How to Clean a Humidor.

One question that comes up quite often is how to clean a humidor?

First you might ask yourself why you would even need to clean a humidor?

It’s important that you understand cleaning a humidor is as important as cleaning out your cookie jar, fridge, closet, or any area where you may store certain items.

Here are some of the top reasons one might want to clean the humidor:

• Small amount of mold has formed on the cigars.  Cleaning the humidor will help prevent the spread of mold from contaminating other cigars.

• Nasty Tobacco beetles have found their way inside your humidor.

• Small sticky blotches have started to foam on the wood inside your humidor

• Many small pieces of tobacco on the bottom of the humidor

Now this might give you a better understand of why one would need to clean a humidor. We are going to go over each problem and break down the best options for the situation.

1. Small amount of mold has formed on the cigars inside the humidor

At some point you will run into some sort of mold on a cigar or two. This just happens, much humidity is inside your humidor and mold forms on the cigars. Or you bought some new cigars placed them inside your humidor which already had some mold already forming.

The remedy is to remove everything from inside the humidor.

This includes the humidifier, Spanish cedar dividers, Spanish cedar trays, “if you have them”. Plus, all cigars of course.  Place all the cigars not affected into a Tupperware dish to preserve them.

Second you want to get rubbing alcohol and a cloth, wet the cloth with the rubbing alcohol and wipe down the entire inside of the humidor, along with all components that were inside the humidor. This will kill off any bacteria inside the humidor.

Leave the humidor open for the remainder of day. “24 hours” The rubbing alcohol will eventually evaporate, and you have eradicated any new mold spores from forming.

Re-season your humidor the following day until you get the desired relative humidity and then place all items back into the humidor. Add some humidifier solution to your humidifier.

2. Nasty Tobacco beetles have found their way inside your humidor.

Any cigar smoker that has been storing cigars can tell you that at some point this will happen. There is no way around it.

The remedy is to remove everything from inside the humidor. Take all the cigars and place them inside a freezer for minimum 5 days.

This will kill off the beetles or any eggs left inside some cigars and prevent them from hatching in the future.

Vacuum out the entire humidor to remove any dust that the beetles have left and any eggs that may have been inside the humidor.

This is also a great time to re-season the wood inside a humidor. After the 3 days let the cigars sit outside for a few hours as they thaw.

something to note your cigars may look awful after you remove them from the freezer but as the extra moisture dissipates, they will start to look like your regular cigars again. once this is complete you can place your cigars back inside your humidor.

3. Small sticky blotches have started to foam on the wood inside your humidor.

We have had this happen to our humidors in the past.

What are the sticky blotches? Unbelievably these sticky spots are sap coming to surface. Either the wood was not kiln dried properly or long enough. Eventually the sap will come to the surface and is very sticky.

The remedy is to remove everything from inside the humidor.

This includes the humidifier, Spanish cedar dividers, Spanish cedar trays, “if you have them”. Plus, all cigars of course.  Place all the cigars that are not affected into a Tupperware dish to preserve them.

Buy Acetone and using a clean cloth wet the cloth with acetone. “Make sure you use gloves when working with Acetone”

Wipe down the sticky spots with the cloth and acetone and the sticky spots will rub right off thus no longer be sticky at all. There may be discoloration from where the sap seeped through. Although the sap will be completely gone.

Leave the humidor open for 48hrs. This will allow more then enough time for the Acetone to completely evaporate.

Re-season your humidor the following day until you get the desired relative humidity and then place all items back into the humidor.

4. Many small pieces of tobacco on the bottom of the humidor

This is by far the most common thing that you would want to clean your humidor for.

Simply remove all cigars and vacuum out the humidor to remove any crumbs or debris.

Anytime your humidor is completely empty we suggest you re season the wood Spanish cedar is a natural moisture retaining wood and never hurts to re season the wood when the humidor is completely empty.

If you ever need to clean your humidor, we hope these tips have been helpful on how to achieve and clean your humidor for numerous reasons.