For various reasons I wont go into I stopped blogging a while ago, but I think I am ready to start doing some cigar reviews again. They wont be as frequent as I don’t have the ability to source them as easily as I did before but I will do any new stick or drink that I get.
Hopefully people will once again find my reviews useful, I still consider myself to be a newbie so will review in the same way I always have and try to give you my honest impressions of each stick.
Watch this space…
So its been a while since I posted, to be honest due to the weather I have not had many cigars so nothing to review. I have however recently purchased a gadget for the humidor, so it seemed like a good time to do a review.
TFA Wireless Multi Sensor Thermo-Hygrometer
Not sure if anyone else has their humidors out of site, my flat is not massive and I have had to put my humidors in a cupboard, which is fine, but its a pain when you want to check humidity. I decided a wireless hygrometer would be ideal, I did a lot of searching but there are not many options
I was looking at the Xikar wireless hygrometer, as its a brand I use and trust, but at £69 with one sensor its not cheap (especially if you need more sensors), and you can only see the output of one sensor at a time, not great for a quick glance.
I also found a really nice wifi hygrometer with a phone/tablet app, but it was pretty expensive, and required an account etc as it used the cloud, probably overkill! In the end I did a bit of searching the Internet and found a couple of people who have reviewed a relatively cheap wireless hygrometer that can have up to 8 sensors attached to it.
The were doing them on Amazon for £39.99 (it comes with 3 sensors) so I picked one up. I have to say its pretty nice, you can see 3 readings on screen at a time, setup was a doddle, you can set high and low alarms for temp and humidity, and two sensors were bang on, the other was was 2% under, (I used my Western Calibre III’s as a quick comparison) not bad. The only thing I noticed is that they are not as quick to respond to changes as the westerns, but they are fast enough.
They are a little thicker than other hygrometers, but not too large, the displays on them are to small to really use, but I guess that not the point of them, as you have the nice receiver unit with the large LCD display.
Having had them for a few weeks I decided to do my regular hygrometer calibration using Boveda calibration kits, and it turns out that the Calibre I used for a quick comparison was perfectly calibrated, so as I thought, two of my sensors are spot on, and one reads 2% low, I can live with that.
Summary
I am really pleased with this hygrometer, its wifi range is good, it works well, the alarms are useful, and its cheaper and more flexible than the Xikar solution. It would be great if they responded a little quicker (but how often do you get catastrophic drops/rises in humidity in your humidors?), and it would be nice if you could calibrate each sensor individually.
Just these two changes would make it perfect, but its still very very good, and an ideal cheap solution if your humidors are hidden away. Well worth checking out.
This was a cracking deal, a friend in the USA saw these and offered to ship to the uk, 20 cigars for around £30 plus 10 free, amazing.. Not tried any yet, but good for stocking the humi, and I have read good reviews of these.
The one thing about cigars is just how many there are to try, if you want to get a good variety you either have to have very deep pockets and buy boxes (often of 20- 25 as surprisingly few companies do 3-5 packs), or you have to buy singles which is more expensive.
One great way to do it is with a box split, or in this case 5 box splits, each box is a different type of Pyramid and you get a couple from each of the boxes, it keeps the cost down, and allows you to sample the cigars to see if you might want a box of a specific cigar…
So I got in on a Pyramid split, cant wait to try them and see which are my favourites.
Just a couple of small packs to give me a bit more variety in the humidor. I have never had the Cohiba Robusto’s so I just thought it was about time, and with the weather drawing in its time for slightly quicker smokes.
I have had the Hoyo’s before and they are a nice stick when you just want a light – medium cigar.
Never had these before, but they often get recommended as a good, cheap, winter smoke when you dont have much time. So I got 5 in for the winter!
I am a big fan of SLR cigars, the Double Corona is one of may all time favourite sticks but it takes a while to smoke, so I got some Regios to see if they give me a little of the SLR taste when I dont have so much time.
I have never had a flavour infused cigar, I have always avoided them based on the advice I have received in the last couple of years, however the idea of infused cigars that drew on types of “Coffee” was too much to resist, especially as they are by Oliva and I am a big fan of their cigars. A kind BOTL offered to source some for me and I now have some of these interesting sticks resting in the Humidor.
I have never had any Nat Sherman cigars, when I was in New York a couple of years ago I stumbled upon the Nat Sherman shop whilst walking to the Chrysler building, but did not go in.
So to kick things off I have some Epoca now in the humi, I cant wait to try one, I did not realise they got cigar of the year from Cigar Dojo.
Its been quite a while since I reviewed a cigar, but such a lot has been going on in my life, and I just did not feel I had time to do any reviews. This does mean I have a number of cigar reviews that I just need to write up, and I am hoping to do this over the next few weeks or so. Here is the first, my review of a San Lotano Toro, I have never had any of these cigars before, but I suspect it will not be my last.
Appearance 9.0/10
As you can see from the picture this is a great looking cigar, its a lovely mid brown colour, it has tight seems, great cap construction, and only a few small veins. The bands are smart, well printed, and give the cigar a very classy look. This is the Toro version so its a 6 x 54 ring, and it just looks and feels perfect in your hand.
Construction & Draw 9.0/10
The construction and draw of this cigar are as good as the appearance. As mentioned the cigar is heavy in the hand, this is not just due to the size but the amount of tobacco packed into the stick. I was worried about the draw, but it was pretty much perfect, cap construction was excellent as well, all in all the construction of this cigar was more than you should expect for a stick at this price. The burn on this cigar was pretty much perfect confirming the excellent construction.
Flavour 8.0/10
This is supposed to be a full strength cigar, normally a full strength cigar this large would hit me a little, but this cigar somehow did not hit me, indeed I would have classed it as mild to full strength, certainly not full.
Pre-light draw was earthy with a hint of sweetness. Once lit it started of mild to medium strength with a small amount of pepper, a strong tobacco flavour and a slight hint of sweetness.
As I got about an inch in I could detect some caramels and the sweetness intensified, there was also a rather nice earthiness to the profile.
By about half way through the cigar the strength had picked up to medium/full and there were hints of vanilla and coffee.
As I got into the last third the pepper I had originally tasted in the beginning came back and gave a nice little zing at the end. The final inch had an almond taste. What was nice about the cigar was that all the flavours stayed a long time on the palate allowing you to identify and enjoy them. Overall the cigar lasted around 2 hours
Value 9.0/10
This cigar retails at around 7.00 USD a stick, which I think for such a well constructed and large cigar represents excellent value for money, especially when you consider the burn time and flavour.
Summary 8.5/10
I could not decide if this was an 8.5 or 9.0 cigar, in the end despite the construction and price I decided on 8.5 but if I was to have another cigar it could go either way. I think for me even though there were flavour transitions there were only a couple and for a stick to be epic I expect a few more noticeable transitions. With this in mind I suspect the Robusto size would be perfect for this cigar, even so, I would absolutely recommend this cigar especially at the price, and this will be a contender for space in my humidor in future. As mentioned this was my first San Lotano cigar, it wont be my last.
UK Cigarnewbie 