How to Store Cigars: Humidor Setup, Humidity and Long-Term Care
A cigar is a finished agricultural product that has already spent years being grown, fermented and aged before it reaches you. Everything that happens after it leaves the factory is preservation, not improvement, and most of what goes wrong with a box happens in storage rather than in manufacture.
The good news is that cigar storage is not complicated. It comes down to holding a stable humidity, keeping the temperature down, and leaving things alone.
Why humidity matters more than anything else
A premium cigar is roughly 12 to 14 percent water by weight. That moisture is what keeps the wrapper flexible, the filler springy and the burn even. Lose it and the tobacco becomes brittle. Gain too much and the cigar cannot draw air.
A dry cigar burns hot and fast, tastes harsh and papery, and cracks when you handle it. A wet cigar is worse in a different way: it draws like a blocked straw, burns down one side, and produces a sour, ammoniac note that no amount of relighting fixes.
Most aficionados settle around 69 percent. If you prefer a slightly firmer draw and a faster burn, 65 percent suits you. Cuban cigars are generally rolled a little more densely than New World cigars, and many people keep Habanos at the lower end of the range for that reason.
The number that actually matters is stability
A humidor that sits at a steady 66 percent is better than one that swings between 62 and 74 percent while averaging 68. Repeated swelling and shrinking is what splits wrappers and loosens caps. If you check your hygrometer and it reads a stable value inside the range, you are done. Resist the urge to adjust.
Temperature and the reason for it
The conventional advice is the “70/70 rule”, meaning 70 degrees Fahrenheit and 70 percent humidity. The humidity half is sound. The temperature half is a ceiling rather than a target, and the reason is not flavour.
The tobacco beetle
Lasioderma serricorne lays eggs in tobacco leaf, and those eggs survive fumigation at low levels in nearly every natural tobacco product. They stay dormant in cool conditions. Sustained temperatures above roughly 22 Celsius, combined with high humidity, are what trigger hatching. A single hatch can destroy an entire box, leaving small round exit holes through wrapper and filler.
Keep your humidor away from radiators, sunny windowsills and the top of anything that generates heat. A cool internal cupboard is a better home than a display shelf. If you live somewhere genuinely hot and cannot hold the temperature down, a wine fridge set to its warmest setting is the usual solution.
Choosing a humidor
Desktop humidors hold anywhere from 25 to 150 cigars and suit almost everyone. Look for a tight seal and a Spanish cedar lining. Test the seal by closing the lid and listening: a good humidor gives a soft sound as air is displaced, and the lid settles rather than clacking shut.
Cabinet humidors are for large collections and are worth it only when you are storing full boxes rather than singles.
Travel cases protect cigars mechanically for a few days. Most are not humidity-controlled, and they are not storage. Anything longer than a long weekend should go back into a proper humidor. We stock travel humidors and cases for exactly this purpose.
Airtight plastic boxes work better than their reputation suggests. Combined with a two-way pack, a sealed food container holds humidity very well. You lose the cedar aroma and some buffering, but for a modest collection it is an honest, cheap solution and it beats a badly sealed wooden box.
Spanish cedar is not decoration
The lining does three jobs. It absorbs and releases moisture, buffering the swings that a sealed box would otherwise produce. It contributes an aroma that cigars slowly take on. And it is unattractive to the beetle. Cedar that has gone completely dry stops buffering, which is why seasoning matters.
Seasoning a new humidor
A new humidor is dry wood. Put cigars into it immediately and the cedar will pull moisture straight out of them.
- Wipe nothing. The old advice to wipe the interior with distilled water is a good way to raise the grain, warp the lining and encourage mould.
- Put a seasoning pack rated at 84 percent relative humidity inside the empty humidor.
- Close it and leave it for one to two weeks. Larger cabinets take longer.
- When the hygrometer holds steady near 80 percent, remove the seasoning pack and fit your normal maintenance packs.
- Add cigars.
Skipping this step is the most common reason a new humidor “will not hold humidity”. Usually it is holding humidity perfectly well and simply putting it into the wood.
Two-way humidity packs
Two-way packs release moisture when the air is dry and absorb it when the air is damp, which is what makes them different from a sponge or a foam humidifier. They are the simplest reliable option and they need no calibration.
Use roughly one 60 gram pack per 25 cigars, and replace a pack once it has gone hard and no longer flexes. Never mix packs of different ratings in the same box, because they will simply work against each other until both are exhausted. You can find humidity packs here.
Traditional foam or crystal humidifiers work, but they are one-way devices. They add moisture and cannot remove it, so in a damp summer they will happily push a humidor to 80 percent. If you use one, fill it with distilled water only. Tap water carries minerals that clog the element and bacteria that will eventually smell.
Hygrometers and why yours is probably wrong
The analogue hygrometer that came with your humidor is very likely inaccurate, sometimes by ten points or more. Digital units are better but still drift.
Calibrate with the salt test. Put a tablespoon of table salt in a bottle cap, add a few drops of water to make a damp slurry that is not dissolved, and seal it with the hygrometer in an airtight bag for eight hours. The air inside stabilises at exactly 75 percent. Whatever your hygrometer reads, the difference from 75 is your correction. Some digital models let you adjust; with the rest you simply do the arithmetic each time you look.
Reviving cigars that have dried out
This is a slow process and it cannot be hurried.
Put the dry cigars in a sealed container with a 65 percent pack and nothing else. Leave them for two weeks. Then move to 69 percent for a further two to four weeks. The point of the staged approach is that the filler absorbs moisture faster than the wrapper, and a wrapper that is asked to stretch too quickly will split lengthways.
Cigars that have been dry for a few months usually come back with a slightly diminished but perfectly pleasant character. Cigars that have been dry for years have lost volatile oils that do not return. They will smoke, but they will not be what they were.
Plume or mould
Cigars in long storage sometimes develop a fine white deposit on the wrapper. Two very different things look similar.
Plume, sometimes called bloom, is crystallised oil migrating to the surface. It is uniform, powdery, appears as fine white specks, and brushes off cleanly leaving no mark. It is harmless and generally taken as a good sign.
Mould is fuzzy rather than powdery, often blue-green or grey rather than white, grows in patches rather than evenly, and leaves a stain when disturbed. It usually smells musty. Mould means the humidity has been too high, and affected cigars should be removed immediately before it spreads.
If you are unsure, look at the pattern. Even distribution across the whole wrapper is almost always plume. A spot that started somewhere and spread outwards is almost always not.
A short checklist
- Season a new humidor before putting cigars in it.
- Hold 65 to 72 percent, and prize stability over hitting an exact number.
- Keep the temperature below about 22 Celsius, away from heat and sunlight.
- Use two-way packs of a single rating, roughly one per 25 cigars.
- Calibrate your hygrometer with the salt test, then trust it.
- Use distilled water only, if you use water at all.
- Open the humidor as little as you reasonably can.
Storage is not where a cigar is made better. It is where a good cigar is kept from getting worse, and it takes very little effort once it is set up correctly.
Frequently asked questions
What humidity should cigars be stored at?
Between 65 and 72 percent relative humidity, with most people settling around 69 percent. Below 62 percent the wrapper dries and cracks and the burn turns hot and fast. Above 75 percent the cigar draws tight, burns unevenly and becomes vulnerable to mould.
What temperature should a humidor be kept at?
Around 18 Celsius, or 65 Fahrenheit. The number matters less than stability. The real reason to stay below roughly 22 Celsius is the tobacco beetle, whose eggs are present in nearly all natural tobacco and hatch in sustained warmth.
How long does it take to season a new humidor?
Between one and two weeks for a desktop humidor. Put a seasoning pack rated at 84 percent inside the empty humidor, close it, and leave it alone. The Spanish cedar needs to absorb moisture before it will hold a stable level, and adding cigars early means the wood draws moisture out of them.
Can cigars that have dried out be saved?
Often yes, if you go slowly. Raise the humidity in stages over several weeks rather than putting a dry cigar straight into a 69 percent environment. Rushing it swells the filler faster than the wrapper can stretch, and the wrapper splits. Cigars that have been dry for years rarely recover their original oils.
Do I need a humidor, or will a plastic box work?
An airtight plastic container with a two-way humidity pack, sometimes called a tupperdor, holds humidity as well as most entry-level humidors and better than a poorly sealed one. What you lose is the Spanish cedar, which contributes aroma and helps buffer swings. For a small collection it is a genuinely reasonable option.