Wine cooler anxiety

[jcorona]

I plan on buying a wine cooler to use for temp control only, storing my cigars in air tight tupperware with bovedas inside, like in this post here:

My goal is providing a stable environment, in terms of rh/temp.

My question is, since the max setting on the wine cooler which I will be buying is around 65 F, and my ambient room temp reaches 80 F in the summer, how will this affect the cigars when I take them out of the cooler at 65 F and into an ambient temp of 80 F? will wrappers crack? will moisture be released suddenly and damage my cigars? do cigars smoke well at 65F? am I overthinking/over worrying this?

Would like to hear everyones thoughts/experiences.

[Fugu]

54 minutes ago, jcorona said:

will moisture be released suddenly and damage my cigars?

Quite the reverse, a cold cigar brought into a warm room will usually gain moisture. But it depends on actual humidity in your ambient. Check out dew point: E.g bringing a cigar @ 65°F into a room with 80° F and 70% rH, will lead to water condensation on the stick (dew point @ 68 °F). Usually, this is only for a short moment, as a cigar (depending on size) usually heats up quite quickly, but could be enouhg to affect performance. So if you are concerned, and if there are huge differences between storage and outside ambient, to be safe you could briefly put the cold cigar in a plastic bag (remove excessive air) until it attained room temperature.

 

[CaptainQuintero]

What's your plan to remove the excess water that will be introduced into the humidor by having the cooler turned on?

[jcorona]

5 minutes ago, CaptainQuintero said:

What's your plan to remove the excess water that will be introduced into the humidor by having the cooler turned on?

Since my cigars are in sealed microclimates, excess water/humidity in the cooler should not be a cause for concern, right?

[CaptainQuintero]

9 hours ago, jcorona said:

Since my cigars are in sealed microclimates, excess water/humidity in the cooler should not be a cause for concern, right?

It's the start of a very deep hole involving dew points etc but short answer:

A fridge/cooler pumps in cold air or turns the air inside your fridge cold. Cold air has more r/h than warm so if you have a cooler turned on, you are actively introducing moisture into your humidor. You need a method to regularly remove this or are best your cigars will get overhumidified, at worst you'll get a mould problem/water damage. Unless your humidor setup requires moisture to be added eg your climate is very dry and there is some air exchange with the climate.

There's a huge amount of factors that come into play when you start changing temp/humidity in a sealed environment

[vinnyvega]

I used to freak out too but the remedy was pretty simple.

1) The more boxes you have in their the better.  This will help absorb some excess moisture.

2) Boveda packs.  Poor man's set and forget.

[PigFish]

5 hours ago, jcorona said:

Since my cigars are in sealed microclimates, excess water/humidity in the cooler should not be a cause for concern, right?

Water should be your concern, but it depends on ambients and how much you smoke.

Your Bovida pack will have a certain hysteresis at 66F. So will your cigars. I am only guessing but my guess is that cigars are more magnetic than Bovida at 66F, and water will hit and stick to any cigars, plastic, boxes etc. whenever the those elements are opened and exposed to a net high rH ambient. You will have an ever increasing water problem, if the activity and delta rH are large enough. You may have reversible system (the Bovida pack) but that system may or may not have the hysteresis to actually address the problem during short cycle openings.

First, you should consider intercepting your control on your cooler and adjusting it to a higher temperature. This would be a start. There is no reason (IMHO) to actually refrigerate cigars and that is what you are doing at 66F.

Next would be to always store in boxes and you should try to open those boxes only when the ambient falls.

Lastly, you really need to see what happens in your circumstances. Hypotheticals are wonderful aids, but also unsettling ones. There are things that you can do IF you run into problems. Don't try to fix problems that you don't have, or anxiety, will be a problem that you will have for certain!!!

-Piggy

[PigFish]

I hope you don't mind if I help out a little here.

3 hours ago, CaptainQuintero said:

It's the start of a very deep hole involving dew points etc but short answer:

A fridge/cooler pumps in cold air or creates cold air inside your fridge. Correct!

Cold air has more water content than warm so if you have a cooler turned on, you are actively introducing moisture into your humidor. Not correct.

Declining temperature will cause a rise in rH (not in actual water content). Contact with a cold plate (such as what would be used to heat exchange air in a cooler/refrigerator) can (will) cause condensation on the cold plate. The condensation is the result of cooling the water, moving along with the air and causing it to bond to itself and phase change from a gas to a liquid. No water is created, it precipitates or condenses on the cold location, removing gaseous water and creating liquid water. There is an increase in mass of liquid water, but it matches the decrease in mass of gaseous water. The above statement 'appears' to indicate that cooling creates water. Probably not the authors intent!

You need a method to regularly remove this or are best your cigars will get overhumidified, at worst you'll get a mould problem/water damage.

The phase change creates no additional water (absolute water content) yet liquid water is created to replace gaseous water. Water, liquid water is a problem for cigars if it touches them. A net rise in the total content of water is likely the result of air exchanges. Water brought into the system via opening the door, especially in a net high rH ambient. The same problem discussed earlier.

Unless your humidor setup requires moisture to be added eg your climate is very dry and there is some air exchange with the climate. Many things can and will happen, I have no comment on this.

There's a huge amount of factors that come into play when you start changing temp/humidity in a sealed environment. This is absolutely true!

If any of your were confused, I hope this helps.

Cheers! -Piggy

[CaptainQuintero]

Thanks pigster! I tried to expand on 'cooler turned on = adding r/h' but should have stuck to that layman's version

[TheMonk]

Piggy, your last reply regarding the declining temp causing an increase in RH has reminded me of something that has been intriguing me for some time, and possibly someone can help me to understand it better.

I've somewhat recently upgraded to a nice big wineador, which has actually been performing really nicely, despite all the issues I've read online regarding the compressor based systems - granted, it's supposed to be a very good unit and I've got a lot of HF beads plus large Boveda packs and KL in there, to help keep the RH as stable as possible. I have however noticed something odd, to which I'd appreciate some help.

Let's take today, for example. My outside conditions are 23ºC and 55% RH, and inside my wineador it was at 18ºC and 70% RH. Considering RH falls when temperature rises, how would you explain that when I open my wineador door the temperature inside starts to increase BUT the RH also increases? I'm not at all knowledgeable in this area, but this makes no sense to me.

[PigFish]

15 minutes ago, TheMonk said:

Piggy, your last reply regarding the declining temp causing an increase in RH has reminded me of something that has been intriguing me for some time, and possibly someone can help me to understand it better.

I've somewhat recently upgraded to a nice big wineador, which has actually been performing really nicely, despite all the issues I've read online regarding the compressor based systems - granted, it's supposed to be a very good unit and I've got a lot of HF beads plus large Boveda packs and KL in there, to help keep the RH as stable as possible. I have however noticed something odd, to which I'd appreciate some help.

Let's take today, for example. My outside conditions are 23ºC and 55% RH, and inside my wineador it was at 18ºC and 70% RH. Considering RH falls when temperature rises, how would you explain that when I open my wineador door the temperature inside starts to increase BUT the RH also increases? I'm not at all knowledgeable in this area, but this makes no sense to me.

This is the result of air exchange and absolute humidity (aH), and the lack of understanding of the meaning of rH.

Now my YouBoob videos are low budget, okay... -LOL But I do try to explain what you are experiencing here in this video!

Piggy on air exchanges

If you need further explanation after viewing the video, LMK! -P

PS (Pig Scriptum): I can do the psychrometrics for you if you really want!

[TheMonk]

If you need further explanation after viewing the video, LMK! -P

PS (Pig Scriptum): I can do the psychrometrics for you if you really want!

I think I'm gonna need a bit more help on this Piggy, in order for me to proceed properly. Nothing too technical, just enough to help me understand this particular behavior, and perhaps how I could slightly tweak the RH - I'd like to lower it by around 3%:

[PigFish]

As much as you need mate. You need to understand however that I cannot fix certain design flaws.

So you have 70rH inside? You have too much water. Are there any active sources (free water) or all beads and such?

I assume it is turned on. You should unpack the entire humidor and look for puddles and soaked boxes as a precaution.

Do you see any condensate? Does it run down the back, or into a tub or what? You cannot have an active cooler with 70rH internals without getting condensation on the cooling unit. You have free water in the system, even if you don't see it!

Get me some answers on this and we will go to the next step... Oh, and don't assume! If I tell you to unpack the humidor do it please. I have done this at least a hundred times with members and others that inquire. Don't be lazy... And don't let me chase my tail. I tell you to do things not so you jump through hoops, but so you can fix your problem. I have had many, many people move on and ignore my advice just to email me 4 months later and ask me if their soaked cigars can be saved...!

A couple pictures of the inside of the humidor/cooler would be nice.

If you don't want to do this in public, we can pick it up via email. My eM is in the profile.

About the behavior, it will exist regardless of the condition of your humidor. I am happy to explain it, but you should decide what you want first, why it happens or what you can do about it. You cannot stop why it happens unless you have control over your ambient, or raise the temperature of your cooler, which I would do anyway!!! There is no reason to store at 18C and that is part of your problem!!! If you cannot change it (a design issue that I spoke about earlier, there may be work-arounds, some you may accept or not like).

-P

[jcorona]

16 hours ago, PigFish said:

First, you should consider intercepting your control on your cooler and adjusting it to a higher temperature. This would be a start. There is no reason (IMHO) to actually refrigerate cigars and that is what you are doing at 66F.

From reading this, I would probably use the cooler as a humidor without turning it on. Or maybe, turning it on once a week in the summer, to achieve a temperature of between 70 to 75 F, @65rh boveda. The higher the inside temp, the less of a water problem I will have when I open the door, all this depending on my ambient rh and temp. My ambient temp rises to around 81 F on the hottest days. The above scenario would probably be the best solution in my case, i.e. not turning the cooler on always and using it as a regular humidor. What do you think @PigFish?

Another question. Right now my tupperdors (with 65% boveda packs) reside in a room with an air conditioning unit, which isn't on always. When I turn it on, the temp in my tupperdor goes down to 72F, and I notice that rh rises to 68% on my hygro. Why is this? is it because water condenses inside the tupperdor due to cooling and sticks to the cigars? there is no air exchange since the tups are closed and air tight.

[TheMonk]

9 hours ago, PigFish said:

As much as you need mate. You need to understand however that I cannot fix certain design flaws.

So you have 70rH inside? You have too much water. Are there any active sources (free water) or all beads and such?

I assume it is turned on. You should unpack the entire humidor and look for puddles and soaked boxes as a precaution.

Do you see any condensate? Does it run down the back, or into a tub or what? You cannot have an active cooler with 70rH internals without getting condensation on the cooling unit. You have free water in the system, even if you don't see it!

Get me some answers on this and we will go to the next step... Oh, and don't assume! If I tell you to unpack the humidor do it please. I have done this at least a hundred times with members and others that inquire. Don't be lazy... And don't let me chase my tail. I tell you to do things not so you jump through hoops, but so you can fix your problem. I have had many, many people move on and ignore my advice just to email me 4 months later and ask me if their soaked cigars can be saved...!

A couple pictures of the inside of the humidor/cooler would be nice.

If you don't want to do this in public, we can pick it up via email. My eM is in the profile.

About the behavior, it will exist regardless of the condition of your humidor. I am happy to explain it, but you should decide what you want first, why it happens or what you can do about it. You cannot stop why it happens unless you have control over your ambient, or raise the temperature of your cooler, which I would do anyway!!! There is no reason to store at 18C and that is part of your problem!!! If you cannot change it (a design issue that I spoke about earlier, there may be work-arounds, some you may accept or not like).

-P

Thanks for your kind reply, Piggy. I will take a few pics and send them to you via e-mail, but I've been checking the wineador thoroughly I there's absolutely no free water or condensate whatsoever. The wineador is really not that packed, so it would be very easy to see.

[Hurltim]

I am watching the fluctuation of my wineador temp literally every day and the resultant change in rH. It's fall here in Colorado and we have yet to turn the heat on for the winter. It gets down to 45 at night and 80 during the day. I have my cigars stored in a humidor that fits perfectly in the wineador and then one box (with 5 on the way). I really need a heating element in the wineador. 

The thing is, and @PigFish says it all the time that the wineador is not the perfect solution for absolute control of rH and Temp. My wineador use is temporary as I plan on building a large cabinet humidor with Piggy's controls (hopefully.) If you don't have central air/heat in your house like I don't, life is a bit more challenging for us.

[CaptainQuintero]

5 hours ago, jcorona said:

From reading this, I would probably use the cooler as a humidor without turning it on. Or maybe, turning it on once a week in the summer, to achieve a temperature of between 70 to 75 F, @65rh boveda. The higher the inside temp, the less of a water problem I will have when I open the door, all this depending on my ambient rh and temp. My ambient temp rises to around 81 F on the hottest days. The above scenario would probably be the best solution in my case, i.e. not turning the cooler on always and using it as a regular humidor. What do you think @PigFish?

Another question. Right now my tupperdors (with 65% boveda packs) reside in a room with an air conditioning unit, which isn't on always. When I turn it on, the temp in my tupperdor goes down to 72F, and I notice that rh rises to 68% on my hygro. Why is this? is it because water condenses inside the tupperdor due to cooling and sticks to the cigars? there is no air exchange since the tups are closed and air tight.

That's what I did. You can have the unit turned on for sure but you have to spend time, money and energy creating a solution which reliably removes the excess r/h that comes with having the unit turned on. Personally I took the decision that I didn't have the time, money or energy.

I simply froze my stock, now there is no reason to worry about temperature. I use beads to regulate the humidity.

Freezing solves the issue of potential beetles, now there is no need for low temperature 

Beads solves the issue of potential mould

It's about finding a balance between what you can invest in your system and what you want from it.

 

[PigFish]

Boy do I have a lot of writing to do.... -LOL My own fault....

3 hours ago, Hurltim said:

The thing is, and @PigFish says it all the time that the wineador is not the perfect solution for absolute control of rH and Temp. 

This is true, yet a wine cooler humidor can be one of the, if not the very best totally controlled solutions you can obtain for the unstable ambient. It depends on how it is engineered, constructed and controlled... The emphasis on this statement should be that there is no perfect humidor (mine included). A perfect humidor exists in a perfect ambient where perfection is not required!!! It is when you have a wild and crazy ambient, like I do, that you need an engineered solution.

Below is a data log of my test humidor. I just downloaded this log this morning. It currently has about 20 boxes of cigars in it. It has a stash of old NC cigars (from cigar events that I will never smoke) and a baggie of frauds.

I can zoom in on the cycles, but frankly many don't understand why examine cycles so closely. They look like mountains, and some likely think, certainly not stable! I can zoom out to a greater range and make the lines, just that, lines; and then, my God... perfection! Yet that is not fair. This cooler has set points of 70F and 60rH...

So who says this is not stable? Frankly you will get greater ranges in temperature and rH by walking across the room you are sitting in, or climbing up on a step ladder!

Stability at my level becomes a study of the micro and not the macro... Cigars only require a macro view. A micro view, the betterment of anything is in the eye of the beholder.

For the record, this is not a run-of-the-mill humidor made from a wine cooler! It is a highly engineered set of components custom made for this wine cooler which has a mere 1 inch of insulation and is a scratch and dent $140 item... It has a LG (compressor) cooler which has gone through hell... I have often thought of selling it on eBay for $1500 (plus or minus) many times but I don't know if anyone would buy it with all the holes that I have put in it!!! If you log onto my YouBoob channel, you can see it run in a 95F ambient in my shop, yes, with my cigars in it... I always find a new reason to keep it, and this is one of those reasons. It gets data logged 24/7 about 300 days a year.

What is engineering? Well, some of my design work I don't often show pictures of. This is the evaporator coil isolator and water table. The polyethylene material itself is about half the price of the cooler, not inclusive of my cad work and machining! This is just one piece of the custom assembly. I don't often watch my time, but between drawing, measuring, pondering and machining there is likely 40 hours worth of work in this piece of plastic.

My last comment on this cooler is this. If I narrowed the parameters a bit, took it out of the shop and put it in the house, the cooling cycle would likely never run again. I could trim the dehydration cycles with tweaks to the activation (differential) logic... and the cooler operation would look like an almost straight line. This is therefore a compromise logic set. The compromise is that it has to run in 50F as well as it does at 90F. And it does!!!

 

6 hours ago, TheMonk said:

Thanks for your kind reply, Piggy. I will take a few pics and send them to you via e-mail, but I've been checking the wineador thoroughly I there's absolutely no free water or condensate whatsoever. The wineador is really not that packed, so it would be very easy to see.

How cool has it been in the house?

Here is where I always get into arguments. If the cooler is running (and it works, cools below the dew point) there is liquid water and perhaps ice forming on the cooling coil (during cooling cycles). You cannot have a cooling system that works in a box like this without condensation... Now whether one sees it or not becomes lesser the focus of the conversation. Whether it exists or not, may be doubtful to the cooler owner, but not to me.

Not seeing it is good in that you don't have soaked boxes. But it is bad because the problems become harder to fix...

True control over wine cooler humidor (WCH) function is in the mastery of controlling liquid and free water. You may get some form of limited function without that control, but you will never get robustness of control. The WCH will never function like mine (above) without such control. The level of control you get (one gets, it is not personal) will be controlled by the ambient and not the administrator. People often tell me that their simple designs work. That is until they don't work...! This is often the result of ambient working against you.

Really quickly, because I am running out of time for this segment... poorly designed WCH depend on higher temperatures to function. The makers know this as well, since they have no mastery of free water, they must force cooling cycles at a frequency great enough to control the out-of-control swings of rH caused by poor design... You must therefore 'force cool' or rH gets out of control. This is your problem, or part of it...

I did not mean to be rude about pulling out the boxes... yet that is a priority (to me) becasue damaged cigars are the first priority to me. Cigar protection is the goal, and water damage and wet boxes also causes this problem. I wanted to make that clear, so I was insistent about it...!

All for now mates. Will rescan the posts to look for more questions a little later!

-Prof. Piglet

 

[PigFish]

Oh, and I would like to add that control means control. I choose 70 and 60. I don't just happen to get 70 and 60! It takes a long time to remove water from cigars. But if I go into the shop now and change the controller to 71 and 58, that is what I am going to get! It will be slow at first. Again, cooking water out of cigars at 70 is not easy, it might take a year for these minuscule changes to really be reflected in the condition of the cigars. But control means the ability to change settings. Only a fully automated humidor, wine cooler or otherwise will let you do that!

Unlike many others who simply get 65/65, I choose what I want. And if I want it different, I push a few buttons and wait. I will get it! The cigars will argue at first, but they will succumb to my will!

Cheers! -P

[Hurltim]

So your "unit" (because I am 46 going on 12) cycles 16 to 20 times an hour and keeps you +/- about a degree and percent (of rH) within spec. I would call that a resounding success. To shorten the reaction time and increase cycles you would need increasingly more expensive hygros and thermometers. I think you are well past the "system bias" of most manufacturers of these sensors.

Please tell me you have a woodworking CNC machine and that you did not do that water table by hand...

Big fan of Incra tools myself. Have the whole LS  Positioner setup for my table saw and router table. 

I am in the early stages (planning) of a larger humidor build and am very interested in using your controllers/sensors. You are a prolific writer and so it is taking me awhile to read all of your posts. LOL!!!

 

[PigFish]

... so I just did it!

Had to take the dog to the groomer (Lady Piggy is getting lazy) and decided to reset the project to 71˚F and 58rH. Lets see what happened since the last post!

This is what I mean by control. My humidor (test box) and all its cigars (contents) are now on their way to a PMC based on 71/58. I know what I like, so I won't keep this setting for long, just long enough to make the point.

When I say 'raise the bar' I post pictures (proof), verses 'best bar ever' where we don't... -LOL

Tastes notwithstanding, I am no super taster; I proffer that I know what water tastes like in a cigar. I know it because I can test it. I can move entire collections of cigars to different settings and compare them (generally, not discounting cigar individualism) while other groups remain at previously desired settings. I have more than on precision humidor!

This proves noting about my tastes, but it does prove that I have the real ability to compare cigar climatology events, cigar conditioning back to back in relatively accurate, precision controlled settings. I have had the ability to do this, and have done this for many years now.

This does not make my opinion 'worth' more than others. I have never argued this, nor will I now! But in my eyes, and mine are the ones important to me, it validates that I know what I am talking about.

In order to understand cigar condition and taste you need a datum to compare. Most of you don't give a shit, I get it... -LOL But I do and this is a little glimpse at my world.

This is the result of success stories and failure stories. If you only knew... I know what is going on inside one's humidor because I had the problem to solve long before I started solving the problems for others here online.

Thanks for your indulgence! -Piggy

[SloppyJ]

Don't want to add anything to this thread other than your wineador that you pick up might only go up to 65°F on it's thermostat but you will find the internal temp is more than that. Right not I have my unit set on 63°F and it's producing an internal temp around 66°F. Just something to keep in mind. 

[Hurltim]

12 minutes ago, PigFish said:

... so I just did it!

Had to take the dog to the groomer (Lady Piggy is getting lazy) and decided to reset the project to 71˚F and 58rH. Lets see what happened since the last post!

This is what I mean by control. My humidor (test box) and all its cigars (contents) are now on their way to a PMC based on 71/58. I know what I like, so I won't keep this setting for long, just long enough to make the point.

When I say 'raise the bar' I post pictures (proof), verses 'best bar ever' where we don't... -LOL

Tastes notwithstanding, I am no super taster; I proffer that I know what water tastes like in a cigar. I know it because I can test it. I can move entire collections of cigars to different settings and compare them (generally, not discounting cigar individualism) while other groups remain at previously desired settings. I have more than on precision humidor!

This proves noting about my tastes, but it does prove that I have the real ability to compare cigar climatology events, cigar conditioning back to back in relatively accurate, precision controlled settings. I have had the ability to do this, and have done this for many years now.

This does not make my opinion 'worth' more than others. I have never argued this, nor will I now! But in my eyes, and mine are the ones important to me, it validates that I know what I am talking about.

In order to understand cigar condition and taste you need a datum to compare. Most of you don't give a shit, I get it... -LOL But I do and this is a little glimpse at my world.

This is the result of success stories and failure stories. If you only knew... I know what is going on inside one's humidor because I had the problem to solve long before I started solving the problems for others here online.

Thanks for your indulgence! -Piggy

That's amazing Ray, really. You are adjusting rH almost a full percent in literally seconds. I really would have expected the curve to be more like the temperature one. 

I used to do materials testing on roadway subgade using a nuclear gauge to measure in situ density and moisture content. The margin of error is +/- 2%. I can get closer to that just by feeling the material from under the gauge.

You sir, are a steely-eyed moisture man!

[PigFish]

47 minutes ago, Hurltim said:

So your "unit" (because I am 46 going on 12) cycles 16 to 20 times an hour and keeps you +/- about a degree and percent (of rH) within spec. I would call that a resounding success. To shorten the reaction time and increase cycles you would need increasingly more expensive hygros and thermometers. I think you are well past the "system bias" of most manufacturers of these sensors.

Please tell me you have a woodworking CNC machine and that you did not do that water table by hand...

Big fan of Incra tools myself. Have the whole LS  Positioner setup for my table saw and router table. 

I am in the early stages (planning) of a larger humidor build and am very interested in using your controllers/sensors. You are a prolific writer and so it is taking me awhile to read all of your posts. LOL!!!

 

yes...

Hand crafted items went the way of the dodo some time ago in my little shop. I would dump my table saw too if I had a 5' by 10' CNC (and if it were not 60 years old and my fathers). Mine is much smaller. I can do CAD/CAM work faster than I can move all the junk off the top of the table saw and set up support for it.

I would like to see a picture of your router table! I have a homemade one, with a router-lift but don't use it often anymore. It comes in handy for pattern cutting items that are hard to jig on the CNC. I usually do that work in groups and use the table for assembly otherwise.

Cheers! -Piggy

 

[Philc2001]

@PigFish very impressive. Thanks. 

I know from other posts you have high-end sensing equipment. However, for the common folk, who are not ready to spend hundreds on RH gauge, do you think there is a reliable calibration method for the average RH gauge? Does the salt test method work, and is it reliable?

Thanks again.