatability. The cigars do the talking to me. I sample and tweak. All of my humidors are set a little different. But since I develop humidors for a hobby, and have built 13 generations of them, I have humidors working back to about generation 8 technology (with some tweaks). The cigars tell you where you need to be. And for me, I can actually take a controller and move it 0.1 at a time and see what happens. Up or down, I don't depend on a humidor to tell me how it wants to store. The cigars tell me, and it tell it!

The hygrometer and the thermometer are just reference points. What are a few points between friends? Condition is something you taste and experience, not set to. Precision allows me to do that. The number could be x and y as far as I am concerned. The ability to keep it x and y is what makes the smoking experience the best it can be... (MHO)

Cheers! -Piggy

 

1 hour ago, hunterbeav said:

So piggy for you the magic numbers are 70df at 62% rh.....

I've got mine at 68df at 65%rh...
I'm still searching for Nirvana lol...

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...I already know that in one of my humidors that is too wet for my taste. But again, the comparison really does not mean much (based on what I previously wrote). How that averages out in your humidor and how it satisfies your taste, that is what matters... There are smokers, and there are experts, yet there are not expert smokers! There are only guys (and gals) like you and I who just like what we like. We all settle. Cheers!

-tP

[vidast]

And you don't have any issues while smoking?

No issues so far. That’s was my non Cuban humidor but now it’s turned into both. I have a strictly Cuban humidor that holds at 65% and like 75df.


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[TBird55]

Keep mine 70F. 61%.  I  tried to keep mine at 65f, when I first went all in on CC, what a headache. Humidity was all over the place, way too wet. Moving the temp up solved my problems.  

[PigFish]

13 hours ago, TBird55 said:

Keep mine 70F. 61%.  I  tried to keep mine at 65f, when I first went all in on CC, what a headache. Humidity was all over the place, way too wet. Moving the temp up solved my problems.  

...Bingo! Been telling people this for years....

There is no need to refrigerate cigars. Room temp is perfect. I is easier to keep, less wet, and when you have air exchanges you have far less free water to deal with. As an added result, water exchanges faster at higher temps because it is more active. Therefore wetter cigars will come to be smokeable faster.

If you want cigars to be the best they possibly can be, a stable environment at your preferred combination of rH and temp is the way to do it.

Cheers! -Piggy

[BarryVT]

Sounds to me like a serious issue that requires a bigger humidor! ?

[PigFish]

I know many of you think I am nuts... and I am okay with that!!! -LOL

However humidor analytics are fun for me. First it makes me arguably the best controlled humidor maker in the world (that I am aware of). Next I bring this to the community and share it so I can help people store better. Really store cigars better, not assume or hearsay store cigars better!

Since I am facing digging out a footing in one of my horse corrals today, I am doing whatever I can to avoid that, so I might as well talk humidor analysis.

Same chart from above viewed two different ways.

1) Where is your average? Not that average is really the absolute way to handle this analysis, because depending on the cycle amplitude and frequency, the hysteresis of tobacco may not actually allow the cigar to settle at the average, but for the sake of a basis of discussion we will just use the average.

What got me thinking about this was the question from above...

... so where do I settle out? From this chart you can see that in actuality, my rH is running about 61.1 at a 1 hour moving average.

How does one make a better humidor? I am glad you asked... It is done through analysis and finding the flaws. As the flaws get smaller, they get harder to find but when you are hell bent at being the best at something, you want to do things no one is even thinking of doing.

For the record, I am not going to call this a problem. Because in the real world, with the hysteresis of cigars being what it is I cannot say that there really is any way to prove if the very small variance that I see visually is actually reflected in the condition of the tobacco. It becomes a resolution issue and more of a mental condition than a physical one... but what the hell...

2) Shows the same analysis from a different perspective. What if I want to use my data to actually make my next generation of humidors better?

What can be gleaned from this is two things. One is that late in the day in the shop is at its hottest. Rather than let my humidor get hotter, a rather aggressively attack the heat cycles (for a number of reasons I won't bother with here). So, late in the day you can see an actual dip in the heat line, more visible with a shorter moving average that I did not plot. But the dip is there around 6PM... you can see it plainly above. While the day gets hotter, the humidor actually gets cooler.

This means actually that I am a bit too aggressive with how I have approached cooling. There are a number of ways to fix this as the controller calls for cooling around a certain set point. This really is likely more an activation logic issue than an actual operational issue. It is not in any way an engineering issue. The humidor works beautifully, but the logic is flawed some by aggressively attacking high heat periods... That is something that costs me nothing but time and analysis to fix.

The second 'fix' is a wish list item. It will take a lot of code writing and analysis to modify. However I am going to modify it (someday). In some ways it shows how well the humidor is engineered.

For the record I like to stay away from mixing concepts such as aH or absolute humidity in with cigar analysis. Like that Newair chart posted a week or so ago, it just confuses people. However operationally this humidor is doing a damn fine job of keeping the same amount of water in the humidor at all times. It is quite impressive I must say...

EXCEPT, when you really understand cigar conditioning, you know that the warmer tobacco gets, the wetter it should be kept. Now, for the record we are viewing such a high resolution perspective of this that I firmly believe that this does not matter at all in one of my humidors. We are talking 1/10 of points here. 1/10 of points, when the cigar community is not really worried about 10 point swings is really splitting hairs, but what the hell. It beats digging in the horse corral...

So what I need (yeah... need...) to do here is write code that views a moving average of temperature (say as a driving factor) and then adjusts the set point of the rH based on it. In this way I actually drive the aH of the humidor lower in instances where the box has a cooling trend. Conversely as the ambient gets cooler, and the box gets warmer, I may want to drive the aH (and rH with it) up to compensate by some small fraction. In this fashion instead of the temperature valleys touching the rH peaks (an indication of great engineering and constant aH) they would coincide (meet peak with peak, valley with valley) and as the box trended higher or lower and then reflect the actual isothermal behavior of tobacco keeping it even more stable.

Coming full circle, aH is not how you store cigars properly. aH stability is great, only if you have temperature stability to match it. Higher heat should be met with higher rH. Lower heat should be matched with lower rH.

Now I need to dig in the dirt...

-the Pig

 

 

[Fugu]

Ray, one question, is it the very same temperature sensor taking the reading for your log-plot above, as also providing the input variable for your controller? I.e. logger and controller utilising the same transducer signal?

[PigFish]

7 minutes ago, Fugu said:

Ray, one question, is it the very same temperature sensor taking the reading for your log-plot above, as also providing the input variable for your controller? I.e. logger and controller utilising the same transducer signal?

No, not in this case.

When I develop I typically log though the sensor that I am controlling along with two independent loggers placed in different locations, all sampling once per second. They are synced through the computer that loads them so there is very little drift there.

This is a maintenance and long term performance log. This means that I stretch the data by logging once in 14 seconds and have to collect data once a week.

Every sensor is different so there are two factors two consider. One, is the actual differential at the different areas and the second is the differential sensor to sensor. Frankly, this whole process is only going to get so good. I am not to the point where I am going to buy a chilled mirror calibrator.

Setting the logger to run through the control sensor is a bit of a pain in the ass. I typically use 4 to 20ma signals but it is easier to pull the signals at 0 to 10vdc, and that means that I have to set up a din terminal setup at the back of the cooler to run a 24v power supply, to get the 0 to 10 to power properly and then tap the signals at the terminals at the back of the cooler and feed all that crap, inside and outside the cooler to the logger, the controller and the sensor. It is a pain... Not to mention, if I shoot video around any of it, it makes the place look like Frankensteins workshop... -LOL

Also when developing I run a multi state logger that pulls hi/low signals at each appliance. What makes this cool, is that I can overlay the hi/low on the logs and see what appliance is causing the problems. I do less and less of this because I can largely read what is going on just by experience now.

So where the hell have you been keeping yourself buddy? Glad to see you again!

-Ray

[Fugu]

Thanks Ray, ok, that's what I was assuming. Otherwise, I think, it would be hard to explain that particular behaviour observed: Your fine-tuned controlling appears precise and pretty close-meshed. External temperature would go into the 'equation' only purely passively, by influencing the internal temp, but not as a direct input variable. What we see in your setup above is a permanent, tight regulation. There is no "simple" overshoot from an overly aggressive algorithm that could explain the longer-term variability. There is short cycling and close feedback controlling with brief periods of regulation, periods which are a minute fraction of the observed long-term periodicity. That long-term effect (24-h cycle) on the other hand seems to be a systematic thing, with a time-constant unrelated to your programmed algorithm (unless you'd feed ambient temp into the equation somehow, which I guess you won't). The set-point would - and should - not change with ambient T. (But correct me if I am wrong).

Therefore, and at least from my understanding as to your technology, from following your posts over the years, I would expect that your controller is working "perfect" - or to put it differently, it works to what it "believes" would be perfect. The 24-h-wave we do see there in your chart could be readily explained by the input sensor being affected to a slightly greater extent by the external ambient than is your logging sensor. It is therefore just not perfectly representative of the "overall" internal climate. Perhaps with the former being positioned closer to the external shell while the latter one being placed more decoupled towards the inside (or something like that?). Mind you, the differences being minute, as you said! If basing on the controller's sensors I bet the reading's moving average would come out straight-line without any visible diurnal periodicity. So I think this is more an issue, if at all it is, of circulation and sensor placement (there just is no perfect mixing achieving full homogeneity in a real-world humidor) and small residual internal inhomogeneities than anything else.

My humble 2cts, and congrats to your achivements once again, Ray! 

[PigFish]

16 hours ago, Fugu said:

Thanks Ray, ok, that's what I was assuming. Otherwise, I think, it would be hard to explain that particular behaviour observed: Your fine-tuned controlling appears precise and pretty close-meshed. External temperature would go into the 'equation' only purely passively, by influencing the internal temp, but not as a direct input variable. What we see in your setup above is a permanent, tight regulation. There is no "simple" overshoot from an overly aggressive algorithm that could explain the longer-term variability. There is short cycling and close feedback controlling with brief periods of regulation, periods which are a minute fraction of the observed long-term periodicity. That long-term effect (24-h cycle) on the other hand seems to be a systematic thing, with a time-constant unrelated to your programmed algorithm (unless you'd feed ambient temp into the equation somehow, which I guess you won't). The set-point would - and should - not change with ambient T. (But correct me if I am wrong).

Therefore, and at least from my understanding as to your technology, from following your posts over the years, I would expect that your controller is working "perfect" - or to put it differently, it works to what it "believes" would be perfect. The 24-h-wave we do see there in your chart could be readily explained by the input sensor being affected to a slightly greater extent by the external ambient than is your logging sensor. It is therefore just not perfectly representative of the "overall" internal climate. Perhaps with the former being positioned closer to the external shell while the latter one being placed more decoupled towards the inside (or something like that?). Mind you, the differences being minute, as you said! If basing on the controller's sensors I bet the reading's moving average would come out straight-line without any visible diurnal periodicity. So I think this is more an issue, if at all it is, of circulation and sensor placement (there just is no perfect mixing achieving full homogeneity in a real-world humidor) and small residual internal inhomogeneities than anything else.

My humble 2cts, and congrats to your achivements once again, Ray! 

Thanks mate...You have written a lot here. It will take me some time to digest it in depth. I really enjoyed your analysis. Some of the fun for those following will be in digesting it, so I am not going to spoil the fun by analyzing and dissecting it. I will say this, I don't necessarily agree with some of your conclusions but you are looking at raw data with far less 'firsthand knowledge' about what is actually happening. It is pretty damn good stab at it however!!

For me, it almost seems a life of learning. I say this somewhat romantically. This has just been such a fun, albeit often frustrating, part of my life, I feel like I have done in now for my whole life. Talking with people about it, with some of my customers and people like you, often collaboratively, gives me another level of enjoyment. So, thanks for playing along!

There is more than one way to skin a cat... Lets go back a few years!

This is a demonstration on why an inquirer was having problems with his TE humidor. I recreated it by manually running my test humidor so that he could understand why he was seeing what he was seeing. I am not going to take it all apart, but it shows reasons why I don't think TE cooled humidors running high amplitude, low cycle rate cooling cycles, work worth a damn...

Since this is not really a TE cooler, nor, one less significant engineering, just a simulation, it frankly works better than most of what the world uses as a TE cooler humidor!

Choices are therefore made. Cycle rate, amplitude of dehydration and overshoot must be considered if you are to make a better humidor.

Next is an older humidor where I was working on getting my amplitudes reduced. It comes at a cost of cycle rate. And cycle it did... This is still a working humidor. It just could stand improvement. I also wanted to prove I could push a compressor cooled wine cooler humidor to work in the mid-nineties (F) and not burn it up.

 

Here I was getting low 80's heat range dehydration only down a couple of rH. Pretty damn good actually but I did not like the long tails and figured that there had to be a better way. I also did not really like the cooler running every 3 or 4 minutes. What was happening is that there was actually a request for cooling prior to the cooler running, and I had hit the limit were the recycle relay was acting as a controller. This went against what I defined as a controlled humidor. I was stuck with a deeper cycle, limiting the operation range of the cooler, or other compromises I did not want to make. Once I saw this small amplitude dehydration however, I did not want to give it up! This is a generation 9 humidor. 16 cycles per hour... Wow...

This brings me to a whole different animal. Controlling and using overshoot, mastering algorithms to not only reduce amplitude further, but allow me to limit cooling cycles to about 4 an hour.

It is the algorithms then that over-drive the cooling. While this will come under the broader term of activation logic, it is more a logic overriding algorrithm. There are also some overriding presumptions in the algorithm, one being that 'things will get worse, before they get better.' While I don't exactly expect that to be understood, I want the cooler to be looking at an upward trend in temperature before it finds a cooling trend. Like a training indicator in the stock market, the trend change must happen to change the humidor's 'outlook' for what is to come next. If you get behind on a cooling cycle in an upward trending temperature  environment, the recovery typically means some short-term crappy looking performance to make up for it. I can see this (not here) but in a restart that has the controller reset to a nonexistant trend. I in that case, there may be 2 or 3 cycles before the humidor knows where it needs to go next.

I could in fact reference an external sensor. However that is a 'false god.' Meaning that external temperature at a single point in space is not the driver for humidor performance. The driver is external temperature certainly, but it really is an overall differential energy state and rate of transfer, not single point differential temperature. More sensors, means more money, more code, more shit to break... More bad data to overcome when the system gets tricked.

I do think I may drive that algorithm too hard. But this has actually changed some since this data log. I tweet some of these functions pretty regularly. There were some other problems with it back earlier in the summer I have since changed. As I begin to explore other rates of change control functions, I think that I will make this thing run better yet!

All for now!

Cheers! -Ray

[Fugu]

1 hour ago, PigFish said:

You have written a lot here. It will take me some time to digest it in depth.

Now, sais he of all people .... !!!

 

1 hour ago, PigFish said:

I could in fact reference an external sensor. However that is a 'false god.'

Absolutely!

 

Ok, I do get the gist. Many thanks for your further elucidation and behind-the-scences info! Well, Piggy mate, I knew I was only scratching the surface there..... But just wanted to say in my post above, this is brilliant! Those matters, effects and deviations you are actually fiddling about with, with tenacity and sophistication - those things will basically come just unnoticed by most of us in our blessed ignorance... haha. - And unnoticed by most humidor makers as well. Keep up the good work!

[Fugu]

By the way - in the / a box, always!