Let a Humidor Fulfill Your Cigars' Potential

The amount of humidity that is present in the interior of your humidor is the crucial factor in keeping your cigars at their best. Even the slightest degree of variation in the humidor's humidity level can drastically affect the maturation process of your well-earned cigar collection. In order to avoid disaster and not watch all of your time and effort, not to mention your dollars, go up in smoke, so to speak, you owe it to yourself to learn to calibrate and use your humidor's hygrometer properly.

Orleans Group FH-106 Hygrometer

Not Just Blowing Smoke; Hygrometers Help Keep Your Cigars Fresh
A hygrometer is really just a fancy name for any device that measures humidity. Think of a thermometer; a thermometer measures air temperature, and by analogy, a hygrometer measures the amount of humidity in the air. Calibrating your humidor's hygrometer correctly and properly maintaining it will make it much easier to monitor humidity levels in your humidor and ensure your cigars deliver the most robust flavor with every puff.

The Salt Test and Calibrating Your Hygrometer
An optimal amount of humidity inside a humidor is 67-70%. In order to calibrate your hygrometer to measure the amount of humidity in the air correctly, you need a bottle cap, a little table salt, and some water. This method might take you back to high school chemistry, but it has proven effective time and time again. Because a saturated solution of salt and water at equilibrium results in a relative humidity of 75%, this gives you an excellent point of reference to calibrate your hygrometer. Place a small amount of salt in a bottle cap and add a few drops of water until it's saturated.

Then place the bottle cap in a plastic bag and let it sit for eight hours. After eight hours, the interior of the bag will have reached the humidity of 75%, and you can then place your hygrometer in the bag as well. Hopefully, after a couple of minutes your hygrometer will read 75%. If not, you need to recalibrate it by loosening the back plate and then using a flat screw driver to adjust the small screw until the device reads 75%. Now that your hygrometer is properly calibrated, you're all set. Just place it inside your humidor and adjust the humidor accordingly until you attain the optimal amount of humidity for your cigars, anywhere between 67% and 70%.