The Half Ashed Cigar Forum

Just curious if anyone else notices that when smoking in the winter when RH is lower outside. That your cigars burn and taste better when kept lower rh in the humidor? I normally stay around 68-70 in summer but winter it seems better to keep them at 63-65. Is it just me or is there something to that? Just wondering if anyone else has this issue. Thanks fellow halfashers.

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Perhaps the lack of RH change can account for this. My humidors, which live in my 32% RH wintertime basement, always drop a few points, which never bothers me at all. I think the cigars burn more steadily and easily when they are on the low side of moisture.

I like em around 65 all year round.

Because of the lack in humidity here in the fall/winter/spring, I actually go the other way. I plug in my electronic device to help add humidity to my cigars faster since the winedor I use for regular smokes gets opened more. I bump up the humidity from 65 to 66ish. My thoughts are that when I smoke, I will be smoking in an environment with less humidity, so lets bring it up to help with the continuing depletion. I know, it might be stupid, but hey, it hasn't failed now.

Maybe you should try leaving your cigars at a lower humidity in the first place all year round, Hoosier.

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IWinchester wrote:I like em around 65 all year round.

^ This

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Thanks guys I will give the 63-65 year round a try. Always tried to keep at 70rh. Temp year round is around 65-70.

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Zedman05 wrote:Because of the lack in humidity here in the fall/winter/spring, I actually go the other way. I plug in my electronic device to help add humidity to my cigars faster since the winedor I use for regular smokes gets opened more. I bump up the humidity from 65 to 66ish. My thoughts are that when I smoke, I will be smoking in an environment with less humidity, so lets bring it up to help with the continuing depletion. I know, it might be stupid, but hey, it hasn't failed now.

Maybe you should try leaving your cigars at a lower humidity in the first place all year round, Hoosier.

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Since humidity is relative to temperature, how warm are your sticks in winter? There's some conversion for moisture volume/weight in air at different temps. The same would obviously apply to in tobacco. The overall moisture content may not change despite your increase of rH percentage.

Separate from this hypothesis, i'm actually thinking 'Hoosier may be on to something. I would think that lowering saturation in winter may create a slightly more favorable condition. Wetter warm (relative to outside, obviously) tobacco can condensate within the cigar, causing steam and diluted smoke, equaling hotter less flavorful taste (think a pipe with moisture). Dryer tobacco could yield better results IN RELATION to how a wetter cigar would otherwise taste in that dry, cold environment. There could, theoretically, be something to this depending on conditions.

As temp goes down, relative humidity goes up. I work with this fact on a daily basis, so thinking in this manor, I increase the humidity ever so slightly to negate the ambient loss. If I smoked cigars in my house, where there is humidified air, I would not change a thing, but my garage (where I smoke 99% of my cigars) is ambient humidity to start. I then heat the garage, thus bringing the humidity to a low spot at the new temperature. My thoughts have always been; as long as my temp stays consistant at around 70ish, then the higher humidity in the cigar will not start to turn to steam, it would only do that if the temp was lowered a lot.
If I were to take my cigars and smoke them outside in the winter, sure, I would never increase their humidity.

I seem to get a better more consistent burn when I lower my humidity in the winter. Which usually increases smoke production which in turn means better flavors. Maybe its just me but outside in the average winter days its 0° to 30° with very low humidity in the outside air.

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Zedman05 wrote:As temp goes down, relative humidity goes up. I work with this fact on a daily basis, so thinking in this manor, I increase the humidity ever so slightly to negate the ambient loss. If I smoked cigars in my house, where there is humidified air, I would not change a thing, but my garage (where I smoke 99% of my cigars) is ambient humidity to start. I then heat the garage, thus bringing the humidity to a low spot at the new temperature. My thoughts have always been; as long as my temp stays consistant at around 70ish, then the higher humidity in the cigar will not start to turn to steam, it would only do that if the temp was lowered a lot.
If I were to take my cigars and smoke them outside in the winter, sure, I would never increase their humidity.

The garage being your smoking spot is the thing I didn't factor. You are obviously correct if your temp is not lower. I'm speaking to when it's used in the generalization from Hoosier above.