Tag Archives: Uranium

A Couple of Shop Visit, a Couple of Cigars and a Contest Winner!

Happy Sunday! I suppose it’s the end of a holiday weekend for a lot of people, I had Thursday off, and stopped into the CigarCigars shop in the King of Prussia Mall and picked up a couple cigars, one of which I smoked later to celebrate our wedding anniversary. Sure, I have plenty of natural Padron 1964 Anniversary Exclusivos, but I hadn’t had a Maduro in quite some time, so I picked one up. My wife spied a Foundry Compounds, Elements and Musings Uranium box with two cigars left in it, so I bought them and got the box. I’m pretty sure I’ve smoked Uranium before, although I don’t smoke many 7″ x 70s. The artwork is cool and I’ll rig a light in the box and it’ll be a nice shelf piece. Gotta give Mike Giannini credit for creative design!  So my wife got a ring from Tiffany, and I got some cigars, it was a good day. The Exclusivo was exceptional, of course. I remember smoking my first one probably 20 years ago and they haven’t changed. 

 

Friday evening I took a ride up to Suburban Cigar Lounge in Mount Penn, PA, which is near Reading. This is a really nice lounge run by Gary, over top of what is, by all reports, a very nice restaurant, which, if I’m not mistaken, his wife runs. I went to meet up with Boston Jimmie, of Stogie Press fame, who took his sweet time showing up. If you advertise that you’re going to be someplace from 7-10, showing up at 8:30 is not acceptable, I don’t care how things are done in Florida.  😜Anyway, Gary has a nice lounge with a friendly clientele, and his humidor has a modest but diverse selection from which I purchased some Alec Bradley Magic Toast Gordos, and RoMaCraft Aquitaine Mode 5s, and lit up a Magic Toast.  I love this Magic Toast, it’s my kinda smoke. The dark, oily Honduran wrapper is beautiful, and the flavor is equally dark and lush. I smoked a Mode 5 next, and while I prefer the CroMagnon, the Aquitaine is damn tasty. This is a great example of how the wrapper can completely change the flavor of a cigar, as the wrapper is the only difference between the CroMagnon and Aquitaine lines. Jimmie finally showed up and hung out for a while. I hadn’t seen him since the 2017 IPCPR show, so it was nice seeing him again. Suburban Cigar Lounge is a great place to hang out of you find yourself in the area. I’m sorry I didn’t let long time reader Corey know I was going!

 

Last night I smoked the 2Guys Smokeshop exclusive Pistoff Kristoff Firecracker. Every year they do a special Firecracker release, last year it was the Mi Querida, prior to that it was the Fratello. I’ve managed to smoke a bunch of them, except for the original ones. It’s a small format, 3½ x 50, in a stronger blend. This was the second Pistoff Firecracker I smoked and I thought it was very good. I’m OK with the Pistoff blend to begin with, so I figured I’d be OK with this, and if I wasn’t, it wasn’t going to be a large time commitment. I do, generally, get an hour out of the Firecrackers, smoking them slowly. Because of the closed foot, a trademark of Kristoff, and usually a Firecracker trait, it starts with a blast of wrapper flavor, and some concern that the draw will be tight, once the wrapper burns, this one opens up to a perfect draw and has a good, bold flavor. It was strong, but well balanced. It looks like these are sold out, as is the case with most of the limited Firecrackers, but often the have second runs, and I would recommend these and others if you like small, strong cigars. They have all been exceptional in my opinion. 

 

Contest

It’s time to select a winner in last weeks contest.  To recap, I am giving away some great, in my opinion, Don Juan Calavera cigars from Danli Honduras Tabaco (from my own humidor, to protect the innocent), a Herics Cigar Tape, and a Cigar Prop and Light Bleed Tool from CigarProp.com. It’s possible some other goodies could fall into the box while I’m packing it up.  There were 42 entries, and according to the random number generator, the winner is Bob Langmaid! I seems like Bob wins everything all the time, but I could only find one instance of him winning one of my contests, and that was almost 4 years ago. I’d rather have someone who hasn’t won before win, but Bob’s name came up, and he’s been fanatically religious about entering my contests for many years, so fair is fair!  Please send me your address Bob! 

 

That’s all for today, until the next time, 

 

CigarCraig

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Independence Day Cigars, An American Puro, a CroMagnon, and Some Foundrys

It’s a holiday weekend, so, of course, our internet, TV and phones in the house mysteriously stop working and Verizon won’t be able to fix it until Monday.  No idea what happened, it just looks like the optical signal isn’t making it to the house.  So here I am, writing my Sunday post from Panera Bread (while noshing on a toasted Asiago Bagel with a schmear!).  I did manage to smoke some cigars this weekend!  I’ll miss watching Finding Bigfoot (best reality show on TV!) to night to end my weekend, but the weather has been spectacular, so I’m getting some things done outside!

 

CroMagnon_KnuckleDraggerThursday evening there were some storms rolling in, and I mentioned before that the new dog isn’t a fan, so I decided to grab something short, and picked out a RoMa Craft Cro Magnon Knuckle Dragger that I had bought down at Cigar Mojo a few weeks ago. This is a beautiful Broadleaf wrapped 4″ x 50 petite robusto.  I’ve only had a few of this line, despite knowing Skip Martin pretty well. I’m just not a very good weasel, I guess. This is a really brilliant cigar if you like strong, rich, dark flavors in a cigar. It burned perfectly, even though I had to turn around from my walk at the first rumble of thunder because the dog immediately turned toward home and started pulling.  I finished the cigar in the garage, and it was a really great smoke, clearly Skip, Mike and the gang are doing things right.

 

Friday was July 4th, a significant date, in the US, as it commemorates our young country’s independence, as well as the day my wife and I tied the knot!  Certainly celebratory cigars are in order.  I started the day with an Alec Bradley American Classic Gordo in the pool, but the cap split badly when I cut it. It didn’t really effect the burn or flavor, it was a nice smoke while relaxing after doing some yard work. I followed it with a pre-dinner Partagas Petit Coronas George Rico_American PuroEspeciale from a box I bought about 4 years ago. I’ve smoked a bunch of these and really enjoy them, sadly I only have a few left. Every Fourth of July I try to smoke a Havana cigar as a form of civil disobedience, I think the founding fathers might take a moment from spinning in their graves and approve. I like the cigars too, I just think that there are many better cigars and Cuban cigars, while different, aren’t necessarily best. After going out to a nice dinner with my wife, I sat on the deck with the American Puro Corona Gorda from George Rico.  I know, it’s a bit of a cliché, but I had it staring at me, so why not, and the Corona Gorda size was perfect for the occasion. The first  thing you notice about this is that smokey, Kentucky fire cured tobacco, which was fairly dominant to me.  Perhaps it was a  happy medium between the Leccia Black and the My Uzi Weighs A Ton Kentucky Fire Cured cigars. This sample came from Gran Habano along with the 5 Vegas I talked about last time, and shared a similar lack of straightness, no big deal, just a minor offence to my CDO (OCD in alphabetical order, AS IT SHOULD BE!).  I really enjoyed the heck out of this cigar, the Connecticut and Pennsylvania tobaccos complimented the smokey Kentucky leaf, and it was a surprise for me.  I would highly recommend trying this cigar as it’s unique in the marketplace, and is pretty darned tasty!

 

CE&M_UraniumSaturday ended up being a spectacular day, so we cleaned some more stuff up in the yard (this will be a recurring morning activity for the foreseeable future!), and hit the pool with a Foundry Compounds Elements and Musings Uranium: The X-Ray.   I bought this at a local shop begrudgingly. I have been trying to smoke all of the cigars in this line, but that just might be impossible, so I had to get it. On the other hand, it’s a 7″x70 which is just way too big. This is listed as containing Honduran, Nicaraguan and “Mysterioso” tobaccos, one can never be sure what’s in any of the Foundry cigars, Michael Gianinni raids General Cigar’s tobacco library and picks out unique tobaccos from unusual places.  This cigar was mild, had a nice flavor, which is why I stayed with it for over three hours. I went for a swim, read a book, went for another swim, got dressed and listened to a podcast on the deck, it was still going. Over all, it burned evenly and was a tasty smoke, although it took a while to get from mild to the low side of medium. I’m glad I tried it, but I don’t see this as a box purchase for me, although I dig the artwork, how can you not like a cross-legged skeleton flipping the bird! I have the CAO Flathead 770 in the humidor which is quite intimidating. I wrapped up the evening going out to see a friend play at a local country club, and meeting some other friends there, where we smoked a couple of the Foundry Compounds Elements and Musings Vanadium, which are aging very nicely. I may have to consider getting another of the V shaped boxes before they sell out.

 

That’s it for now, the Panera people are staring lo look at me like I’m overstaying my welcome! We are looking forward to getting things back to normal at home.  Until the next time,

 

CigarCraig

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