Brian’s The Week In Smoke, Issue 4

It’s time once again for Brian’s Week In Smoke. In case this is your first Week in Smoke, be advised that it covers many (though not necessarily all) of the cigars I’ve smoked in the past week (or 2, or 3), along with a couple of quick thoughts that came to me at the time. These are not full reviews, but quick blurbs based on a single smoking experience. As such, they maybe influenced by the natural variations that …

Epic Cigar Fail

This weekend I did something that many would consider Epic Cigar Fail. Before spilling my guts and confessing, let me first set the stage for this story. For the past couple of weeks my wife and I have been talking about taking a two and a half hour drive to visit my grandmother.

You see, my grandmother lives out in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. She is roughly a half hour further, for me, from where Cigarfest is held. …

Brian’s The Week In Smoke, Issue 3

It’s time once again for Brian’s Week In Smoke. In case this is your first Week in Smoke, be advised that it covers many (though not necessarily all) of the cigars I’ve smoked in the past week (or 2, or 3), along with a couple of quick thoughts that came to me at the time. These are not full reviews, but quick blurbs based on a single smoking experience. As such, they maybe influenced by the natural variations that …

Brian’s The Week In Smoke, Issue 2

Love it or really love it, The Week in Smoke is back with another list of shoot-from-the-hip mini-reviews. (Or should that be, burn-from-the-hip? On second thought, no, no it really shouldn’t be.)

In case this is your first Week in Smoke, be advised that it covers many (though not necessarily all) of the cigars I’ve smoked in the past week or so, along with a couple of quick thoughts that came to me at the time. These are not …

Brian’s The Week in Smoke

Due to some positive response to my recent coverage of the new cigars at IPCPR 2010, and some encouragement to smoke through the rest of them, I bringing you something I’m calling “The Week in Smoke.” Like the preceding article, this covers many (though not necessarily all) of the cigars I’ve smoked in the past week or so, along with a couple of quick thoughts that came to me at the time. These are not full reviews, but quick …

18 Minutes with Pete Johnson

Its always fun and entertaining to sit down and talk with Pete. As always Pete has a lot of cool things up his sleeves this year and down the road. We talk about the new cigars he has for the show, monster series, out of costume series, saints, sinners and adopt a farm. Great stuff as always…and who doesn’t like red vine? LOL

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Five More Questions

Thanks to everyone for their comment love on my first five questions. The e-mails started rolling in and so here are five more questions.

This time around the focus has to do with storage and humidification questions. Do machine made cigars need humidification? What the fuck did I do to my Cigar Oasis Ultra? Which hygrometer is right? Where do I place my humidification device? And my personal favorite; why can’t I use plain tap water?

Enjoy and keep sending …

Five Questions

Between traveling and getting over whatever I got in Las Vegas, I really haven’t had the time to do the needed work for a review. Instead I go old school and do YQMA solo.

I tackle such hard hitting questions like why do we bash that “lifestyle” publication and why don’t we explain how we do our reviews anywhere on the site. I also take time to answer questions about other new releases from CAO as well as why Stogie …

The Process of Choosing Cigars

Towards the middle of January, I got into a bit of a writing groove. The walls of writers block crumbled and a flood of post ideas and the urge to write struck me. After I wrote a variety of things for Stogie Review, I moved to write a handful of things for my personal blog. Once I was tapped out of ideas for both sites, I still possessed the urge to write. To quench that urge, I posted …

The Readers Respond: Is the Persona Really Necessary?

Back in late December of 2009, we posed a question from Patrick asking “Is the Persona Really Necessary?” Before hitting publish, Brian, Jerry, and I were a little concerned that the article would draw out hostility towards peoples least favorite manufacturer due to their marketing tactics.

I must say, we were pleasantly surprised by the conversational tone that took place in the comments section and were thoroughly impressed by the opinions expressed by many of the commenters. Since …