Hi all, I just recently bought a wine cooler (thermoelectric) to age my cigars. I've been a smoker for 6 years and have been maintaining my desktop humidor (quite a large box humidor, holds 400 sticks roughly) for a few years now using boveda and I maintain consistent 69% humidity all year round.
I just bought a 24 bottle thermoelectric wine cooler (hard to find thermoelectric in the UK!) and put 2lbs of Heartfelt Beads 70% in there. I put some cigar lids and cedar in the bottom with the beads to help add some wood in there and then put my cigar boxes in, around 10 boxes (the boxes have already been sitting in my other humidor at 69% humidity). I have a Caliber IV hygrometer to measure temperature and humidity. I'm setting my wine cooler at 18C (64F). The humidity is reading between 65-70%, which I'm happy with (I actually wanted to bring it down to 65% for slower aging).
So my problem is - every time the cooler fan kicks on to chill the wine cooler, the humidity drops to around 50-55% humidity, then as soon as the fan stops, the humidity rises back up (as it should do) to 65 again.
I've been reading the forums and understand that:
-when the wine cooler starts to run and cools the air inside, by laws of science, humidity will always drop as the air gets colder and drawn out of the wine cooler - even with thermoelectric coolers. If this is the case, why do so many people recommend thermoelectric over compressor? If both types of coolers causes humidity to drop, why is there a bias towards getting thermoelectric? Is it because a compressor will aggressively drive the humidity down even further and have more issues with condensation inside the cooler? Everyone seems to say "buy a thermoelectric because compressor will remove humidity" but it happens in both, except no one talks about it happening in a thermoelectric.
-a lot of people say that their wineadors sit at "rock solid" humidity all year round - how is this possible when the wine cooler fan kicks in to chill the air? Unless they have so much boxes and cigars in there to buffer the difference and hardly notice any real significant drop in humidity?
-Should I be worried at all? All my cigars in my new wineador are in boxes - I wanted a wineador to age boxes and will only put boxes in there (not single sticks) - from what I understand, the boxes will help humidify the cigars and protect them from humidity changes through the day and the cigars themselves won't really see any real difference/issues, right? I do like having a stable environment (consistent 65-70% without the multiple drops in humidity during the day) but am I worried over nothing? Do the RH swings (which is happening multiple times a day due to the fan kicking in to maintain the 18c temp) affect my cigars if they are protected in the boxes?
What do most people do to counter this? I know some people leave their wineador turned off (unplugged) and I did try that and it sits at a stable 70% but I wanted the wineador to control temperature, around 18C for the main compartment. My wineador has a separate compartment in the top and I was thinking of bringing that temperature down to 12C for real low and slow aging (with 62% humidity) but I know the colder the air, the less humidity it can hold. I was thinking of getting an electricity timer to plug into the wall socket to control when to give power to the wine cooler (only problem with this is that the temp settings resets to 12c when the cooler is switched off) but I could at least lessen the amount of RH swings in a day. Maybe I could also try spreading my HF beads all around and really loading more boxes in to stabilise more.
Do I just have to accept that the RH swings will keep happening as long as I have the wineador switched on? Do I need more buffer e.g. more cigar boxes/more beads spread throughout? I was thinking of adding boveda packs in there too. Any advice would be appreciated.
I just bought a 24 bottle thermoelectric wine cooler (hard to find thermoelectric in the UK!) and put 2lbs of Heartfelt Beads 70% in there. I put some cigar lids and cedar in the bottom with the beads to help add some wood in there and then put my cigar boxes in, around 10 boxes (the boxes have already been sitting in my other humidor at 69% humidity). I have a Caliber IV hygrometer to measure temperature and humidity. I'm setting my wine cooler at 18C (64F). The humidity is reading between 65-70%, which I'm happy with (I actually wanted to bring it down to 65% for slower aging).
So my problem is - every time the cooler fan kicks on to chill the wine cooler, the humidity drops to around 50-55% humidity, then as soon as the fan stops, the humidity rises back up (as it should do) to 65 again.
I've been reading the forums and understand that:
-when the wine cooler starts to run and cools the air inside, by laws of science, humidity will always drop as the air gets colder and drawn out of the wine cooler - even with thermoelectric coolers. If this is the case, why do so many people recommend thermoelectric over compressor? If both types of coolers causes humidity to drop, why is there a bias towards getting thermoelectric? Is it because a compressor will aggressively drive the humidity down even further and have more issues with condensation inside the cooler? Everyone seems to say "buy a thermoelectric because compressor will remove humidity" but it happens in both, except no one talks about it happening in a thermoelectric.
-a lot of people say that their wineadors sit at "rock solid" humidity all year round - how is this possible when the wine cooler fan kicks in to chill the air? Unless they have so much boxes and cigars in there to buffer the difference and hardly notice any real significant drop in humidity?
-Should I be worried at all? All my cigars in my new wineador are in boxes - I wanted a wineador to age boxes and will only put boxes in there (not single sticks) - from what I understand, the boxes will help humidify the cigars and protect them from humidity changes through the day and the cigars themselves won't really see any real difference/issues, right? I do like having a stable environment (consistent 65-70% without the multiple drops in humidity during the day) but am I worried over nothing? Do the RH swings (which is happening multiple times a day due to the fan kicking in to maintain the 18c temp) affect my cigars if they are protected in the boxes?
What do most people do to counter this? I know some people leave their wineador turned off (unplugged) and I did try that and it sits at a stable 70% but I wanted the wineador to control temperature, around 18C for the main compartment. My wineador has a separate compartment in the top and I was thinking of bringing that temperature down to 12C for real low and slow aging (with 62% humidity) but I know the colder the air, the less humidity it can hold. I was thinking of getting an electricity timer to plug into the wall socket to control when to give power to the wine cooler (only problem with this is that the temp settings resets to 12c when the cooler is switched off) but I could at least lessen the amount of RH swings in a day. Maybe I could also try spreading my HF beads all around and really loading more boxes in to stabilise more.
Do I just have to accept that the RH swings will keep happening as long as I have the wineador switched on? Do I need more buffer e.g. more cigar boxes/more beads spread throughout? I was thinking of adding boveda packs in there too. Any advice would be appreciated.
