Seasoning a New Jemar Humidor
Every new humidor arrives with the same hidden problem. The Spanish cedar inside has spent months in workshops, warehouses and shipping crates at whatever humidity those places happened to have — usually far below the level a cigar wants. Put cigars into that box on the first day and the cedar will do exactly what it was chosen to do: absorb moisture from its surroundings. Except that the only moisture available is in your cigars, and within a week they will be dry, brittle and burning hot. Seasoning is the process of feeding the wood first, so that it has nothing to take from the tobacco.
What you are trying to achieve
The aim is to bring the cedar lining up to roughly the same moisture content as the air you intend to keep in the box — around 65 to 72 percent relative humidity — and to do it slowly enough that the wood does not swell unevenly. A properly seasoned lining then acts as a buffer for years, giving humidity back after every opening and taking the surplus when the box is closed. An unseasoned lining fights the humidifier for months and never quite settles.
The method we recommend
There are old methods involving distilled water, sponges and wiping the wood down, and we advise against all of them for a Jemar. The interior is bare cedar over a veneered carcass, and liquid water on the surface can raise the grain, lift a veneer edge or warp a close-fitting lid — damage that no amount of care afterwards will undo. The slow, dry method is safer and, in our experience, more even.
It goes like this. Unpack the humidor, remove any packaging and the cedar tray if there is one, and wipe out any dust with a dry cloth. Place one Boveda 84% seasoning pack inside for every twenty-five cigars of the box's capacity — two for a forty-cigar Classical 33, four for the hundred-cigar 450, a full set for the WR2. Put the tray back in, close the lid, and leave the humidor alone for fourteen days. Do not open it to check. The 84% packs are designed to release moisture into dry wood, and the cedar will take what it needs at its own pace.
Then set the working level
After two weeks, remove the seasoning packs — they will feel stiffer and lighter than when they went in — and replace them with the packs you intend to keep in the box. For most Canadian homes that means Boveda 69% or 72%, at the same one-pack-per-twenty-five-cigars ratio. The 69 is our usual recommendation for a heated house in winter; the 72 suits a smoker who prefers cigars a little softer or who lives somewhere with drier air.
Now load the cigars. If you have a hygrometer, put it in; a digital one is far more reliable than the analogue dials that come with many boxes, and it should be checked in a sealed bag with a Boveda pack before you trust it. Over the first week the reading should settle within two points of the pack's rating. If it drifts low, add a pack. If it runs high, the room is humid and the box is fine — the packs will absorb the excess.
A few things to avoid
- Do not wipe the cedar with water, distilled or otherwise. It is the single most common way a new humidor is damaged.
- Do not use tap water in any humidifier, ever. Minerals and chlorine both end up in the wood and the cigars.
- Do not skip the two weeks. A box loaded after three days will spend the next three months pulling humidity from the cigars.
- Do not season in a hot room or in sunlight. Heat drives the moisture out of the packs faster than the wood can take it and can leave the lining uneven.
When to season again
A humidor that is kept stocked and closed does not need re-seasoning. If it stands empty for a few months, or if it has been allowed to run dry for a long stretch, repeat the two-week process before reloading it. Otherwise the only maintenance is replacing the Boveda packs when they go stiff — typically every two to four months, depending on how often the lid is opened and how dry the house is.
What is in the box
El Laguito Cigars supplies every Jemar humidor with printed seasoning instructions and can include the right number of 84% seasoning packs and working packs with the order, so that the box is ready to start the day it arrives. If you would rather talk it through, call or write; setting a new humidor up correctly is the difference between a piece that works for thirty years and one that frustrates you for three.