humidor question

S

SIFU1A

Joined
May 12, 2001
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a bud quit smoking cigars and gave me his humidor, a very nice one made out of pine i think, its wood anyway, here is the deal he had a beetle infestation in it and a few of the cigars stored in it suffered some damage, so anyway i removed all the cigars and cleaned the humidor well with a wet soapy rag and let it dry in the sun outside, question being do i need to do anything else to get rid of the bugs or the bugs eggs? i dont wanna put some expensive cigars in it and have them start getting holes in them lol, not good.....

thanks,
 
Unless someone with some actual knowledge comes along maybe you could just set it up to humidify and put in some cheapy cigars like swisher sweets and see if anything bad happens. After a couple of weeks if nothing bad has happended, I'd guess it would be ok.

Another trick would be to put in some fresh cut cedar..which repels bugs naturally, just for a few weeks as well.
 
good idea zen, i might try the swishers.

if i put a few hundred dollars worth of cigars in it and they got holes in a few weeks i am gonna have a heart attack lol.
 
I avoided advising chemicals because it is hard to predict what would happen to future cigars and how much nasty chemicals they would absorb and thus poison the good sifu dude. I'm guessing the beatles came from the actual cigars and not from the box. I guess it depends on how long the prior owner had it, and if the infestation was a very recent thing.

Maybe sifu should do a quick join and question to some Cigar forum. I'm sure there is a cigar forum out there...probably bigger than bladeforums.
 
Oops. I just assumed that it was a problem with a beetle infestation in the wood itself rather than one coming from the cigars. My apologies and I will edit my earlier post. :o
 
yeah i dont wanna poison myself lol, so no chemicals please.

i presume the infestation is from the cigars not the humidor, in fact it would have to be from the cigars.

i was wondering if the bugs laid eggs how long i need to watch out for them hatching and if they would be plainly visible, if they are i didnt see anything in the humidor out of the norm, at least if they are pretty easy to see.

even with all the holes in the cigars i never did see a bug, only what the bugs had messed up lol, so i presume them to be quite small?
 
I turn a lot of wood. One of the things that makes wood interesting is its defects. When I have a piece of wood that has borers or other bugs, I put it in the deep freeze for a couple of weeks.

If you have thin walls on the humidor, it shouldn't take but a few days. They will freeze, your humidor won't have any poisonous residue. I would take off the hygrometer and any other gauges on it before freezing.

Robert
 
SIFU1A,
In an attempt to make up for misunderstanding the problem earlier, I found an article from Cigar Aficionado that talks about tobacco beetles.
The Last Word on Tobacco Beetles
The information regarding home humidors can be found on page four. It basically says to freeze any exposed cigars and to wipe the humidor down with a damp cloth. I hope that it can be of some help. :)
 
CarpScot said:
SIFU1A,
In an attempt to make up for misunderstanding the problem earlier, I found an article from Cigar Aficionado that talks about tobacco beetles.
The Last Word on Tobacco Beetles
The information regarding home humidors can be found on page four. It basically says to freeze any exposed cigars and to wipe the humidor down with a damp cloth. I hope that it can be of some help. :)
Click to expand...

Good find. Simply freeze the box for a few days and all is well.:thumbup:
 
Do not put fresh cut cedar in a humidor under any circumstances. Unless it's Spanish cedar, in which case it's probably not fresh cut.

Any other variety of cedar besides Spanish will impart a distinct and strong odor and flavor of urine onto your cigars. It will also impart that odor to the rest of the wood in the humidor, and that odor is very difficult to remove. It doesn't take much to ruin a humidor. One common screw-up among custom builders is to build walk in humidors in custom houses made from what they think is perfectly acceptable nicely grained knot free cedar they got from the local woodcraft. The homeowner then fills the walk-in with $$$ of cigars that promptly get permanently ruined. Any cigar store owner will tell you stories about the irate wealthy customers that come in a few weeks after making a big multibox purchase, complaining that all their nice new cigars taste like pee.

If you ever have need of cigar cedar for any reason, including making your own matches, humidor dividers, extra ghetto humidors, etc. any good cigar shop will have a stack of it for free or very little money. One good trick is to grab a hand-full of cigar box dividers from the cigar shop cedar bin (they all have them, just ask) and split them with an X-acto knife. Light those with your regular butane lighter and then light your cigar with the cedar. Tasty. I know people that carry a little matchbook of cedar strips just for this reason. Keep in mind that that's the same kind of person that carries their own gourmet salt or hot sauce everywhere they go, so YMMV.

Put the box back on a flat surface, open the box (some boxes need a support under the lid to keep the hinges from bending) remove any and all dividers, humidification units or removable gauges and run a vacuum cleaner hose through the box thoroughly, and then let the sun shine into the box and onto the dividers for a day or two, and make sure to rotate the dividers. Do not leave the box out if there is a dew at night where you live.

Then close the box, throw it in the freezer for a couple days, and then take it out and leave it open in a dry place. Keep an eye on it to make sure there's no weird things happening like condensation or warping. If the box was dry that shouldn't happen. If there are any signs of glue like stains or gummyness, throw the humidor away. When at all, humidors only use glue on the outside of the box, never ever ever on the inside cedar sleeve.

As an optional step, get a clean cotton swab (like your wife's makeup swabs) dipped in grain alcohol (not rubbing alcohol, whiskey or any other alcohol with any flavor) and wet the surfaces inside the box evenly and let the box dry while it's open, THOROUGHLY.

Replace all gauges and internals (for peace of mind swabbed with grain alcohol) and let the box humidify for between one and two weeks, the longer the better. Check the box for any weirdness including new dust or things that look like sand grains before putting the cigars in.

I assume you know how to humidify your box, if not just ask.

FYI beetles are not by any means the only thing that can infest your humidor. You can get aphids, ants and any number of other little critters that are mostly harmless but not welcome. Usually all you need to do is swab with grain alcohol and vacuum, but sometimes there is an underlying problem like excessive humidity or fungus growth.
 
I just noticed you said you cleaned the box with a wet soapy rag. Don't ever do that again.

If it was a very mild soap then you might be fine. I would wet all inside surfaces with grain alcohol and suck it up several times with a brand new soap free clean sponge. You do not want your cigars to have that pine-sol fresh smell, and it doesn't take much for that to happen.

If you used dishwashing soap or something strong, or even if whatever soap actually had a chance to soak into the cedar, then (and I'm just hypothesizing) you might wet all surfaces with alcohol and fill the box with kosher salt and leave it for a few days sporadically sprinkling some more grain alcy around the edges of the box. This would suck up any bizarre odors and chemicals from the soap, and the flavor of the salt would only help not hurt the cigars. As an added bonus I can't imagine what could still be alive in the box after a salt bath. I would be worried about too much salt soaking into the cracks and such, but that's an issue you're going to have to figure out yourself. The salt and alcohol trick is a pipe smoker's trick that I'm mentally transposing.
 
all right guys, thanks for all the links and info, i think i'll use the grain alcohol and wipe it down like bobo said and then stick it in the freezer, hopefully that will take care of the problem.

when i washed it out with a wet soapy rag i used about a drop of dishsoap in probably 2 qts of water so i dont think it would have imparted any bad scents, i hope.

anyway thanks guys ya'll have been a big help.
 
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