Boveda Packs in Morocco: Which Set Point, Size and Lifespan

Of all the parameters of cigar storage, humidity is the only one that can be measured, adjusted and verified. It is also the one most often botched, not through neglect but because we trust a figure displayed by an instrument that has never been checked, or a sponge that humidifies at random. This guide sets things straight: what the percentage really means, which set point to aim for, how humidity packs do their work, and how to know, within twenty-four hours, whether your hygrometer is telling the truth.

Relative humidity, without the fog

Relative humidity (RH) expresses the amount of water held in the air, as a percentage of the maximum that air can carry at its temperature. The word that matters is “relative”: air at 30 °C can hold far more water than air at 18 °C. For the same amount of water, heating a room therefore makes its relative humidity drop, which is why a heated winter dries out humidors as surely as summer does.

Tobacco, a hygroscopic material, equilibrates with the surrounding air: at 65% RH, a leaf stabilises at around 12 to 14% water by weight, the point at which it is supple without being spongy, and burns evenly without overheating. All of storage comes down to keeping the tobacco in that window, whatever the whims of the room. In an arid climate, that battle has rules of its own; our guide to storing cigars in a dry climate covers them in detail.

62, 65, 69, 72: choosing your set point

Humidity packs come in several set points, and the choice is not cosmetic:

• 62% is the choice for tight draws and very hot climates: a slightly drier cigar burns cooler and forgives rooms at 26 °C. Some lovers of powerful puros also find the aromas more concentrated there.
• 65% is the modern default set point, and our recommendation in dry country: the balance of wrapper suppleness, clean combustion and a safety margin against mould.
• 69% is the classicist’s choice: close to the historic 70, favoured for young Cuban cigars and cool rooms. It demands a temperature held below 21 °C to remain risk-free.
• 72% and above is reserved for seasoning new humidors and for rehydration boxes, never for everyday storage.

One absolute rule: never mix set points in the same container. Two packs at different points work against each other (the one humidifying exhausts the one drying) and the humidor settles somewhere between the two, nowhere in particular.

How a two-way pack does its job

A humidity pack (Boveda is the brand that made the format the standard) holds a saturated salt solution behind a membrane permeable to water vapour. The physics of saturated solutions has this elegant property: above a given brine, the air equilibrates at a fixed relative humidity, determined by the chosen salt. The membrane then lets vapour travel in both directions:

• the air in the box is too dry → the solution releases water;
• the air is too humid → the solution absorbs the excess.

That is the “two-way” action, and it is what radically sets the pack apart from the sponge or the gel, which can only humidify. No adjustment, no electronics, no water to add: the pack holds its set point until its reserve runs out, then hardens, the unambiguous signal that it must be replaced.

The container shifts the set point

Here is the point almost nobody explains, and the one that costs many enthusiasts their first disappointment: a 65% pack does not deliver 65% in just any box. The printed set point is the one the salt solution imposes on the air it actually controls. What the hygrometer ends up showing depends, for its part, on what is around it.

• An airtight plastic box barely leaks and absorbs nothing: the air inside settles practically at the set point. That is exactly why calibration is done in a closed pouch, where a reference pack imposes its value to within a tenth.
• A semi-sealed container — travel humidor, acrylic box, metal case — exchanges a little air through imperfect seals: the reading settles slightly below the set point.
• A wooden humidor combines both effects: it breathes a little through its lid, and its cedar takes its share of the moisture instead of leaving it in the air. You read a few points below the pack’s set point — this is not a fault, it is how a wooden box normally works.

The practical consequence fits in one sentence: in a wooden humidor, a pack works a notch below what is written on it. A 65% in a Spanish cedar box gives drier tobacco than a 65% in an airtight box, for an identical set point.

Hence two ways of correcting it, depending on what you are after. Move up a notch — 69% instead of 65% — to recover in wood the suppleness you would have had in a closed box. Or season the box properly, so the cedar stops taking its share and settles for buffering: that is the whole point of our guide to seasoning a cigar humidor, and it is the reason a new humidor always seems to read lower than expected.

In an airtight box, conversely, take the set point at face value: nothing will pull it down, and a pack set too high will be felt just as plainly.

The sizes: 8, 60 and 320 grams

The set point decides the balance, the size decides the water reserve: at a given set point, a large pack does not regulate better, it regulates for longer. Three sizes cover every cigar use.

• 8 g — the case and the travel box. The size of a thick postage stamp, it slips into a three-cigar case or a small sealed box. Its reserve is tiny: it lasts a few weeks, and you should ask nothing more of it than a genuinely airtight container.
• 60 g — the reference. This is the desktop humidor size, the one you buy by the lot and replace without thinking. All the dosage logic in this guide is counted in 60 g packs.
• 320 g — the cabinet and the chest. Reserved for large volumes, where lining up six 60 g packs would cost more and take up more room. Allow one per 25 litres.

Two practical details. The wall mount (a plastic grille that clips the pack under the lid) is not a gimmick: it keeps the perforated face clear and stops the pack from ending up lying beneath a row of cigars. And the 84% seasoning pack, covered in our guide to seasoning a cigar humidor, comes in the same sizes: it is the level that changes, not the technology.

Getting the dosage right

Underprovisioning is the most common mistake: a pack spent in three weeks did not fail, it was simply alone against too much volume. Practical benchmarks:

Container	Suggested dosage (60 g packs)
travel case, 3 to 5 cigars	one 8 g pack
sealed box, ~15 cigars	1 pack
“50” desktop humidor	2 packs
“100–120” desktop humidor	3 to 4 packs
cabinet or chest	one 320 g pack per 25 litres

Two principles for fine-tuning. You can never overdose: a surplus pack simply works less, that is all. And the wood counts: a solid cedar humidor, which buffers on its own, burns through its packs faster than an inert box in the first weeks, while the wood charges up. That is the seasoning described in our humidor guide.

Place the packs in contact with the air, never with the wrappers: resting on the dividers or clipped under the lid, perforated face unobstructed. A pack lying beneath a row of cigars creates a local pocket of humid air, and a hygrometer sitting on top of it will tell you anything but the truth.

Lifespan: recognising the moment to replace

A pack does not die all at once, it wears out. Its membrane lets vapour through until the salt solution has given up its reserve of water; at that point it no longer regulates anything, it merely takes up space.

The test is tactile and final: a new pack is supple, a spent pack is as stiff as a dry biscuit. In between, a half-hardened pack is still working, but it has little left to give — that is the moment to order the next ones, not the moment to wait for them.

Its life depends less on the calendar than on three factors:

• how airtight the container is: a sealed box lets a pack sleep for six months; a wooden humidor opened every day wears it out in a few weeks;
• the climate of the room: in a Moroccan summer, the dry air pulls constantly on the reserve, and our guide to storing cigars in a dry climate explains why consumption doubles without warning;
• new wood: a freshly seasoned humidor goes on drinking for a few weeks, and its first packs disappear quickly. That is not a fault, it is the wood finishing its own equilibration.

So allow two to six months per pack, and always keep a set in reserve: a dead pack that is not replaced the same day means a humidor that has become a plain wooden box again.

A word about recharging, which circulates widely: soaking a hardened pack for a few days in a very humid container restores its suppleness, but dilutes the salt solution and therefore upsets the precision of the set point. The pack turns soft again without turning accurate again. Set against the price of the cigars it protects, replacement remains the only rational economy.

Spotting a counterfeit pack

The success of the format has bred copies, sold loose on marketplaces and sometimes slipped into cut-price lots. The problem is not the brand, it is the formulation: an approximate brine holds no set point at all, and a badly calibrated membrane can let water seep onto a wrapper.

The signals that should make you put the packet down:

• a price out of all proportion to the usual retail channel: humidity regulation is not a high-margin product, and a spectacular discount has no honest explanation;
• outer packaging missing or already opened: packs are sold sealed, singly or in shrink-wrapped lots; a bare pack, sold on its own in a clear plastic bag, has no traceability whatsoever;
• poor printing: blurred text, colours that vary from one pack to another within the same lot, uneven welding along the edges;
• contents that slosh: inside, the solution is a saturated paste, not a free liquid. A pack that gurgles is not genuine;
• a fanciful set point: cigar set points are standardised (62, 65, 69, 72, and 84 for seasoning). An exotic “68%” or “70%” should arouse suspicion.

In practice the defence is simple: buy the 60 g size in a sealed lot, from an identifiable retailer, and be wary of the pack sold on its own. That is also the point of going through a house that answers for what it sells.

In Morocco: the set point, the dosage and the lifespan all change

Everything above holds everywhere; three settings change under our climate. The set point: 65%, without hesitation, from Tangier to Agadir. The 69% is tempting on paper, but as soon as a room passes 24 °C — summer everywhere, half the year in Marrakech — it pushes cigars towards softness and opens the door to mould. The dosage: one pack more than the basic rule in any humidor whose lid is not perfectly airtight, because the 30%-humidity air of the interior pulls on the box at every opening. The lifespan: allow six to eight weeks for a 60 g pack in a desktop humidor in Marrakech or Fez, two to three months on the coast, against a full quarter in a temperate climate; a pack that hardens quickly is not faulty, it is working. Always keep a reserve in hand, in their sealed packaging, away from heat: a car in summer exhausts them in a few days. Our guide to storing cigars in a dry climate details the rest of the routine, and CIGARA is preparing the 8, 60 and 320 g sizes for Rabat, Casablanca and Marrakech.

Calibrating your hygrometer: the moment of truth

A new hygrometer, even a digital one, can drift by 5 to 10 points. Until it is calibrated, you are flying blind. Two reliable methods:

The pack calibration kit

The simplest: a pack with a known set point (usually 75.5%) supplied in a clear zippered pouch. Slip the hygrometer in, seal it, and wait 24 hours without opening, at a stable temperature. The gap between the display and 75.5 gives you your correction: an adjustable hygrometer gets adjusted, a fixed model is henceforth read “plus two” or “minus three”.

The salt test, the back-of-the-drawer method

The same physics, in artisanal form: table salt in a bottle cap, moistened just enough to make a thick slurry, with no standing water. Cap and hygrometer go into a sealed box, 24 hours, constant temperature: above a saturated brine of sodium chloride, the air settles at precisely 75%. The reading is interpreted just as with the kit.

Recalibrate once a year, after any knock, and at every battery change, since some sensors lose their bearings when the power cuts. And place the hygrometer away from the humidity source, at mid-height in the humidor: it is the average air you care about, not the pack’s breath.

Pack, gel, crystals or sponge: what sets them apart

The two-way pack is not the only way to humidify a humidor, but it is the only one that regulates in both directions without adjustment. The overview, to place them:

System	Regulates downwards	Set point	Maintenance
two-way pack	yes	fixed, printed on	replacement, 2 to 6 months
gel (polymer beads)	no	approximate	distilled water to add
crystals (silica)	partially	depends on the dose	refilling and monitoring
sponge, green foam	no	none	water to add, risk of mould

Gel and crystals are honest solutions in a temperate room, provided you accept an approximate set point and a regular top-up of water. The sponge, on the other hand, no longer has a place: it saturates the air locally, wets whatever it touches and turns into a seat of mould — it is the first accessory to remove from an entry-level humidor, as our guide to storing cigars without a humidor points out.

The pack, for its part, buys peace of mind: no water to measure out, no adjustment to revisit, and a set point that stays true for as long as the pack is supple. Its recurring cost is the price of that absence of possible error.

Reading beyond the number

A calibrated hygrometer is a safeguard, not an oracle. The real sensors are your own senses: a wrapper that is matte and silky to the touch, a foot that regains its shape after gentle pressure, a cut that falls clean without splintering: those are cigars at 65%. A wrapper glistening with moisture, a draw that resists, patches of white mould at the points of contact signal excess; a crackle under the fingers, the opposite. The number confirms; the tobacco decides.