How to Dry Box Cigars

Cigars aren’t like sex – there’s definitely such a thing as too moist.

(Too far? Oh well, too late to turn back now!)

Anyhow, sometimes in your well-intentioned efforts to humidify, humidify, humidify, you wind up overdoing it. Cigars should be smoked at around 70% humidity. If your hygrometer is approaching 75%, you’re overdoing it. Signs of over humidification are split ends at the foot, tight bands (from cigar swelling), and entire vegetable gardens sprouting out of your humidor (or, more likely, mold).

A high moisture level is bad for your cigar. It can wreck the burn, lead to plugging, and create a bitter taste.

The answer in many cases is to try dry box cigars.

What’s Dry Boxing?

It’s putting cigars in a dry box, without humidification. Yes, it’s that simple. But doing it without ruining cigars is a bit of an art.

First, use a small container like a cigar travel case. The environment is easier to control than a larger humidor. Then, the general rule of thumb is to leave overly moist cigars in there for a day or two.

Actually, a great experiment to get a sense of how to dry box properly is to place three cigars in your case. Then, try to smoke one after a day, another after two days, and then the third on the third day. You can do this even longer if humidity still isn’t reduced enough. The key is to get a sense of how the conditions in your own humidors, cases, and environments react to this practice.

If you’ve done things right, you’ll feel like a cigar master. Or, if your dry box cigars haven’t worked out, you’ll feel like a dope and blame us for the loss of good cigars. Either way, you’re going to learn something, so there’s that.

Also, if you want to avoid excessive drying, you can use a 65% humidity pack. We say just keep it simple and dry the damn things if that’s what you’re trying to do. Don’t be too fancy.

This issue can be tricky – let us know your successes and failures in the comments section and we’ll try to all learn together.

Image via famous-smoke.com

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