Guys,
I thought this might be helpful for those trying to understand storage and the seasoning process. I've also added it to the seasoning sticky.
1) The Air - in virtually all cases, except a new box of cigars, air is what you have in greatest abundance. It's also the main thing we can manipulate. Air is the guard at the gate to the castle of the perfect cigar.
2) The Cigar - assuming we keep our humidors mostly filled, the tobacco inside is the second-most impactful humidification device. Tobacco is far more porous and elastic than wood, so it can absorb and desorb vast amounts of water relatively quickly.
3) The Wood - that Spanish cedar lining is a wonderful thing. It looks terrific, it emits a pleasant aroma and, over long periods, introduces it to the cigar, it's highly porous for a hard wood, so can hold a tremendous amount of water and it sports a native moisture content of ~74%, so it does all this pretty darn close to where we want to store our cigars.
4) Your chosen device - This of course means your beads, Boveda, Credo, Oasis... whatever, which manipulates the condition of the air, in order to regulate the amount of moisture made available to the tobacco and wood.
Think of everything as a SYSTEM; "head bone's connected to thigh bone"... Everything must work in harmony in order to achieve the end goal. What we need to do then is to first address the air, then the wood. We want to get as much water vapor into the air as possible, so it can be delivered to the wood to drink. Inside the wood, the gas is reverted to a liquid, which then collects on the surface of the wood to be returned into gas and then back into liquid inside the cigar, whew...
Thank you Jack ;)
