Travel Case Humidity

[kilroy]

Hey all.

So I just got back this morning from an 8 day vacation home back to New Orleans and the plantation. Trip was magical, blah blah blah. Got a bunch of wedding preparations out of the way yada yada.. here's a few pics:

[link=http://www.wdmg.org/stuff/homepics/2008/octtrip/IMG_3342.jpg?tmp=1225290598]St. Louis Cathedral[/link]

[link=http://www.wdmg.org/stuff/homepics/2008/octtrip/IMG_3351.jpg?tmp=1225290604]Breakfast of Champions (beignets)[/link]

[link=http://www.wdmg.org/stuff/homepics/2008/octtrip/IMG_3405.jpg?tmp=1225290494]The fiancee outside a freaky restaurant[/link]

[link=http://www.wdmg.org/stuff/homepics/2008/octtrip/IMG_3407.jpg?tmp=1225290496]A fawn nursing just out back of the plantation house[/link] (I'm pretty sure someone is gonna put a cap in momma's ass this winter)

[link=http://www.wdmg.org/stuff/homepics/2008/octtrip/IMG_3521.jpg?tmp=1225290589]Me enjoying coffee and a cigar by the lake in the morning air blah blah[/link]

ANYWAY, the important stuff:

So I packed up 10 cigars in my travel humidor. Besides it getting vacuum sealed by riding in a plane to new orleans it did its job well. However, by yesterday after 7 days without humidification inside of it, I noticed that the larger ringed cigars were getting a little dry while the thinner ringed ones were still okay.

Has anyone else had this happen to them? I'd of assumed the smaller ones would go dry first. I've tried to humidify the case before (its one of those hard plastic with 2 close snap types) but no matter how small the humidifier it always winds up pushing it into the 80% area. Thankfully I don't take many 8 day trips that often!

Anyways its good to be back and I leave you... with this:

[mef]

Kilroy

Very cool ashtray.

[Colt45]

Regarding the larger ring gauge cigars being drier, my guess (and it's only a guess) is that there

is more room for air between the leaves in a thicker cigar - assuming a "normal" roll.

And when you say "drier", how much so? I would not expect them to be "dried out" so to speak

after seven days.

I use the same type of travel-dors, and never use a humidifier. In fact, I've found that my

cigars tend to end up on the moist side, especially when traveling to a warm / humid climate.

Thanks for the pics!

[Tampa1257]

Andy,

You need to get a Tube of Beads for the Traveldor or a Puck. N2Adventure can hook you up, check out his site. Mark is good peeps and well established here on FOH.

Chuck

[kilroy]

» You need to get a Tube of Beads for the Traveldor or a Puck. N2Adventure

» can hook you up, check out his site. Mark is good peeps and well

» established here on FOH.

That's a great idea. I've actually got a drymistat tube thats been out of use for a while (that thing could over humidify a desert). I'm thinking of drilling some 1/16" holes through it and putting a tiny socklet of beads in there to use.

As far as how dry it was... I smoked a PSD4 yesterday afternoon and it had an overall dry feel... the draw was a little loose, the burn was a little hot and the finish was a little dry. Now that I think about it, it did feel a little light. I'm starting to think that along with the higher leaf count idea that the increased surface area of the larger ring might let it lose moisture easier.

Another thing was that vacuum thing on the beginning of the trip. When I took the case out of my bag it was locked shut. I had to goto the B+M store next to the hotel and use a flathead screwdriver to pry it open. It sounded like opening up a vacuum sealed bag of coffee. I wonder if that could have sucked out an appreciable amount of water from it?

[bolivr]

On shorter trips (less than a week) my experience of not humidifying the travel humi was the way I accidentally discovered the concept of 'dry boxing'.

I normally store at 70% so a few days in the travel humi produced some excelent smokes, both smaller ring and larger. In fact some PSD4s that I was unimpressed with ended up beautiful and I could finally understand the hype over this smoke:-) .

[n2advnture]

» You need to get a Tube of Beads for the Traveldor or a Puck. N2Adventure

» can hook you up, check out his site. Mark is good peeps and well

» established here on FOH.

Thanks for the kind words Chuck!

Andy,

I have found that you can put properly humidified sticks into a travel humidor and they are usually good (depending on the climate) for about 3 days on average. Any longer than that I recommend having a humidifier in the travel humidor.

The Puck-ifier was designed to be an exact replacement for the existing humidifier that is located in the lid of most large sized travel humidors and the foam in the lid can usually be cut to fit the Puck-ifier pretty easily if there is no allocation for a humidifier in the lid foam.

This set up is great because it doesn't rob you of any precious cigar space which is critical when traveling.

I hope this helps

~Mark

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