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Been a while chaps! I've refilled my butane gas tank and the ol gas heater is back in service, smoking outside in the workshop is manageble again, hooray!
I have a few review sticks to get through and the cold weather has not put me in the usual reflective cigar mood (which is why I have about 60 'just smoke em' sticks, which require no thought). Well I was feeling ponderous and content today and fancied reviewing one of my to-do sticks. So I picked out G-mans Mystery Maduro, I do love a maduro now n then.
Writing style in play-by-play commetary, notes were being made as I was smoking.
The appearance was quite pleasing out in the daylight, I thought it was just a standard chocolate wrapper, but it was quite strange! It was almost blue/purple with underlying black spots all over. Very unique, very tasty looking!
Being a torpedo I cut the end off quite high as a good drawing torpedo will draw easily with a more focused head. Pre-Light Draw test seemed ok. I lit it up with my super turbo flame lighter and off I puffed! First draw was A-ok! Taste was that typical NC maduro 'musk', it almost tasted like a red malbec wine, very sweet. Either that or I didn't clean my teeth very well
Pallette hits of sugar and sweetness, oh la la.Draw was getting quite poor about an inch in, not poor because you're taking too long to draw, or you lit it poorly. Poor as in, poor construction is causing said poorness, what a poor sentence! I cut the cap down a notch to increase draw a bit, no luck there. So I blasted it with my flame to get it going again, Rarely I get cigars that just 'go out' or begin acting silly. A few good lugs and it was going again. I could tell that this was going to be one of them 'work for it' smokes. A nice white ash was forming, always a good combustion sign i've found. Still getting that winey sweet taste, not bad at all.
Getting down near half way, the cigar was becoming a general pain. It would refuse to burn even. It was suffering alot of side burn and silly wrapper burn. For instance, I'd even out the burn, then all of a sudden a semi circle burn pattern would form down one side of the cigar, wtf? The ash turned dull and unpleasant looking, and the ash was brittle due to me constantly trying to tame this maduristic beast. Looking very rough, and not smoking much better.
The flavors were musky and earthy, typical of a maduro NC i find. I just wanted the burn to stablize so I could focus on flavors and taste, but it was having none of it.
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I stopped writing notes after that, although I can tell you it was more of the same, I got down to the last third and just got tired of it. It didn't look nice and wasnt interesting one bit. But my experience got much better! Probably the best part infact;
I wedged a giant nail into the head of the cigar and held it infront of my caligas heater and watched it ignite, also double teamed on it with my turbo flame. Now it was smoking great, I was waving it around like a lighter at a concert, don't think i've seen a cigar emit so much smoke. Then again I don't think cigar smokers are meant to do that to their vitolas
yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Overall: Just not fun, not inherently BAD, but just not fun. I had to keep working for it, and torching it with my flame didnt help the ash, and probably the smoke in general. Taste was fine, but as I say, the constant torching probably didn't do it any favors. Still, that's what you get for being a naughty burning stogie. Tsk
6.5
Thank you Gman for providing the smoke!
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