NO, that wasn’t me on youtube…

Rich,
I think everybody really enjoyed the event, even if they didn’t enjoy the cigar! We’ll be doing it again sometime soon. It sounds like Ed may be ponying up the cigars next time around, and I may not be in on know the next time around!

tbritt327,
OK that’s interesting… I’m gonna have to ask Lonnie about that the next time I see him!

Ratters,
I’ve been using the Cranial Screw method a lot recently. In fact, I used it again on the cigar I’m smoking right now! I love it.

No problem Marcian, thanks for subjecting yourself to our experiment!

Dave Hanifan,
Yeah, I love how it works out when people don’t know what they’re smoking. I think I may have enjoyed it the most knowing the whole time and seeing it unfold.

Rich is correct, these were rolled specifically for this tasting. And I really should have let them rest a while. I was in too much of a hurry. Add to that the transit time in the dry weather (they spent a little extra time waiting for pick up) and the unpredictability of an organic product, and you have stogies that just weren’t up to par. I smoked one at the event, and even I thought it wasn’t as good.

Travis Lindsay,
Yeah too much age can be a bad thing. But these thinks needed another week or two. It probably would have helped if I kept them in my super duper herf box. I’m definitely going to avoid these mistakes going forward.

Great point about resting the cigars. I remember getting a batch of cigars and the first few I smoked weren’t good. But after they got some quite time in my humidor they started to get better and better.

However, I think its possible to give a cigar too much time. Eventually they will lose some of the punch and the flavors they would have had if you let them age too long. And the better the cigar is the better it ages, IMHO.

I don’t think it was the band…
besides Me, Nick, and Marcian,, no one else had had the El Titan prior to the tasting…

One thing Brian didn’t mention (or at least he mentioned to us at the tasting) was that these cigars were rolled for us (blind tasting)… hence they didn’t have the resting time most others enjoy.

The biggest thing I got out of this tasting was that letting a cigar rest, or age , has a signifigant impact on the smoke.
People seem too eager to chalk it up to the blind tasting itself… but its hard to convey how different that stick really and truly was in comparison to a properly rested and humidified version.
Marcian even felt compelled to hop on to the camera a second time…
It had characteristics of a “good” El titan, but those of us who have had it before, really didn’t consider it, because of how poorly these were made, and the harshness, and other flaws we encountered. Half way through I thought it was the El Titan, but talked myself out of it, because it “couldn’t be this bad”.

Hopefully everyone will have a chance to do a blind tasting… its really an eye opener….but I think ours had another variable that most don’t… that the sticks we smoked were fresh as you could get them….