New Arrival: Travel Humidor

I was not really looking for a small humidor, but I put a crazy low bit on this, and to my surprise got it, so now at least if I go away I can take a few sticks with me.

Hygrometer Calibration

I now have a number of humidors and a number of hygrometers. Most humidors come with the analogue type of hygrometer. I have pretty much given up on theses, if you get one that’s correct then fine, but trying to calibrate them is generally an exercise in futility.

Instead I have moved to digital hygrometers, I have reviewed them in the past, and I have now picked up a couple of Western Caliber IV hygrometers which have the advantage of being adjustable, and are now my preferred choice (they also arrived as I found out with their calibration spot on !)

 

In the past to calibrate hygrometers I have used the Salt Test, I am not going to go through the process here, as there are great web tutorials, and there is nothing wrong with calibration using salt (although some digital hygrometer manufacturers do not recommend it, I know salt is corrosive but I cant see an issue). However I have found a far simpler, if not quite so cheap way to do it.

I have switched to using Boveda Calibration Kits, these are just ridiculously simple to use. Open the kit slide in your hygrometers, wait 24 hours, adjust you hygrometer if they don’t read 75 or 76 (or note the difference if you cant adjust your hygrometer). Best of all if the gel pack is not dry you can use it again…

Here are my hygrometers in the pack

As you can see the Western’s were spot on.

For the £2.99 this kit cost me, I dont think I would calibrate using the salt test again.

 

 

Review: XIKAR Crystal Clear Humidifier

Rather than a cigar review tonight I decided to review a new addition to my humidor.

Having talked to a number of people I seem to have been quite lucky in that I have been able to regulate the humidity in both my humidors pretty successfully using normal humidifiers and humidifier solution. I think partly this is because pretty early on I found out the hard way that the large humidifier blocks that seem to ship with a lot of humidors are often too large, and its difficult to stop the humidity getting way beyond 70%, then the next time you look its below 65%.

I decided to replace the large humidifier blocks with a number of smaller long humidifiers, this allowed me to better control the humidity, it also saved a bit of space.

Whilst these worked well, in my new humidor because it is quite tall, and does not have any trays, I wanted to find something that could humidify the entire humidor, but take up as little space as possible. After some research I decided to give the XIKAR crystals a go.

This single small 4oz jar is large enough to humidify my 150 cigar humidor, and it occupies a lot less space than more traditional humidifiers. It uses crystals that you need to “top” up from time to time with a special fluid when the level of the crystals drops below a certain point. Admittedly you do need to use the fluid from XIKAR so you have tied yourself into the company, but so far these crystals are keeping my 150 count humidor at a steady 67% so I am really pleased.

I have had the XIKAR crystals in the humidor for around 4 weeks now and the humidity is rock solid, so for me these have been a great buy. If you have problems regulating the humidity in your humidor then I would recommend you give these a go.