Is the inside of your humidor a disheveled mess? Are you constantly forgetting about some of the cigars in your collection, or are you struggling to track down a certain stick you bought a week ago? Have certain cigars been sitting around, waiting to be smoked, all because you can’t remember what they are, where you bought them, or how long they’ve been in your humidor?
If any of these questions strike a nerve, it's probably because you need to do a little bit of humidor organization. There’s more to cigar storage than just casting them into the Spanish cedar void and calling it a day, and here's why...
The Consequences of a Disorganized Humidor
When properly maintained, a high-quality humidor will keep premium cigars in prime condition for years to come. Unfortunately, many stogie smokers view this as a chance to shove as many stogies as possible inside that cigar box, not knowing that there are consequences to having a disorganized humidor. Some of these issues include, but are not limited to:
- Unwanted mixed tobacco flavors and aromatics
- Loss of cigar identification
- Lack of aging information or placement time
- Sigari danneggiati
- Poor humidity distribution
To help reduce these risks and other issues associated with over-stuffing a humidor, we’ve put together some tips to help prevent that humidor of yours from turning into a "kitchen junk drawer."
That said, there are multiple ways of organizing a humidor, so follow whichever of the following strategies seems like it will work best for you. Let's get to it, shall we?
FIFO: Primo a entrare, primo a uscire
Perhaps the simplest strategy to ensure you don’t lose out on a good cigar due to negligence is following the most standard inventory practice of FIFO, or the “first in, first out” methodology.
The concept is simple: Organize your cigars from newest to oldest so that you smoke your oldest cigars first before moving on to anything recently purchased. This way, you will always blow through older blends and don’t have to worry as much about tracking how long a cigar has been in your collection.
Keep in mind that FIFO has almost nothing to do with your cigars going bad, though. A quality humidor that has been properly humidified will keep cigars in prime smoking form for monthson end when its contents are rotated properly. This explains why this kind of organization technique works so well for product circulation.
As for storage location inside l'humidor itself, that really depends on personal smoking preference and the humidor's internal configuration. Running a successful FIFO organization routine can be as simple as storing your newest cigars on the lowest section(s) of the humidor and shifting older cigars toward the top.
Nota dei nerd del tabacco: Keeping a log of what you’ve smoked is a helpful way to keep track of what you like, what to revisit, and what to avoid in the future. Keep a cigar journal or track everything with a spreadsheet, including tasting notes. There are also cigar apps that volontà help you track what you’ve got on hand and/or sono planning to smoke, with the Klaro Valet Smart Hygrometer app being one of the highest reviewed oggi sul mercato.
Metodo di selezione del vassoio superiore
As you organize the lower levels of your humidor and find that the FIFO technique is indeed worth utilizing, you may want to start utilizing the tray storage technique. This requires merely stacking your next smoking options in the top tray of your humidor, and allowing the newer sticks to percolate a bit more down bottom. This allows you to easily remove a bunch of cigars at once for easy under-storage, while retaining a healthy assortment of smoking options up top.
Naturally, what you opt to place in that tray is entirely up to you, but a few of the more common approaches include:
- A few go-to EDC (Every Day Cigar) options
- One mild, one medium, and one strong cigar
- A rich after-dinner blend
- An aged cigar that is ready to smoke
- Qualcosa di nuovo e diverso
This way, when it’s time to pick something out for doing a bit of yard work, or for a special occasion, you have a selection of top-tier options to easily access without digging too deep underneath. Yes, cigars can be surprisingly resilient when rolled properly, and they can handle some jostling. But the less frequently they are handled, the better they will hold up over time, so keep the hands-on time to your weekly rotation schedule and skip the stogie spelunking expeditions when you can.
Should I Stack My Cigars?
For flavor preservation and practical storage purposes, there is nothing wrong with stacking cigars in your humidor. If your humidor is deep enough, you can stack as deep as you like, with products like the Klaro Military Humidor allowing impressive depths for heavier cigar hauls.
But, is stacking good for organization and ease of access? Yes and no. While it will grant you the ability to vertically store more cigars, you’ll be handling those sticks far more often if you must dig for your blend of choice for that evening's festivities. Hastily searching for a specific stick can royally screw up the whole FIFO order, as well as rotation scheduling, and can make it more difficult to find what you want the next time you pop your paws inside.
But if you are going to stack your cigars, here are a couple of key points to consider:
- Stack cellophane-protected cigars and nudes separately.
- Stack by strength or wrapper style when possible.
- Avoid anything more than four sticks deep.
- Never stack flavored/infused/steeped cigars with unflavored cigars.
- When possible, use a humidor divider to keep stronger blends from influencing milder cigars stacked nearby.
Il rischio di riempimento eccessivo
Another risk of having a haphazard, unorganized humidor is overfilling. Without knowing how many cigars you have, as well as the sizes and types of cigars you are storing, you run the risk of overfilling your humidor.
The more tobacco you store in that humidor, the more difficult it will be for the humidification system inside the humidor to keep a consistent level of humidity. Since humidor humidity fluctuations swing with the seasons, and tobacco remains selectively permeable, having entirely too much or too little humidity is of equal concern when a humidor is maxed out.
Hte dimensioni dell'humidor determines how many cigars you can safely store, and organizing that box will help you determine when it’s necessary to purchase a second humidor or a larger replacement.
Aging Special Cigars vs Storing EDC Smokes
Most routine cigar smokers have both an array of go-to, every day cigars (EDC), as well as a collection of rare, strong, and/or high-dollar blends that they have been collecting and aging. Chances are that these same people are also keeping these two categories completely separate from one another.
EDC smokes are those tried-and-true, trusted blends that won't break the bank, while always delivering the goods. Stogies that you buy by the cigar bundle or box, and always keep on hand because they never let you down and are always a good share.
In contrast, private stock cigars that are set aside for aging are the blends you view as an investment, as you hope that months, or even years, will return an even more refined smoking experience. Although a finished cigar sitting on the shelf has already been cured, fermented, and aged post-production, further time in the humidor can potentially allow different cigar flavor profiles and aromatics to develop and evolve. Sharp, bitter, and spicy notes as well as strength will often soften over time, and the overall experience will feel more uniform and refined. Just note that invecchiamento dei sigari is kind of like aging wine, and eventually the organic compounds inside will break down to a point where they are not nearly as flavorful or balanced as they once were.
Our suggestion is to secure a secondary humidor for those private stock aged sticks. If a new humidor is completely out of the question, and you have the real estate inside, use a divider or the tray method to keep your EDC blends separate from your heavily aged leaf.
Also, it is important to know that your private stock of cigars also requires routine rotation every other week or so. However, if your humidor tends to have varying humidification levels in different spots, find the migliore umidità consigliata level for your aged cigar collection and stick to using whichever area gets you closest to that humidity range.
Other Common Cigar Storage Techniques
Over the years, we’ve heard from a lot of different cigar enthusiasts, many of whom have developed their own strategy for dealing with heat and humidity fluctuations and organizing their humidors accordingly. Many of these tactics have legitimacy, with the following being some of the most common approaches to creative cigar organization.
Organizing Cigars By Brand
Organizing by brand is less about keeping tobacco pure and more about keeping track of what you’ve got on hand, as well as what you’d like to try again in the future.
To learn more about cigar brands in the industry, check out these cigar brands to learn more about the history and background behind the world's best premium tobacco.
Organizing Cigars By Size
We’ve heard of some cigar collectors who organize their collection by shape (aka vitola) or by ring size. Arranged from largest to smallest, this method allows you to quickly peruse your collection based on smoke time restrictions or the kind of smoking experience you want to have.
But, like organizing by brand, this method can get dicey if you have a ton of different tobaccos and cigar vintages stored next to one another. If you want to gain easy access to a specific cigar vitola, go ahead and store by wrapper or cigar type so you can choose based on these credentials instead.
Organizing Cigars By Potency
Another common organization method is to separate your cigars by strength, keeping mild and medium cigars as distant as possible from stronger cigars. This strategy makes the most sense, as it reduces the amount of flavor and aroma "cross-contamination" within the humidor, and it gives you a quick way to decide which cigar to spark. If you have multiple dividers, this will also allow you to stack your cigars and save space.
Sbuffi di separazione
At the end of the day, creating a cigar storage system that works is really the name of the game, and how you organize your sticks can be very different from the next smoker's collection. So type up that spreadsheet, slap that fresh blend on the bottom level, or stuff your EDC smokes up top in a tray.
If you are continuously struggling with stacked cigars O find the FIFO process to be too tedious, and the need for a humidor tray seems mandatory, now might be the right time to consider a second humidor. Not only does this open up more real estate, but you can begin to explore aging techniques, experiment with different humidity levels, and molto more.
To learn more about humidor maintenance and cigar storage, check out Klaro's comprehensive guida allo humidor. There, you will discover how to choose the right humidor for your cigar collecting and preservation needs, how to maintain a humidor, the history of humidors, what the best accessori humidor on the market today offer, and a plethora of other pertinent tips and useful tricks.
