First, I have never been a huge fan of Sam Adams.  I find their Boston Lager to be rather bitter and harsh, and a bit darker than my tastes prefer.  That’s just me, I generally enjoy a lighter taste like a Lager or Pilsner, over a Stout or Bach, but of course there are exceptions.

So I grabbed this 6-pack today in hopes that it would be like the Sam Adams White Ale, but it isn’t.  However, I still think the taste is pretty good.  It does start off with a somewhat bitter Sam Adams bite, but not one that is over-powering.  After a few sips it develops into a nice taste with hints of dark wheat and “winter sprices” according to the bottle.  Not sure what “winter spices” are, but it does have a nice dark wheat taste to it.  However, so far, the White Ale is my favorite.  I will be blogging about that one later.

I have spent the week with my brother in Tampa, FL this week, and we went out for cigars the other night.  Ybor City is an area of downtown Tampa, and there are some hand-rolled cigars made right here in town, so I decided to try a couple of them.  The first one I smoked was this Corojo in a Natural wrapper.  It started extremely spicy and bitter.  The bitterness went away pretty fast, but the spiciness stayed for the first 1/3-1/2 of the cigar.  After that, it developed into a creamy taste until the last 1/4 of the cigar, where the spiciness came back.  There was PLENTY of smoke, and the draw was about perfect.   The ash burned evenly and was pretty light colored, so overall this was a good smoke.

My cigar started very dry. It burned incredibly even and had plenty of smoke, but the taste didn’t start all that great. However, about 10% into it, it developed a slight coffee flavor and the dryness dissipated. The dryness did not return and the hits of coffee came-and-went during the entire course of the cigar. The burn remained even, and ash very white, and I never had to re-light it at all.

The quality of this smoke was quite good, but I didn’t care for the taste all that much, and I didn’t like the dryness at all. A good smoke experience, but not one that I would look for again in the store.

I smoked 2 of them before writing this post, one Saturday afternoon, and one Sunday evening.  The first one started out a bit hot and very spicy, but quickly mellowed into a mild-to-medium smoke with hints of leather.  The second one wasn’t hot at all, was smooth all the way through, and I got the same hints of leather and some earth tones to it.  There was plenty of smoke and the flavor was quite good, but I think that I still liked the Blue Label better.

The cigar burned a bit unevenly towards the end, but this didn’t affect the flavor or quality at all, in my opinion.  I look forward to smoking the other 4 sticks I got.

I smoked the first 1/3 of this stick one night and let it go out, then picked it up the next day. After a very short dry spell, it returned to the earthen woodsy flavor from the previous day. I would like to smoke another one of these, but it won’t make my top 10 list.

This cigar was awful. I know that it was made by Pepin Garcia, who is just about my favorite producer right now, but this one was horrible. The draw was tight, the smoke very, very light and the cigar didn’t stay lit. It had a very bold body to it, almost too much so, because I went to bed that night with a headache and not feeling well. There was no nausea like I have read some cigars will do to you on an empty stomach (never experienced this myself) but I didn’t feel well at all.

I am hoping this was just a bad stick. I have one more that I will try and force myself to smoke some day, but for now I don’t think I ever want to try this one again. I hope all Padillas are not this way.

I picked up the cigar 2 days later, last night, re-lit and smoked the rest of it. The flavor was still 100% present, plenty of smoke, good draw and not dry at all.

This was a really good smoke, good quality, good wrapper and good taste. I want to get another one and see if I can distinguish a flavor this time.

We stopped by here on the way out of town yesterday and I asked my normal question that I do when in a new shop, “What do you guys have that no one else does?”  The tobaconist there was most helpful and took me into the back where they stored some cigars in a humidor that wasn’t for the public.  He showed me some Camacho cigars that he said the owners of the shop picked up from traveling to the Camacho factory and these cigars were the ones that were new, non-production blends, ones that didn’t make it into standard production, but were tested for production and then later changed in some way.  I picked up 3 different vitolas and smoked the first one as soon as I got home.

The cigar started rather bitter, but I have noticed that many cigars do, especially ones that I am not famliar with, maybe it is some kind of mental thing.  I pufed through the first bit of the cigar, and the flavor developed into a smoky, peppery flavor, with a hint of cream.  The pepper as quite strong and always present, but I didn’t believe it to be over abundant.  The smoke was cool and there was plenty of it, I continued retro-hailing the smoke all the way down to the nub and it never got hot at all.  The flavor remained constant pepper throughout the entire smoke.  Pepper isn’t really one of my favorite cigar flavors, but this was a really good cigar.  I might have to call the shop and have them ship me some more, but I need to smoke the other 2 first

The previous night before I smoked this black-banded classic, I smoked a Tatuaje Torpedo, probably my favorite or 2nd favorite of his cigars, so in my opinion the Cuban Classic didn’t quite measure up.  Don’t get me wrong, it was a great smoke, but I didn’t care for it as much as I liked the Tatuaje.  I will probably pickup another one of these to try again at some point, especially if I find a deal online for a 5-pack or something.  My tastes weren’t all that on-target this night, I couldn’t really taste anything specific, perhaps some nutmeg but I am not too sure.  Definately leaves room for me to smoke another one at some point.