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How to Calibrate Your Hygrometer

calibrate hygrometer

Calibrate Your Hygrometer Using The Salt Method

To check if your analog hygrometer is reading correctly, use the salt method to test it’s accuracy. Follow this step by step method for the perfect calibration.

  1. Place some salt in a bottle cap or small cup and dampen it with a few drops of water with out dissolving it.
  2. Carefully place the damp salt into a see-through container and close it tightly. You can use a zip lock bag provided it seals you leave some air inside the bag.
  3. Let it sit for at least 6 hours and note the reading on the hygrometer without opening the container. It should read exactly seventy five percent. The difference is how much your hygrometer is off.
  4. If needed adjust to seventy five percent, using the screw on the back of the hygrometer.

A digital hygrometer is the best solution for your humidor as it will provide you with the most accurate humidity level, but if you enjoy the classic aesthetic of an analog hygrometer follow along with our video guide to learn how for perfect calibration.

Video Transcript

Hello. Today we’re gonna do a video on how to calibrate your analog hygrometer. I get a lot of emails from customers saying their hygrometer doesn’t work or after they season their humidor that the humidity level is not reading properly. So, today what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna show you how to calibrate your analog hydrometer. And the easiest way to do that is using a salt method. Basically, you want to get a cap or some small container and fill it with salt and add a few drops of water, turn it into a slush. You don’t wanna liquefy the salt, just make it slush. You can use a Ziploc bag or myself, I prefer to use a Sure Seal Tupperware. This way you’re ensuring that no air is getting out and leave it for approximately six hours. After about six hours, your analog hygrometer should be reading roughly 75% relative humidity. So, this has been sitting here for about six hours and we’re gonna take it out and show you how to calibrate your analog hygrometer.

So, and as you see, this hygrometer is reading around 72%, so it’s pretty accurate. Now, if that was reading around 40%, basically, what you’d wanna do is in the back of it, this is a brand new Cigar Star analog hygrometer, which is included with all our humidors, and you’d just get a flat headed screwdriver, stick it in the crack in the back. And as you notice, you can move that from side to side. So, now that it’s been sitting in there for six hours, you basically wanna move that to the humidity level, which it should be at, and that’s roughly 75%. So, once you move that in there, you know that your analog hygrometer is reading the proper relative humidity and ready to go back into your humidor. The analog hygrometers will be plus/minus 5%. So, that one is set perfectly at 75%.

So, I put four different models in here just to show you and give you an idea of how an analog hygrometer works. So, if you notice, it’s basically a spring that’s wound all the way around, which is attached to the needle in the front. So, basically, what this does is when there’s a lot of humidity, it expands creating the needle to move. When there’s no humidity, it retracts, therefore moving the needle to a lower reading. A good way to test to make sure your analog hygrometer is working properly is just to breathe on it. And you’ll notice when you breathe on it that that needle will move right away because the humidity is actually causing that spring in the back to retract or expand causing the needle to move. So, I’ll take out another one just to show you because the newer model is very easy to calibrate. Some of the older models, not so easy. So, this is one of the older models. Easy way to do this is to pop the back off using the screwdriver. And then you’ll notice in the back, it’s the same as the other one. You can just take that and move that to read around 75% because that’s where it should be after sitting in your Tupperware dish or Ziploc bag for six hours. Then you can just take the back, pop it back on, place it back into your humidor and you’ll know when you place it inside your humidor that it’ll be reading the relative humidity correctly.

So, just to show you an idea, here’s another hygrometer, it’s reading 40%, so you know that’s way off. So, basically, you just take that and there’s a screw in the back and you can just move that to around 75%. So, once it’s reading around 75%, you know it’s ready to go. So, as for the salt, you’ll notice I just used a tea candle container and you’ll notice that salt, it’s not saturated, it is actually just a little enough water in there. And that’s how you want it to be when you place it in your Tupperware dish. So, once you’ve got your analog hygrometer calibrated properly and back in your humidor, it should be reading the relative humidity correctly, ensuring perfectly aging cigars which will ensure that you have a great smoke when you’re ready to smoke your cigars. We really hope that this video has been useful for you, and we wish you happy smoking and perfectly aging cigars.