Recharging Boveda packs & brown water

I recently had some older Boveda packs that I wanted to experiment with, so using a method I saw around here (can't remember where). I weighed the pack and subtracted the weight from 60 g to get the amount of water that had been lost. Then I added the pack to a airtight container along with the amount of water needed to bring it back up to 60 g. After a day or two the pack reabsorbed all the moisture, leaving a plump, squishy pack.

The only down side to this was that some of the water initially "leached" out what the packs had absorbed, which was a brown tannin-filled solution. The other thing I noted was the packs smelled very sour when wet, which must be from whatever else they absorbed while in the humidor (possibly ammonia from second/third fermentation).

Has anyone else noticed this before? If so, did you have any problems using the packs again? I often just let them passively recharge, but when I do it in a large batch it can take several weeks.

I've never had that. Did you have the pack just laying right in the water or something? I always suspend mine above the water - ideally on a small piece of stiff screen sitting on a few pop bottle caps or something. Usually takes my packs a week or more to refill themselves.

I recharge my packs passively. I have never run into that issue even when a pack had sprung a leak on me. Personally if it were me I would use it as long as it is not leaking.

That's a new one to me as well, I always recharged them without direct contact with the water. how dark was the water and how old is the pack? Could be from the humidor. My HF beads all are much yellower than they were when new.

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Originally Posted by Emperor Zurg

I've never had that. Did you have the pack just laying right in the water or something? I always suspend mine above the water - ideally on a small piece of stiff screen sitting on a few pop bottle caps or something. Usually takes my packs a week or more to refill themselves.

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Yeah, they were in contact with the water. I did it just as a test to see what would happen. I did it with 5 packs so far and they all seemed to have gone back to their original condition. I probably won't use them, but they registered within 1% of the pack RH on the hygrometer.

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Originally Posted by jhedrick83

That's a new one to me as well, I always recharged them without direct contact with the water. how dark was the water and how old is the pack? Could be from the humidor. My HF beads all are much yellower than they were when new.

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It looked like dilute tea. Some, but not all, of the packs I have sit directly on bare cigars, so I figure the tannins could diffuse into the packs over time. If that's the case it could just be the paper that has turned color and not the liquid inside. The packs I tried this with were over 2 years old.

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Originally Posted by BlueDevil07

It looked like dilute tea. Some, but not all, of the packs I have sit directly on bare cigars, so I figure the tannins could diffuse into the packs over time. If that's the case it could just be the paper that has turned color and not the liquid inside. The packs I tried this with were over 2 years old.

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That might be the cause for the tinge in the water. I'd say as long as the pack isn't leaking on the cigars, use it.

I throw my brown boveda packs right into water in a tupperware container, been doing it for close to two years without any issues or ill effect to them or my cigars.