so i should be receiving my 20ct humidor in the mail shortly and i had a few questions about seasoning.

and yes i did read up on a few other threads about 20ct humidors being cheap and not worth it but i have a reason, i'm in afghanistan and figured having a 50ct tabletop might be a little inconvenient.

any ways.....coming with the humidor is a bottle of PG solution. I dont exactly have access to distilled water so can i simply substitute the PG for distilled water in the seasoning process??? like wiping the inside down lightly and putting a shot glass of it on the inside???

Also any other suggestions on anything are more than welcome!!


thanks Oscar

Quotericanoskr - 3/21/2014  10:28 AM


and yes i did read up on a few other threads about 20ct humidors being cheap and not worth it but i have a reason, i'm in afghanistan and figured having a 50ct tabletop might be a little inconvenient.

Don't worry about that brother.  Anything works in a pinch, you may want to do the light test just to be sure you dont have leaks.  The PG solution should work fine brother.  Don't stress, a little prep work and that should all work perfectly for you!

Did you read the Seasoning a Humidor article? You can use sterile water, if you have access to that. Might get it at a drug store or something... I'm not sure about the PG solution...

[/QUOTE]

Don't worry about that brother.  Anything works in a pinch, you may want to do the light test just to be sure you dont have leaks.  The PG solution should work fine brother.  Don't stress, a little prep work and that should all work perfectly for you![/QUOTE]


I wish i woulda found this site sooner i woulda simply done a touperdore cuz im only here for another 7 months. but yeah it should work in a pinch...and hebron I'll check to see if our px has sterile water if it does i think i'll use that for seasoning  

thanks guys

Having deployed many times myself, the best thing you can use is a Pelican case and Boveda packs or the Drymistat tubes. You could also get one of the Xikar travel humidors. Without the foam they will hold plenty of sticks.

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Quotericanoskr - 3/21/2014  3:40 PM

I wish i woulda found this site sooner i woulda simply done a touperdore cuz im only here for another 7 months. but yeah it should work in a pinch...and hebron I'll check to see if our px has sterile water if it does i think i'll use that for seasoning  

thanks guys

Getting distilled water is difficult in Norway, but I got sterile water at the local drug store. Doesn't have the same electrical properties as distilled water, but that makes no difference... It's sterile  

Good luck  

There are others with more scientific credentials that might chime in, but I would NOT rub down your spanish cedar with PG solution.  If you can find sterile water (or even boil some water), that would be a better option.

Quotenwb - 3/21/2014  4:13 PM

There are others with more scientific credentials that might chime in, but I would NOT rub down your spanish cedar with PG solution.  If you can find sterile water (or even boil some water), that would be a better option.

I have agree with Nathan on this, I wouldn't rub the cedar with PG solution...

Making your own distilled water is quite simple if you have access to tap water, a burner or stove top, a big stainless or copper pot and some other small things usually found in a kitchen.

Plenty of DIY links on the net.

But Bovedas and their likes might be the simplest way to go about it, for seasoning as well as for keeping the RH to your desired level after the seasoning part.

I'm in with the no PG rub down also. Boil the water and use it

Sterile water or boiled water! Got it

Thanks guys

OK, so i seasoned my 75-100 ct. humi with 4 boveda seasoning packs. Left them in for 14 days as recommended, the humidity was at 65% at the end of the 14 days with bone dry boveda packs. I put in my smokes, 3 72% boveda packs and a xikar crystal jar, and my RH will not go over 61%. Does it take time to adjust or is the humidor still not seasoned enough??

Quotes1nist3r - 4/23/2014  8:02 AM

OK, so i seasoned my 75-100 ct. humi with 4 boveda seasoning packs. Left them in for 14 days as recommended, the humidity was at 65% at the end of the 14 days with bone dry boveda packs. I put in my smokes, 3 72% boveda packs and a xikar crystal jar, and my RH will not go over 61%. Does it take time to adjust or is the humidor still not seasoned enough??

61% is not that bad. If you add more cigars, the rh should go up. You may also want to check the calibration of your hygrometer, just to be sure that it is reading correctly.  

Quotenirab - 4/23/2014  9:08 PM

Quotes1nist3r - 4/23/2014  8:02 AM

OK, so i seasoned my 75-100 ct. humi with 4 boveda seasoning packs. Left them in for 14 days as recommended, the humidity was at 65% at the end of the 14 days with bone dry boveda packs. I put in my smokes, 3 72% boveda packs and a xikar crystal jar, and my RH will not go over 61%. Does it take time to adjust or is the humidor still not seasoned enough??

61% is not that bad. If you add more cigars, the rh should go up. You may also want to check the calibration of your hygrometer, just to be sure that it is reading correctly.  

Thanks for the input nirab. I have about 30 cigars in there now, and if i could get the RH to about 65-68 i would feel alot better.

Quotes1nist3r - 4/23/2014  10:02 AM

OK, so i seasoned my 75-100 ct. humi with 4 boveda seasoning packs. Left them in for 14 days as recommended, the humidity was at 65% at the end of the 14 days with bone dry boveda packs. I put in my smokes, 3 72% boveda packs and a xikar crystal jar, and my RH will not go over 61%. Does it take time to adjust or is the humidor still not seasoned enough??

If I remember correctly, those seasoning packs should raise the humidity closer to 75%.  So either you hygrometer isn't reading correctly, your humidor needed to be seasoned some more, or you have a poor seal.

PG should never be applied to the wood surface.  The whole purpose of the PG is to control the  water's evaporation.  Putting it on the wood will inhibit the woods ability to do its job.  PG solution should be used for the initial charging of your humidification puck and for recharge only if you ever let it go completely dry (and even then is questionable).

For those who don't understand the mechanism of PG solution. the way that PG solution works is that the solution is 50% PG/ 50% water.  The water will evaporate slowly and the PG will help to maintain a semi constant humidity above it; the humidity being controlled by the humectant value of the mixture.  When the water evaporates you need to recharge it with more water.  As long as you keep putting water back into the system, the PG will help to maintain a proper cigar environment.  The high osmotic pressure of a 50% PG solution also keeps microbes from living in your humidification puck.

However, some people think that you should recharge with PG solution. This is a terrible idea and will quickly end the life of your humidification puck.  As you keep recharging with PG solution, the PG water ratio keeps increasing and shifting the humidity that it wants to live at (its humectant value changes).  Because the solution soaks into the sponge of your puck, it saturates it and won't let more liquid in until an appropriate amount of liquid leaves.  PG itself has very low vapor pressure, and will, thus, not want to evaporate.  If you keep recharging with PG solution, your humidification device will go into a death spiral.

So the first time that you use PG solution to charge your humidification device the PG water ratio is 50/50.  If all of the water evaporates and you recharge with PG solution, then your resultant solution is 75/25, a third such recharge now brings you to 87.5/12.5, a fourth and you are at 93.75/ 6.25, etc.  The humectant value is now completely out of whack, and on top of that, there just isn't enough water left to do the job.

If you have screwed up and done this, you can recover your humidification device by submerging it in water a few times.  You want to submerge in pure water for a few minutes, dump the water, and repeat.  Three dunks should do it (and no, dunking in three times the amount of water won't do the same job, physics doesn't work that way).  Let the puck dry, and then recharge with PG solution.

Some smart geeks on here, thanks for your service brother I hope you get this figured out. I may have an extra Xikar travel humidor around the house I can send you. PM me if interested and I will have a look

Jason always has great answers about this kind of stuff.

It's like CG has it's own "team of scientists"...oh wait...we do!!        

We should change Extreme Guru to Cigar Scientist

I just wanted to say that substituting boiled or sterile water for distilled or deionized water might not be the best solution. The reason to use distilled water is more for the lack of mineral content than the worry of microbes. Simply boiling the water isn't going to remove things like calcium. The minerals can clog up your humidification device, as well as depositing on your cigars, which can impart a nasty metallic taste.

If you don't have access to deionized or distilled water, I'd recommend sticking with Boveda products for the time being.