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oday we're going to talk about something that is really essential to your cigar smoking journey, and that is seasoning a humidor. So while every humidor is going to be a bit different, today we'll be talking about seasoning a desktop cedar humidor. This particular one is a Savoy. Really awesome grain on this and it's available at Smokingpipes.com. So let's hop into it.

Gather Your Essential Items

First things first, you're going to need a few items:

• A household sponge (any kind of sponge will do as long as it's new)
• A plastic bag
• A little bit of distilled water

It's specifically important that it is distilled water, not tap water or anything like that because there's the potential risk that you could introduce mold or some other pests. So, it's really important that it's distilled water.

Soaking The Sponge & Utilizing A Plastic Bag As A Barrier

We're going to take our sponge and dip this right into our water. We don't want it waterlogged, but you definitely want it pretty moist. We're going to wring that out just a bit. So now that we have soaked our sponge, we're going to take our plastic bag. This is going to act as a barrier. Anytime you have water directly in contact with this wood, it's not really a great idea. You can definitely season the humidor a bit faster by taking this sponge and wiping down the inside lightly. It works. But I think this method is tried and true and there's less chance of warping your wood.

So we're going to take this sponge, put it right on top of that plastic bag, and then we're going to close our lid. And as difficult as it's going to be, we should keep this closed for about a week. The humidity will slowly rise inside of here. When you open it up in about a week, it should be at about 90% humidity — at least down here in the South, where we are at, the temperature gets pretty high up.

Testing The Humidity & Waiting Patiently To Enjoy Your Cigars

Fast-forward a week later, we've removed our sponge and our plastic bag. It's important to test your humidity on a calibrated hygrometer. You want to make sure this is fairly high at this point. We're going to take our Boveda pack. There are quite a few different manufacturers of these. Here at Smokingpipes, we really recommend Boveda. We're going to slap that in there, fill it with cigars. This humidity should level out over the next week or so. So if it's a little high upfront or a little low, don't worry about it. That two-way Boveda humidity system will really do a good job with balancing it out. And we'll close our lid and you're good to go.