When you buy your humidor, it doesn’t come ready for you to pop your cigar collection in there right away. You need to set up your humidor before you can use it.
This setup doesn’t take too long, and it’s not a difficult thing to do, but it is important. The humidor is designed to keep your cigars fresh and at the proper humidity levels and temperature. Prepping your humidor helps ensure it can do its job.
Let’s take a closer look at how to set up and use your humidor, and why it’s important to do so.
Why Setting Up Your Humidor Is Important
The setup of a humidor is often referred to as seasoning a humidor. You season a humidor much in the same way you season other things, such as food. You’re prepping the humidor for use.
The reason this is important to season your humidor is that you need to prepare the interior of the humidor for the proper levels of humidity. Without setting up and seasoning your humidor, it will do a poor job of keeping the humidity levels consistent and controllable.
This can lead your cigars to dry out and crack. That’s exactly the opposite of what you want to happen.
Setting Up Your Humidor
So, how do you set up your humidor? It’s honestly fairly easy. The exact instructions will vary from humidor to humidor, but the gist of it is that you add water or moisture to the interior of your humidor prior to use.
You want to bring the levels of humidity up to somewhere around 70 percent. From there you have things right where you want them and can fine-tune as you see fit.
As I mentioned the exact setup will vary from humidor to humidor. That said, in some of the versions, you simply wipe down the interior of the box with a wet cloth. You’ll also need to also attach the hygrometer to the inside of the humidor.
The Klaro Desktop Analog Cherry Humidor (or the digital version of this same humidor), for example, requires both the humidification device and the hygrometer to be attached to the lid of the box. Many of the higher-end humidors have built-in hygrometers.
For these higher-end models, it’s a matter of seasoning the humidor and getting your humidification device set up. Klaro humidors come with our own proprietary Hydro System. Setting up this system is simple. Here’s a quick guide.
Using Your Humidor
Once your humidor is set up, it’s ready for use. Still, you need to monitor the interior humidity level and the temperature. Just because you seasoned your humidor properly doesn’t mean that it will always stay that way.
Check your humidor periodically, and make adjustments as needed to the humidification device. This may mean referring back to the Hydro System instructions from time to time.
Keeping your humidity levels within the correct range will also vary from humidor to humidor. You’ll find different sizes of humidors and different types of humidification devices perform differently. This means what works well for one kind of humidor might not for another, especially if the size and humidification device are different.
It might take a little while for you to feel like your cigars are where you want them to be in terms of humidity. Everyone is a little different. Some cigar enthusiasts prefer a more moist cigar whereas others prefer something on the drier side. There’s no right or wrong answer here, but typically most cigars do best between 67 and 72 percent humidity.
Also, as you add more cigars to your humidor, you need to continue to carefully monitor the level of humidity. It will change slightly as you add or remove cigars. Also the quality and make-up of your cigars will factor in as well.
The bottom line is once you season your humidor, it’s ready for use. From there, you should monitor the humidity level to make sure it’s within the recommended ranges. If you do that, you should be able to enjoy properly humidified cigars for years to come.
