News: BODEGAcooler JC-85A

BODEGAcooler is not among the most recognized names when it comes to cigar storage. However, the brand seems to be gaining ground through their presence on Amazon (four-and-a-half stars with 14 ratings), offering a more approachable price point for those looking at wineador-style cigar humidors.

The company states that their origins began with the COVID lockdown of 2020, filling a wide range of refrigeration needs for the growing number of people with more leisure time than they’d previously been accustomed to. Their primary category seems to be car refrigerators, though they also handle wine coolers, traditional beverage coolers, and other refrigeration accessories.

BODEGA’s only cigar humidor is the 546 Count Electric Cigar Humidor, which competes alongside similar heating/cooling storage units from the likes of Raching, Whynter, and NewAir.

BODEGAcooler 546 Count Electric Cigar Humidor Breakdown

Key Features

Unboxing

There are no surprises with the BODEGA’s box—it’s tall and slender, arriving in plastic-strapped cardboard with a good amount of padding on the interior (no shipping damage evidenced whatsoever). Unlike the other wineador humidors we’ve reviewed, there was quite a bit of tape holding the door shut. Unfortunately, this makes for a heavy cleanup from tape residue. Inside, there are shelf dividers, instructions, spare water absorbers (more on that later), keys for the lock, and the handle to the door. As with other similar humidors, the handle needs to be assembled. This requires pulling out the door gasket to reveal the screws; it’s then a straightforward process of screwing on the handle and pressing the gasket back into place.

After plugging in the unit, BODEGA advises to run it for 24 hours before adding cigars.

Appearance

The BODEGA isn’t the most dazzling looking wineador on the market, but it’s not ugly either, and will likely get the job done (in the looks department) for most hobbyists. It has a tall/slender look, which could allow it to fit in more nooks around the home/lounge. Personally, I find the stainless steel look a bit dated, and would prefer a standard black option. The full glass door is always appreciated, allowing a quick view of your cigars.

Water Setup

This is where things start to get a little weird… Most humidors with built-in humidification have the water reservoir and humidification mechanism neatly hidden away. You typically pour water into a tray, which then drains into the actual reservoir, where the magic then happens behind the scenes. In the case of the BODEGA, things are not so discreet. The whole operation is housed on what is essentially the fourth and bottom shelf of the humidor, which slides out to reveal a clear plastic box with vents along the sides. Strapped to the top of this box is a fan (along with its electrical wiring), which is taped down to the plastic water reservoir box, running to the back of the humidor and out of sight.

There isn’t a whole lot of romance here—it’s all on display… Basically, you open a cap on the top of the reservoir to add water, then the fan forces air into the reservoir, moving air across the water and out through its various vents. There are also two paper blocks of absorbent mesh within the reservoir. As far as I can tell, these are nothing short of mold factories. BODEGA includes two spare mesh blocks, advising that you replace them twice per year. I’ve been testing this unit for around four months, and there is already brown discoloring on each block.

But these mesh mold factories aren’t even the worst of your worries, as the whole setup of this humidification system allows for little-to-no control over humidity. As mentioned, most humidors separate this functionality within the humidor; this is not only done for aesthetic reasons, but to keep the cigars from being in constant contact with unfettered humidity. With this setup, it doesn’t really matter what RH level you set the unit to, as the water is constantly evaporating into the humidor (whether the fan is on or off).

Display Panel

The display panel and its buttons are located behind the door on the top of the device. The buttons are digital in touch, flanking the display in the center. To start, there is a lock button that needs to be pressed for three seconds in order to change temp/humidity settings (up/down on the left of the display for temp, up/down on the right of the display for RH). The temperature range is between 61 and 72 °F, and the RH setting ranges from 60 to 80% RH. On the far right is a light/power button, which turns on/off the light with a single press or on/off the humidor with a three-second press. The unit can switch between °C and °F by holding the two humidity buttons for three seconds. After making your settings, you can lock them in by pressing the lock button again for three seconds (or it will automatically lock after a minute or so).

It’s a fairly intuitive display, and has some nice digital visuals as well, such as spinning fan blades when the fans are running, a heat symbol while it is heating, etc. My biggest criticism here is that the light button doesn’t have more customization: it’s either on or off (always nice to have the option to only turn on when the door is open, etc.).

Options:

Lock
Up (temperature)
Down (temperature)
Humidity Up
Humidity Down
Light

Cigars

There are a thousand ways to stock any given humidor, but as a general estimate, I stocked the three shelves of the BODEGA with boxes, bundles, and single cigars (of various sizes). It’s really no surprise that the humidor falls short of the manufacturer rating, as do virtually all humidors on the market. Manufacturers typically use corona (or smaller) cigars to reach these numbers, so if you want to stock this humidor entirely from identically-sized petit cigars, you might be able to hit that 546 number…

Single Shelf

All cigars: ~90 cigars
All 10-count bundles: 120 cigars
All boxes: ~60 cigars (~4 boxes)

Entire Humidor

All cigars: ~270 cigars
All bundles: ~360 cigars
All Boxes: ~180 cigars
Boxes & loose cigars: ~195 cigars

Total “Real-World” Results

180–360 cigars

Shelves / Build

They aren’t the fanciest cedar shelves in the world, but they certainly aren’t shabby in quality either. First up, you have the cutout design of the shelf front: it’s a curvy (heart-shaped?) design that feels a bit overdone in comparison to the rest of the unit. Each shelf has cedar slats on the bottom and slots for two dividers (there are three dividers included, allowing for a decent amount of customization). And while the shelves don’t use modern ball bearing drawer slides for full extendability, they do slide comfortably within six slot positions on the humidor (again, pretty decent customization). For a better look at how the shelves slide and lock into place, see the video above.

Temperature / Humidity

Strip away the design, tech functionality, etc.—every humidor eventually boils down to this segment: temperature and humidity. Unfortunately, in BODEGA’s case, this is where the unit suffers dramatically… so dramatically that the humidor becomes unrecommendable from this point forward in the review.

As mentioned in the water-filling portion of this review, the mechanism used to humidify is essentially all or nothing. With water in the reservoir—no matter the settings you select for RH—humidity averages a minimum of 80% (with highs in the 90s!). I initially started my tests with this unit at around 67% RH. With humidity quickly rising to astronomical levels, I lowered RH to its lowest setting: 60%. This did little to remedy excess humidity, with the results shown below.

As you can probably imagine, the humidor runs through its water rather quickly (around a week), bringing RH down to the high-30s at a fairly sharp curve (see downturn at the right end of the graph in the image below). Even sharper is the rate at which it pumps in humidity when filled with water (see upturn at the left end of the graph in the image below). When adding water, the humidor can (and will) rise from the high-30s to the mid-70s in the span of an hour! Obviously, these high levels are not ideal for cigars, but it’s the shock of dramatically rising/falling that’s perhaps more concerning, and will no doubt cause cracking wrappers due to expanding fillers that will be soaking up far too much humidity at rapid rates.

In terms of temperature, the BODEGA did a decent job, averaging out at 65 °F. The highs and lows were a bit dramatic, but the humidor was stored in our detached studio (as are all humidors for our reviews), which doesn’t have the most stable temperature environment.

Misc / Extras

Other aspects touted by BODEGA are a two-layered hollow glass door (listed as being ideal for UV ray blocking and condensation), a safety lock, adjustable feet, and a high-quality compressor that helps to purify the interior air while remaining quiet.

The glass door did its job well in terms of condensation (saying a lot considering the high humidity), not having the pools of water at the bottom of the humidor that you’ll sometimes find on cold days. In terms of UV, who knows… but you shouldn’t keep your humidor where sunlight can get to the door in the first place.

Safety lock and keys are standard on every humidor I’ve ever tested. I’ve never used a single one of them (but I guess it can’t hurt to have it). Likewise, the adjustable feet are an expected feature that’s always good to have.

While our studio environment is on the loud side, it does seem to be a fairly quiet unit, all things considered.

The LED lights are not up to par with other comparable units. The light is a deep blue hue and only at the top of the unit. This provides almost no benefit and has a cold, uninviting appearance.

Purchase Recommendation

In the immortal words of American Idol judge Randy Jackson, “It’s a no from me, dawg.” The BODEGAcooler JC-85A humidor is somewhat affordable (at least in comparison to the competition) and gets the job done in terms of look and functionality, but the humidification is a rogue beast that cannot be tamed, likely to cause much more damage to your cigar collection than, you know, keep them in ideal smokable condition. I hate to be this brash in a review, but I’d avoid this humidor at ALL COSTS.

I do not recommend buying this humidor; however, if you are dead set on the purchase, there is currently a $200-off coupon for the BODEGA humidor on Amazon, bringing the price down to $799.99 (this is not an affiliate link).
The humidor was tested from Nov. 2022 until the time of this writing (March 2023).
The chart for temp/humidity above only shows around 12 days. This was to illustrate the pattern of rising humidity when filled and falling humidity when empty. This pattern ran consistently across the testing period.
Notes about the ratings below: The score of “1” was used instead of “0” to allow our scoring mechanism to register a more correct average (as “0” removes it from the overall calculation).

The post BODEGAcooler JC-85A appeared first on Cigar Dojo.

Originally posted on March 14, 2023 @ 6:17 am