Sorry for the huge gap in communication! I'm back with an update.
I've had time to smoke through the majority of the sticks in the 62 and 72 percent, and have found some constants.
First of, a few surprises, well to me at least. After plenty of time to acclimate, and comparing the same selections to each other, I found it impossible to tell simply by look at what stick was at what percent. Even putting the extremes next to each other there was no visible evidence as to the humidity. I guess I've read a lot about guys seeing a "dull" wrapper and immediately knowing it was 3% drier than they prefer. Maybe it's just me. Second, there was almost zero difference in the feel of the sticks. I say almost because the only place I could feel anything was when giving a squeeze at the absolute very tippy top of the foot. As to be expected, the higher the RH, the "squishier" the feel. There was a difference, but not a huge one. If I was given a selection of sticks with no hint how they were stored I'd probably chalk it up to variances from stick to stick. Finally, and I wasn't really out to compare this, without exception the higher the HR, the stronger the smell from the unit cigar. The final pre-smoke observation was that I did end up spotting a tiny patch of mold in the 72% GreatValuedor during a weekly inspection. It was on the Short Story, right in the middle of an excess smear of glue. The offending cigar was promptly burned as not to contaminate the others.
On to the taste. I might put up my full tasting notes at some point, but I found some consistencies that I will post here. The 72% sticks started with very bold flavors in the earthier, darker, even chocolate ranges. No stick was given flavors I hadn't detected before, but they were much more pronounced. For example, the Short Story started with a hugely dominant cocoa flavor. The sweetness picked up a little later on, but never really "mixed" with the cocoa. The 62% RH sticks saw a more subtle and more blended flavor profile. As expected, the smoke also felt very dry. Oddly enough, and again very consistently, the half way points saw an abrupt change. The 62% sticks turned to nothing more than hot air, not even a generic tobacco smoke flavor. The 72% sticks turned bitter, very bitter, but not all of them were an unpleasant bitter to me. I do tend to enjoy that side of the flavor wheel though.
Now for the burn. The drier the stick, the shorter the burn time, not really a huge surprise there. I'll default to the Short Story again, 72% lasted me 1 hour and 24 minutes, while the 62% sample went only 1 hour and 5 minutes. I did note that I felt like I was puffing a little faster on the higher humidity cigars to ensure they stayed light. I stopped them pretty darn close to the same amount remaining. The burn line was very consistent between the same sticks and the different RH storage levels. Another unexpected observation was there was virtually no difference in the amount of time it took me to do my usual toasting rituals. I expected that higher RH would result in needing a longer toast to properly (for me) light.
So there you have it so far. I'm certainly surprised by a few things, maybe you weren't, but there you go. As I have the time I'll put up some more detailed and cigar specific notes with the 69 and 65 percent, as I think we were all betting that the 72 and 62 would not end up being a winning RH storage option.
