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Acrylic or wood?

We know that Spanish cedar is the most naturally and correctly preferred material in humidor production due to its ability to balance moisture and to be more resistant to insects. In addition, there are acrylic humidors in the market that you can find even in brands that produce luxury and quality humidors such as Zino. Interest in these is not at all insignificant.

In this article, as a cigar enthusiast who already uses both humidor, I would like to mention the advantages and disadvantages that I have encountered during use, which can be beneficial for you to have in mind.

Before you take your precious cigars, be it acrylic or cedar, to rest in it, you must "season" to make sure that the humidity value in your new humidor is in the range of 70-72%. So make sure that your empty humidor is within this humidity range in the first place. At this point, it is not difficult to guess that cedar humidors require a longer time for this task than acrylic humidors. After all, to bring the humidity inside your wood humidor to proper conditions, the cedar walls of your humidor must absorb a certain amount of moisture first. Of course, this is a process that can take up to 15-20 days, depending on the humidor. Since acrylic does not absorb moisture into itself, it only takes much less time to balance the humidity of the air inside the humidor. The "seasoning" period of my cedar humidor took close to 15 days. It was possible for me to bring the humidity rate of the acrylic humidor to the 71% I wanted in 1-2 days.

Another problem you may encounter due to the fact that wooden humidors are natural materials is the sensitivity to mold, which is the nightmare of all of us and caused by excessive moisture. If there is a moldy cigar in your humidor, if it is not tubos and it is touching the cedar, the mold will spread to the humidor at this touch point and will begin to mold the humidor. I haven't lived yet, but this is a very difficult process to overcome. It is even a situation where you may have to change the humidor most of the time. In the acrylic humidor, on the contrary, there will be no contamination, and if any moldy cigar touches, it is possible to get rid of the mold by wiping the inner wall of the humidor with a lint-free cloth or sponge moistened with pure water and drying immediately afterwards. Unfortunately, I don't need to say that in either case you have to throw your moldy cigar.

In the early days when I started smoking cigars, the first humidor we shared with my father was due to the poor quality of the humidor, the problem we had was the woodworking and the resulting air leakage. This is a situation that you may encounter over time in both low-quality humidors and humidors that have been damaged or kept very humid. As a result; A humidor, or rather a wooden box, that constantly leaks air, does not balance the humidity and damages your cigars instead of protecting them. Wood is a natural material and of course, no matter how high quality it is, it has a certain lifespan. With acrylics, this problem is less common. Unless you take a hammer in your hand and hit your humidor or there is no obvious manufacturing error.

Until now, I always seemed to talk about the advantages of acrylic humidor. Why do we buy cedar humidor despite all this plus, paying more money? There is no advantage in wooden humidors.

One of the important features of humidors, which are all cedar, is that they do not expose cigars to any light source naturally. This is important in many ways. The cigars in the acrylic humidor that are kept in a suitable temperature environment can be damaged if they are exposed to sunlight since the humidor is transparent and they will get hot. Although there are dark acrylic humidors, it would be correct to keep the transparent humidors in a place that is not exposed to light as much as possible. I personally keep mine in the darkest part of my house.

Another similar problem is that acrylic humidors are more affected by the temperature changes of the room than wood covered cedar humidors. Since the walls of acrylic humidors are thinner, the insulation they can provide is unfortunately less compared to thick-walled cedar humidors. This, of course, allows the room temperature to affect the heat inside the humidor more. Again for this reason, I generally take care to keep the acrylic humidum in cooler environments.

One of the most important features of wooden humidor in my opinion is that you can proudly display each of them in the most special corner of your home. It is possible to find attractive and attractive wooden humidors, especially nowadays, where smoking cigars and cigar culture are becoming increasingly popular. No matter where you exhibit, they certainly add value to it.

As a result, both types of humidor have their own advantages and disadvantages. Here again, the decision is up to us cigar lovers. If you ask my first choice, there will be a wood-covered cedar humidor in the corner of my house that I can proudly display and instead of immediately revealing the interior with transparency, keeping its mystery, but only if you establish a certain closeness, you can see what they hide inside.

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