Blog & Cigar News | Mardo Cigars

What's going on everyone. This is Gerard with mardocigars.com. And having a beautiful humidor is truly a luxury in your great, great hobby, but you want to make sure that the humidor is keeping a great seal to make sure that your cigars are safely secure and ready to smoke.

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So over the years, I have, and I still own a lot of humidors, small to large sizes, even travel humidors, and I've had my fair share of humidors not keeping a proper seal when I first began. Nowadays, I make sure all my humidors are keeping a proper seal. Due to that, my cigars, some of them are very expensive and some of them are very limited and I can't replace them if they go bad. So we don't want cigars to dry out. So we're going to get right into tip number one.

Tip Number 1

Okay, so tip number one, we're going to talk about the enclosure of the humidor. One of the easiest way to tell is when you open the lid of the humidor, it should have a little bit of a snug feeling and it should take a little bit of effort to open just like that. And also you can see that where the lid meets the insert is very well constructed. So therefore when you open and close it every single time, you can feel that it has a vacuum suction to it. So pay very close attention to that, do it a couple of times. If you're in a shop and you are testing out a humidor, see if it has a good seal. See if it takes a little effort to open it. And when you close it, you can just feel that seal that it has. A lot of inexpensive humidors are not properly crafted, don't have that feel to it. So that's tip number one.

Tip Number 2

So tip number two is a little trick I've always used. I get myself in a bit of a dark room and I put a lit flashlight inside the humidor. And what I want to do is I want to place it facing upward. So in this case we'll take out the insert and place it in there just like that. And we'll close the humidor and I'll take a look at every corner, see if there's any light seeping out from any area.

Now in this case, I have placed this flashlight inside his humidor before the video and there is no light coming out at anywhere, but also, especially in the back where the hinges are is where sometimes the craftsmanship is tested to see if there is a seal or not. And in this case, I don't see any light coming out of any part of the humidor.

So it's very simple. Just get a lit flashlight, get in a dark room, place inside the humidor, lit like I just did and see if there's any light seeping out of it. And you can do this even if you've had the humidor for a year or two because a lot of times that brand new humidor is going to keep a seal. But after many, many years of humidity, taking cigars in and out, the wear and tear of a humidor can start showing after a year or two. So I will highly advise that you don't just do one time. If you start noticing that your humanity is not being kept in your humidor, definitely do the flashlight test again and see if there's any light seeping out of it.

Tip Number 3

Okay, so tip number three, if you've had your humidor for some time and now you're seeing that the humidity is dropping and it's not keeping humidity. First off, you want to take a look and see if your quantity of cigars has increased. And maybe it's too much for that humidor, it can't hold enough humidity. You want to increase your humidification system, so therefore you have to have a lot more humidity. A very good hygrometer. I recommended digital hygrometer. Check your battery, make sure it's a fresh battery. So if you have increased humidification system in there, you have placed a brand new battery in your hygrometer and that you see that your humidor is still not keeping humidity. That's a very, very bad sign. So as I mentioned in tip number two, that you want to redo the flashlight test and see if there's any humanity seeping out.

Another thing that you can do is that some guys do use the same humidor and what they do, they get some clear caulking and they caulk all the areas of the humidor that they see that there are any type of seams. So you can do that. However, if you do want to use some caulking, make sure try to get some odorless caulking so therefore it doesn't tarnish your cigars. And temporarily, you have to put your cigars in some type of humid bag for a while and then leave the humidor open. So therefore if there is any odor and that caulking, it can dissipate.

Once you have caulked the whole entire humidor on the seams, and what I'm talking about is the edges of your humidor, you use some clear caulking on the edges of your seams on the inside of the lid and also the entire inside of your humidor. And once you have done that and you've aired it out, so therefore you want to replace your cigars inside. And before you do that, I highly recommend just keep it empty, put in the humidification system, put in the hygrometer and see if the humidity increases. Once you have that humidity increased to the specified humidity that you desire, anywhere between 65 to 72%, then you want to place your cigars inside because the cigars are going to absorb some humidity so therefore they can stay fresh.

Now if it drops drastically after all measures had been met, you've replaced your battery, you put more humidification systems in there and you have done the caulking system and it's still a dropping humidity, there may be some pores inside the wood that is robbing your humidity because maybe it wasn't a very nice humidor that was made and was truly good wood. So therefore last resort, you may have to get yourself at better humidor and go out on a market or online and purchase another one.

Now if you are going to, I highly advise that you do make an investment of a nice brand name humidor, Diamond Crown makes very good ones. There is so many other ones that don't come to mind right now, but I would definitely look at some blogs. I would ask your friends, get on Facebook groups and see what people are using to keep their humidors well humidified and their cigars fresh.

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