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Recorded at the Ten86 Cigar Lounge in Hawthorne, New Jersey, the lizards smoke two short cigars with the cold weather in mind: the Cuban Ramón Allones Small Club Corona and the Dominican Arturo Fuente Hemingway Short Story. The guys discuss the value of desktop humidors, why they always smoke the Cuban first, and their Thanksgiving plans.
Released every Tuesday, the LOUNGE LIZARDS podcast helps listeners navigate the experience of finding and enjoying premium cigars (both Cuban and non-Cuban) and quality spirits. Episodes are normally around 90 minutes long and feature a variety of different topics including food, travel, life, sports and work.
The podcast features eight members: Rooster, Poobah, Gizmo, Senator, Pagoda, Chef Ricky, Grinder and Bam Bam.
This is not your typical cigar podcast. We’re a group of friends who love sharing cigars, whiskey and a good laugh.
Join us and become a card-carrying lounge lizard yourself! Email us at hello@loungelizardspod.com to join the conversation and be featured on an upcoming episode!
**Gizmo:** [00:00:00] Welcome to the Lounge Lizards podcast. It's so good to have you here. It's a leisure and lifestyle podcast founded on our love of premium cigars, as well as whiskey, travel, food, work, and whatever else we feel like getting into. My name is Gizmo. Tonight I'm joined by Rooster Pagoda and bam bam. And our plan is to smoke a couple cigars, drink some whiskey, talk about life, and of course, have some laughs.
So take this as your 55th official invitation to join us and become a card carrying lounge lizard. Plan to meet us here once a week. We are gonna smoke two short cigars tonight. Share our thoughts on 'em and give you our formal lizard ratings. We discuss the value of a desktop humidor. We talk about the merits of starting cigars sessions with the Cuban, and we discuss our Thanksgiving plans all among a variety of other things for the next hour.
So sit back, gets your favorite drink, light up a cigar, and enjoy as we smoke both the Ramon Iona Small Club Corona, and our Torah of Fuentes Hemingway in short story.
Our second short smoke [00:01:00] special tonight on the pod. Last one we did in February. Very excited about this. We're gonna do two short smokes tonight, boys, cuz it's cold out and uh, it's kind of that time of the year where you're smoking in shorter stints outside. Yeah. I like short smokes. I know you do. And
**Bam Bam:** I love doing them in that single episode.
Two six back back.
**Gizmo:** Yeah. It's great
**Rooster:** for like your ride to work and stuff. And you got a half an hour ride. I mean, I smoke in the car so .
**Gizmo:** Yeah, we know . It still
**Rooster:** amazes me now. My car's actually going back. You know the lease is up. Yeah, mine too. I'm, what are you gonna do? I'm gonna drive Ionize motor. Not my, my no.
Ionize the car.
**Gizmo:** Yeah. What? Well, to get the smell. Oh, fuck it. . . It's mine
anyway.
**Rooster:** Haven't, I haven't been driving it. So it's just been airing out for a Oh wow. I'll spray some stuff. So do you smoke in your daughter's car? So I smoke. I had one, one today. I had a RAs. Oh my. In her car. Car. It's my car now. I mean, I'm gonna be driving that, right?
Oh, you are? She's in college. Right. So she doesn't get one car. [00:02:00] Electric. Okay. Electric. Nice. The way the gas prices are, I think I'm, you know, holy mo, it's a smart thing to do. So I'm just gonna not get another car. I'm gonna drive her car. Oh, and you're gonna give yours
**Gizmo:** back? I'm gonna give mine
**Rooster:** back. Okay.
That makes sense. Unless I buy it because, The buyout is much less than what they're going for. On your car? On Yeah,
**Bam Bam:** on that car. This is true. Cars leases are
**Gizmo:** outrageous. On, on our cars. You can always sell the buyout too. They the lease
**Rooster:** the same car. I know. To lease the same car. I know it's over $700. Yeah.
$200
**Gizmo:** more. Yeah. Wow. A month. That's that's
**Pagoda:** crazy. That's crazy. Mine's double. And the reason is they came of the new model. Yeah. It is double. Literally double. That's
**Rooster:** ridiculous. Your, your car, the new model has, uh, massage chairs, I think. Right? Does it? What different
**Pagoda:** does it make?
**Gizmo:** How do you ride down the road with a massage chair Going get a massage while you're smoking a cigar.
It's,
**Bam Bam:** you fall asleep while the wheel . It's fantastic. Look,
**Gizmo:** this is becoming too much . All right, we'll get to back to cars actually, cuz I have a couple questions for you guys about that, about leases and stuff. But first boys [00:03:00] proud to be back at our clubhouse tonight. Yes sir. 10 86 cigars. Yes sir. In Hawthorne, New Jersey.
Um, very, uh, appreciative to John, the owner here, the place is clean. It's. Welcoming. It's comfortable. We're very happy to be here. And it's a great place. It's immaculate.
**Rooster:** Shout out to Kimberly. She's the one who keeps it. Oh yeah. She keeps it
**Gizmo:** tidy. Keeps it tidy. Oh yeah. She's very tidy. Yeah, man. The bathrooms are so clean.
I know we talked about that on not a speck previous episode, but this is, uh, what a setup. Yeah, John's great. We love John's a great proprietor, 24 hour key card access, peace and love, John, come in anytime. Um, so we're very happy to be here. And the, uh, second. Mm-hmm. smoke that we're gonna do tonight, uh, is actually out of the 10 86 humidor.
So we'll get to that in a little while, but nice up first boys. We got the Ramon Ionis Small Club. Corona. Yeah. The RA S C C, which is a petite Corona 42 ring gauge by four and three eight inches. So we're starting with a Cuban tonight. Uh, we're gonna finish with a new world. [00:04:00] So, uh, again, going the concept of this thing, we did an episode of this, uh, in February of the year of this year.
We did the TAA Petite Casados, and we did the Parus Short. Great episode. So we're changing it up now to give, uh, listeners a little bit, uh, a few more options on Oh, yeah. Uh, short Smokes. And these are very inexpensive, right? I mean, they wanna be six bucks to eight bucks.
**Rooster:** Um, something like that. Yeah. About 8, 8, 8
**Gizmo:** bucks.
Eight. Yeah. and, and we wanted to pick cigars. We actually kind of went through a bunch of them, but the reason why we picked this and we picked the short story is we wanted smokes that were really easy to get. Mm-hmm. at any time, but
**Bam Bam:** also very high quality, but also very high quality. I mean, this is really quite a delicious cigar.
**Rooster:** Yeah. Yeah. And it's, I think it's pretty, pretty full flavored. Yeah. That's a not, you know, not strength wise, but the flavor.
**Gizmo:** Yeah. The strength
**Bam Bam:** profile is probably,
**Gizmo:** that's a, that's a medium, really. Medium. Medium strength.
**Bam Bam:** Uh, yeah. Light medium maybe, but
**Rooster:** the flavors full. [00:05:00] I think the, I think there's more flavor in the short stick than the ra.
Oh, to me. I mean, well, we are gonna
**Gizmo:** smoke. We're gonna see how we Yeah. And see what, you know, what you guys did. Lagoda doesn't like that . No, no, no.
**Pagoda:** I like, I, I, uh, remember you introduced me to this, uh, and you offered it to me. Cause I was looking for the half Corona for Oh, okay. Mm-hmm. . And you said, why didn't you tried this?
And others I love RAs, which is,
**Rooster:** uh, sure. So I mean, it it has the RAs dna N yeah. Yeah. But I think it's more, more flavor. Um, maybe it's the wrapper that
**Gizmo:** you get a lot of flavor out of the wrapper and the, the ring gauge. Yeah. Yeah. But you know what, you know what's funny and, and you know what, boys, let's cut this thing.
Mm-hmm. . See we're getting on the cold draw on the wrapper. But as we're doing that, what's funny is I think a lot of people, and prior to our experiences here and smoking as much as we do now, I always assume that a smaller cigar meant that it was lighter, less flavor. You know, and it's honestly sometimes quite the opposite.
That's the opposite. Yep. Absolutely. [00:06:00]
**Bam Bam:** My draw is wide open.
**Gizmo:** Mine's tight. Mine's tight as shit. Actually, mine's tight open. Grab it. You may have to grab another one. It's really tight. Yeah. Yeah.
**Bam Bam:** Maybe take a bit off the, um,
**Gizmo:** yeah, pagoda went a cigar. Ready outta turn.
**Pagoda:** Oh, did I do it a little too early? , listen, I can't wait , but if a good thing in hand, you've gotta go for
**Rooster:** it. This is true. It's only the 53rd
**Gizmo:** episode. .
**Bam Bam:** No, right. 57.
**Gizmo:** This is, it's like 55th. 55th. This is my first. This is my, this is
**Pagoda:** my first Russian to it. I'm a bit off today, so
**Rooster:** I'm gonna, what happened to you're Russian
**Gizmo:** I'm gonna try this thing as it is. Bam. Bam. I may use that, but let me light it first. Mm-hmm. . and, uh, we'll see how it goes. But what are you guys getting on the, uh, on the cold draw this thing
**Bam Bam:** a good amount of dry fruit. Mm-hmm. .
**Gizmo:** It's quite nice. Some, yeah, some cedar. And, and on the, on the, the [00:07:00] cold draw, just initially to your point, it does have that kind of rassy thing, but it feels like it's a little more intense.
Yeah. At least on the cold draw. I guess we'll see how it smokes here.
**Bam Bam:** The, I haven't smoked this in a long time. When, when we say that, you know, that quintessential Cuban twang. Yeah. I find that twang to be a little different than what the rest of you think of it as. Mm-hmm. I don't see it as that salty profile, but instead for me, the Cuban twang is that combination of savory and sweet or floral and, um, tobacco or earth earthy.
When you get those two, for me, profiles that work beautifully to me, that's the Cuban twang. Yeah. But you know,
**Pagoda:** like for me that's what it's the salty and the floral together. There's that little say. Yeah, yeah. You know, and which you may call earthy or you know, and you know, there,
**Bam Bam:** um, I think the terminology's different, but I think we're talking same.
We're about the same thing and
**Pagoda:** it's, it's so pronounced, especially in the RA as well. Well, you get
**Bam Bam:** it. It's the magnified in this cigar. It really [00:08:00] is magnified in my
**Rooster:** opinion. Yeah. I think, I think the Monte crystal line has the most amount of Cuban twang. Yeah.
**Gizmo:** 100% when I think of Cuban
**Rooster:** Monty two. Yeah, I think
**Gizmo:** about the Monte Crusta.
I think Monty two all day. Monte Monte two. Yeah. When I crave that salty thing. Yeah. I go Monte two. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's awesome. All right boys, let's light this thing. The Ramona Iona small Club. Corona. Again, it's a 42 ring gauge by four and three eight inch cigar. Comes in a dress box of 25. So cardboard dress box, which like we said, you can probably get for what you're getting 'em for like 165 now.
Maybe. Something like that. Something like that. Mm-hmm. . Uh, and this cigar that we're smoking tonight is from OER April, 2020. Yeah, right in the, yeah. Beginning of Covid. I just
**Pagoda:** re let Magar just have . We on, we're all on the same page.
**Gizmo:** I did take the perfect draw while we were talking. I took the perfect draw of [00:09:00] my cigar.
Try to open it up a little bit. Um, is cause I really want to have a nice experience. It's good, right?
**Bam Bam:** It's it's very good. Yeah. Oh, so Puba gave me my first club Corona at our North lounge. Really? Yep. PBA likes these and I flew through it because I was so, it was so good. I never really had a, a little guy like this that had so much flavor.
I asked him for another one and I smoked another one Right after you did it back
**Gizmo:** to back. Back to back. Ugh. I I can't tell you the last time I did that. No, but I
**Bam Bam:** love this. It just took me by surprise how flavorful this cigar is. It's awesome. It's off to a great start and a very attainable cigar.
**Rooster:** It is.
It's one of the better, uh, cigars in this size and that price and that Well, the price. Yeah. Um, well, but a lot of these, you know, like the half, like the und half Coronas mm-hmm. , uh, the EGUs shorts, all amazing cigars. The, you know, the club
**Gizmo:** Coronas perfect for a winter smoke. Yeah. Yeah. Great fault smoke.
Yeah. So this is nice outside, not too much wind. This is where I'm gonna go. Yeah.
**Bam Bam:** Because of the dimension. [00:10:00] You're not out for
**Gizmo:** an hour. Yeah. You're out there for a half hour, 40 minutes at the most, depending on how you smoke. Yeah. And, and you know, the thing that we said on the previous episode, the short smoke episode we did in February, the thing that's important about cigars like this is if there's a gusta wind or, or something happens where you have to run inside, you're not really too bummed out if you have to throw half of this away.
Right. It's, you're not throwing away a, a, an expensive Corona or a double Corona
**Bam Bam:** or Yeah. Or a 50 booster. A $15 Monty. Yeah.
**Gizmo:** Yeah, yeah. Exactly right. And I very
**Rooster:** expensive. I knew we were gonna do this cigar tonight, so I smoked a RAs in the morning , just to kind of compare the two. Right. Great idea. And this one, I mean, the RAs was fantastic, don't get me wrong.
Yeah. But I think this. Can fit into like an evening smoke. Doesn't have to be a daytime smoke per se. I mean, you can't smoke at any time. But RAs was like a little bit on the milder side. Um, but this has more flavor to me
**Gizmo:** than the Rasta.
**Bam Bam:** So, not to interrupt you. [00:11:00] When I was with pba, we had dinner and this was our last cigar of the night after maybe two or three cigars each, and it topped off the evening beautifully.
Yeah. Because it gives you that sweetness and savory that
**Gizmo:** I love. And it's got some spice.
**Rooster:** Oh, yeah. And you get like little hints of like, some kind of nut, like, I don't know, cashers or, uh, almonds or little, little nuttiness, little spice,
**Gizmo:** little leather. The leather. It's got that cedar thing that I would say the, the primary note in this to me is cedar, or it's kind of woody.
It's, it's like, unlike the ra, I think that kind of leans a little bit more. Um, how would you describe that earthy?
**Bam Bam:** I, I don't know. I think the RA is earthy and there's salt there. This to me is, is earthy, but I think a bit more pronounced on floral and, uh,
**Gizmo:** dried
**Rooster:** fruit. Yeah. It's like concentrated flavors
**Gizmo:** of RA at the club.
Corona. Yeah. And by the way, when we, when we keep saying RAs, we're talking about the Ramon Iona, especially selected, which is the Cuban rib Robusto from Ramon. Uh, and we did that [00:12:00] episode. We did that part. Yeah. All time. All time. Lizard favorite. Yeah, that's, we, we smoke a lot of those cigars. I think between the seven of us, we have split up , multiple cabs, seven 50 cabs this year.
Yeah. And we need more. So we effectively each have had, or have smoked 50 cigars of RAs each easily this year. Yeah. Easily. Phenomenal cigar. So what do you, what do you guys think of this? I mean, I, I think this is really, really off to a great start. It's a little, uh,
**Bam Bam:** home run hitter.
**Gizmo:** Yeah. It really.
**Rooster:** also, you get a little bit of coffee notes too.
**Gizmo:** Mm-hmm.
**Bam Bam:** and the smoke, if you bring it to you, it's
**Gizmo:** really, really delicious. Yeah. It's, I do think, to your point, to both of your points about, um, having this after a meal, I could definitely see me having this on Thursday after a big Turkey dinner. Thanksgiving. Yeah. Yeah. .
**Bam Bam:** Absolutely. Probably not right after the
**Gizmo:** meal.
No, but I'm saying, let's say, let's say you have a half hour, let's say the kids are running around. The wife's looking for you to clean up the dishes. I don't do dishes. Yep. , not me. All right. Let's put hypothetical again. Bam. This is not [00:13:00] reality. Gotcha. Hypothetical. Okay. You have to do dishes. Yes. Okay.
That's the hypothetical. Uh, and you really have a half hour. This is a great, this is a great one to go to. Perfect. To slot. I think I would go to this in that moment over the pargo short, which we've done before. Yeah, I agree. Right after you make that
**Rooster:** bolognese , you can go for the
**Gizmo:** No go for that part. You wanna listen?
No. Bolognese, it's Thanksgiving. Do you want, do you want to give out the recipe for bolognese so folks can make it on Thursday?
**Bam Bam:** You know what I'll do? I'll issue a bulletin and I'll, I'll, I'll make sure everyone in lizard, in the lizard nation can get access to it. Perfect . Perfect. Mm. Never gonna let me
**Gizmo:** live that down.
Never. We got some other things. We're never gonna let you live down in a night. I know. , this is, uh, this is really nice. It's awesome. So I've only, this is probably only the second or third I've had, my first came from, uh, from Senator in his, uh, in, in the, in the Senator's lounge, lounge. Um, and I've, I have a few of them now.
They're very, very good. They're
**Bam Bam:** awesome. Yeah. This is, this is just a quintessential [00:14:00] beautiful Cuban little guy. How
**Rooster:** do you guys like this compared to the half Corona
**Gizmo:** and the Parus Short? Yeah. So, uh, you know, totally different applications for me.
**Bam Bam:** I've got my opinion, um, this is more flavorful than the Parus short, I think.
But, um, I
**Gizmo:** would say it's, it's got more oomph to it. Yeah. I think Parus Short offers classic Parus, which is very different than this. It's creamier than this. It's, it's a little creamier, but it has that kind of parus Yeah. Cinnamon thing. Yeah. That a D four has a
**Bam Bam:** little baking spice. You don't get that here.
Yeah. But this and the half Corona. put them in a boxing match. They're fighting it out. But the half Corona, the half Corona is so good, but the half
**Gizmo:** Corona has a sweetness thing about it. Yeah. I'm getting, but to me that's a dessert stick to me.
**Bam Bam:** It
**Pagoda:** could be. No, I, yeah. Dakota, what do you think? Corona? Yeah, right.
**Rooster:** Iman Ahman dna.
**Pagoda:** And I haven't had it for, you know, they've been so tough to find, especially the ones, you know, we like them in the 10 box. Yeah, the tens have been hard, hard and, uh, so they've been really difficult to find. So I, I've run out [00:15:00] of those and it's been a while. Honestly,
**Bam Bam:** I have two dress boxes of those half Coronas.
I haven't had a problem yet. You
**Gizmo:** know what? I will say they're not. I also have two dress boxes. I just got them. Yeah. Uh, and I feel, you know, the, any lizard who's been listening for a while knows that we despise dress, um, the how tightly Havana stuffs. , her cubic tobacco stuffs, those, uh, cigars and dress boxes, especially, you know, the double Coronas, the boxes are just too small.
However, in the half Corona, there's a spacer in the bottom. They're, and, and they're, the, the boxes are totally appropriate for the size of the cigars. I agree. So it doesn't affect the, you know, when the, when they're drying and, and when they're maturing mm-hmm. , it doesn't affect the, uh, worth a buy. Yeah.
And they're, they're like a hundred and thirty five hundred fifty
**Pagoda:** bucks. Yeah. Yeah. I think I, I need to, I need to, uh, I need to get them last time, uh, uh, you know, I was seeking these actually, uh, Senator Ping me and, uh, uh, mentioned that I should go and buy those. And they would, they would price it like one 70, by [00:16:00] the way.
Wow. And you know, we were used to paying one 20 for them. Yeah. For the tens too. And this, this within the year, this not have been like within two years or something. I would pay that
**Bam Bam:** without thinking
**Pagoda:** and, and, you know, I said I hesitated and they were gone. No. And I, that, that
**Gizmo:** was it. Well, so that's the reason, you know, I think, I think we've talked about the up cor uh, the Upton Half Corona.
We all have smoked a ton of those cigars in comparison, but the reason why we didn't do it is because it's just not that easy to find right now. No. So that we're gonna, maybe we'll do that on a future episode,
**Bam Bam:** but my first half Corona was given to me by Senator. Yeah, me too. At the
**Gizmo:** Senator's lounge.
**Pagoda:** Me too.
And my first half Corona was given by you. Ben.
**Gizmo:** Yes, sir. My, my first was Yes, Puba. Yeah. Yeah. Um, Puba and Senator and I had 'em together. So, you
**Bam Bam:** know, as you go through our cigar journeys, there's always a moment where you won't ever forget the experience of a cigar that you've had. The half Corona is one of those experiences Club.
Absolutely. The club Corona the Ra, Ramona Iona, especially selected. These are, they [00:17:00] hit you and they leave their imprint, their dna, and you just, you'll never forget them. Yeah. You have to pursue
**Rooster:** those cigars, especially when you get a free stick. It also tastes better. .
**Gizmo:** It always does, by the way, . It's a gift.
That's true. It's a gift of leaf. Yes. You
**Rooster:** know what else is really good? The boulevard, the, the short stick. Well, the, the Royal Corona. It's Corona, not the, uh, no, there's
**Gizmo:** a shorter, the Royal Corona
**Rooster:** Corona is the, uh, Rob Robusto size. Maybe now
**Bam Bam:** you're talking, so they have, they have a petite Corona. It's not very short.
It's a little, it's longer than this. Yeah, a bit longer. It'll be a little longer. It's really, that is really quite a delicious cigar. I've got a box. I'll bring it in. I, I don't think you'll, you'll say anything negative
**Gizmo:** about it. So it's actually longer. It's actually longer than you guys are saying. So this is four and three eights.
That's five. And any, yeah. Yeah. So it's, you know, it's what? A little more than half an inch. What's it called? It's called the Corona, petite Corona.
**Bam Bam:** All floral and fruit. Dried fruit from beginning to end. It is [00:18:00] really, really quite nice. See, I love that. Favorite profile. I pursue that. It's fantastic. Yeah.
**Gizmo:** Amazing. This is, uh, you know, you guys were right. I mean, I haven't had one of these in some time versus the RAs. This definitely has mm-hmm. this pack. This is pack, this is ready to fight.
**Bam Bam:** Yeah. Oh yeah. And I think this in the half Corona would do battle. Yeah. Yeah, I think I
**Pagoda:** need a box of days for sure.
**Gizmo:** Yeah. That's good. Yeah, they're easy to, they're fairly easy to get. So, I,
**Bam Bam:** I have a question for you guys. Yeah. I find myself grouping cigars cuz I would like to piggyback similar experiences of cigars from one to another. So if I have this and the half Corona, I would do a punch punch with that series because for me, I get those similar fruity f floral notes.
I like to continue to pursue
that.
**Rooster:** But do you like to build on flavor as the night
**Gizmo:** progresses? It depends. Yeah. Like what would the order be if
**Bam Bam:** earlier in the day I would do that grouping that I just [00:19:00] mentioned because it's so flavorful and delicious and I'll have it with a coffee.
**Gizmo:** What would, what would the three of those be though, in
**Bam Bam:** order?
Um, the first one I would probably have is this, um, club Corona. Interesting. Cause
**Gizmo:** I don't know
**Bam Bam:** if I'd start with this. I, I would jump to the half Corona because for me the half Corona is a, just a, it's got a different flavor profile. It's a bit, it, it's got a bit heavier of a, of a flavor for me, which I love.
and then, uh, the club Corona or the, um, the punch punch, that's the final one for me. Hmm.
**Gizmo:** Yeah.
**Rooster:** Yeah. So you, you guys smoke like 3, 4, 5 sticks, like mm-hmm. at a stretch. Yeah. Initiate. I, I, it's hard for me to do that. I stop at like two threes, like the max, right. And, uh, but I, but I think I saw you. We
**Gizmo:** smoke four once though.
Yeah. But it's like, I don't really
peer
**Rooster:** enjoy the last one or the song, you know, but I can, you know, if there's like a, if there's a break, I can do one after breakfast or one in the morning, one in the afternoon, one after dinner. Mm-hmm. and that's, that's like a perfect day, right? Yeah. Yeah. But if I do like a, like a [00:20:00] nice, even a robuster size after dinner, I'm pretty content, right.
I don't need to smoke another one. And I smoke slow, so it takes, you know, Boosto will last me like an hour and a half. Yeah. So
**Gizmo:** that, that boosto last me 50 minutes. Right. Me
**Bam Bam:** too. You know? And when I'm out with you guys or with a group, I tend to want more cigars in a single setting.
**Gizmo:** Same. Same here. Yeah, same.
Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
**Bam Bam:** Now that's a whole plan after dinner when I'm with a group as far as grouping cigars personally for me. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I usually like to start. and then end with an excluse. Usually. See
**Gizmo:** I finish with the half Corona. So like, wow. So I love that to me is a dessert stick. So I'll go through my Cubans.
So let's say we're gonna, let's say we're gonna have a full on crazy, you know, lizard night, right? That's a great idea. I go, I'll go like a lighter Cuban. Um, I'll, like, let's say I'll start with a punch punch. I'll go to Amani two. Mm-hmm. , then I'll move to, uh, let's say a padron of some sort, or a Davidoff or two of [00:21:00] those.
And then I'm gonna finish with a half Corona. Wow. I agree with you. Half Corona. I like it at the end. I like that. And that, you know, I, Senator and I, we would do that all the time. That's cool. And
**Bam Bam:** yeah.
**Pagoda:** Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I, I've, yeah. I've never really, uh, started with the half grown at all. Right. It's always one of those, Hey, listen, let's just have one more
**Gizmo:** Yeah.
One more half hour smoke. Yeah.
**Pagoda:** And that's exactly what it is. Exactly. And, uh, so Papas Frito is by way. I just thought I'd throw it in the
**Gizmo:** Yeah. The, uh, the leaguer Very good cigar. Yeah. Yeah. We, we just told John to get some Yeah. On the lounge. That's, yeah. We were giving him Melissa some things to get. Yeah.
Nice.
**Rooster:** Awesome. You know, this is also a great stick size-wise for women. Yes. Yeah. You know, like a half Corona, the, the small, the Boulevard. Petite Coronas. True. The Poor Laga. The Petite Corona also. That's a good one. That's a, that's a great one. Stake. Oh yeah. This one
**Pagoda:** I'm assuming for smoking
**Gizmo:** you to . Yeah.
You know, Kimberly, uh, [00:22:00] who we mentioned works here was asking us about cigars and said she's starting to get into cigars and wants to learn more. And, you know, I th I think, I think the poor Aga is a great recommendation. Yeah. The Ahman. Uh, and then the other one I would say is the Schwa Supreme, or excuse me, the El Ray del Muno.
Uh, Demi. Is it the demi toss? Demi toss? Yep. That's a little one. Yeah.
**Rooster:** I can also picture her smoking like an L g c m D O number four. Oh yeah. But that's a
**Gizmo:** very elegant Sure. Bring 'em over.
**Rooster:** It's elegant. I mean, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's a realistic, it's, it's supposed to be like, you gotta smoke that slow. You can't, no, you can't just puff on that.
You, if you,
**Gizmo:** you smoke that fast. Yeah. It'll get you a tar
**Bam Bam:** blast. Yeah. Isn't it? It's discontinued, right? No,
**Gizmo:** that's the only one that make number four is not,
**Rooster:** that's the one. Got it. That is not discontinued. Oh, okay. All the other one, number one, number two, and the number three are discontinued.
**Bam Bam:** So we all have a bunch of those that I don't, I haven't touched in.
Which
**Rooster:** one? What size number
**Gizmo:** four?
**Bam Bam:** I've got, we've got the four
we,
**Gizmo:** the two, twos and fours.
**Bam Bam:** Ones and twos. We have, [00:23:00] I
**Gizmo:** don't think we have the four. I think you have two and four. Two and four. Two and four. Yeah. You
**Bam Bam:** don't have a one. Yeah, I won't touch us for a very long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why? I just look, I look at them.
Why? Because you can't get 'em anymore. You
**Gizmo:** can, well, you can find '
**Bam Bam:** em. No, you can get 'em, you can find 'em. The connoisseur
**Rooster:** corner. You can find 'em once in a while. I mean, you can, the number four comes up. Four
**Gizmo:** comes up, but the rest four comes up. They're very expensive. I haven't seen those come up, uh, fresh.
I haven't seen a box code of 21 or 22. I I, I don't even know if they've rolled any of those since covid. Wow. You know, I was actually, I was very happy to see, uh, 22 box codes of Shawa Supreme and, uh, cutie Coronas sc Claros. Oh, nice. As well. So it seems like some of the other stuff that we like is coming.
Yep. It's rolling. So, so we're about, uh, what, half, half an inch? Three quarters of an inch in mm-hmm. Yeah. , what do you guys think so far? Incredible. Incredible. It is, this is smoking slower than I expected. Yeah. Pagoda, what do you
**Rooster:** think? I mean, is this like in your flavor profile of, of course. Yeah.
**Pagoda:** Yeah, yeah.
[00:24:00] I mean, I, I didn't know, so, you know, I was very hesitant. I remember, uh, the night we smoked the 8 98 and then we smoked the RAs and I think bam, bam loved the RAs. And of course, and you know, I enjoyed the RA a lot. Like that was, uh, one of, yeah, I think
**Rooster:** ba bam shit on the 8 98. Did he
**Gizmo:** shit on the eight 90? I never did that.
Yes. We'll, ask Senator when he is back. I
**Bam Bam:** don't care what senator says. . I did not do that. .
**Pagoda:** But since then, I've really, really good fond of ra. You know, like it's, it's one of those things which I always have in Mahu. Uh,
**Rooster:** yeah, that's the, that's the box that Grinder was gonna split with you, right?
**Gizmo:** never
**Bam Bam:** happened.
**Pagoda:** Oh, oh, well. But, uh, uh, but thank
**Rooster:** you. I think, uh, grinder is in Florida so we could, uh, make a talk about em. ,
**Gizmo:** you're not here. You're fair game. Oh my God. This is
**Bam Bam:** such a great, this is really nice. This is so nice.
**Gizmo:** So we talked about smoking outside in the cold guys, and I know we have a couple things we want to hit, but, uh, we talked about on the, on the [00:25:00] first time we did this in February and some of the other episodes when it was cold out.
But what are your kind of go-to methods to stay warm outside? I was just gonna go there. Yeah. Fire cut.
**Rooster:** Thermal underwear. Yeah. .
**Gizmo:** Yeah. You need a blast. Some people do that. Hash me around over, yeah. Yeah, you do. So you do a what do you have?
**Bam Bam:** A blanket. Okay. And a fire. Okay. Yeah. With a solo. I do, I do have a solo.
I do have solo. Solo. That thing
**Gizmo:** is garbage. .
**Bam Bam:** No it's not. You've gotta hug. It's horrible.
**Gizmo:** What are you gonna sit on it?
**Bam Bam:** What do you have to sit on it? Yeah, you gotta put your feet into it. But here's, I've learned something. So I've got the one down from the Yukon, the Yukon's, the big one. So, but my neighbor has the Yukon.
When I'm out in the bitter cold with that Yukon, it truly radiates. It does tremendous. It's a, it's $200 more than the model that I have. I should have went, just bought that one. So this winter I think I'm gonna go for the Yukon. I'll have you guys over. We'll test
**Rooster:** it out. Yeah. But why do you, what, why do you like that over like a traditional, like the kind that me and
**Gizmo:** Senator
have?
**Bam Bam:** So I have a cast, I have an iron, like a [00:26:00] metal cast iron fire pit. It's just very smoky. If the wood is wet, it, the smoke bellows. In this solo, regardless of how wet the wood is, you won't ever, and if, if you gotta keep the wood under the rim, you'll never get a puff of smoke out of it. Wow. It's incredible.
It's all heat. Can I tell you something? The thing
**Pagoda:** is beautiful put on a deck. Ah. So you can't put one of those cars down, one under
**Rooster:** your bloody, yeah, you can. You can put it on a piece of slate or
**Bam Bam:** something. You can do that. Now it comes with a base that air rates the bottom so that you can put it on a wood surface.
So you have to buy that piece. The
**Rooster:** key with any of these. Like, especially the cast iron fire pits. Mm-hmm. , you have to get the fire started earlier. How much, or if you're having like guests come over, let's say at seven, have it started like 6, 6 15. Yeah.
**Gizmo:** Yeah.
**Rooster:** So by that time, the colds are hot, so whatever wood you put on, it's not gonna
**Gizmo:** smell and it burns right away.
It's not burned right away. That's exactly
**Rooster:** great point. Prepare. Prepare and, you know, put a lot of, like, lot of kindling and a lot of paper and put the logs on [00:27:00] it, get it going.
**Gizmo:** Great point. Now, early, early
**Bam Bam:** start, dura Flame has tiny little mini starter logs. Yeah. They're four inches long, so you don't gotta, you don't have to buy those long, ugly, awful dura flames.
Right. They come in a box of like 20 or 25.
**Gizmo:** Great fire starter.
**Bam Bam:** Can't live without it. I cannot live without that. Are you not a boy scout? I'm not a boy scout. . No. It's, it's
**Gizmo:** awesome. No, it sounds, it, it can't spark two
**Bam Bam:** rocks. It's, it's, it's four inches long. It's, you just flip the wrappers up, light the corners, put the wood on top of it.
You're golden. Yeah, you're golden. That's awesome.
**Gizmo:** Yeah, I, uh, I, I like, you know, so it's kind of in that timeframe now where it's not like bitter, bitter, bitter, cold like it will be in January or February, but I like using, I have the, the propane standup heaters. . Yep. Um, you know, you know what I'm talking about?
Yeah. What, what do they call, like at the restaurants you see, like, at the restaurants and stuff that they have, you know, it's a propane tank at the bottom and then it's a pole up and then it radiates. Yeah. But
**Rooster:** that's really good for like one or two, [00:28:00] you know, if you're like right next to it, it by myself radiates some heat.
Exactly. Yeah. Uh, it looks cool. Like I have one that kind of like shoots up of like, you see the flame. Yeah. But it's really, if you gotta sit right next to it, right. Yeah. And, and you have to stand sometimes .
**Gizmo:** Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny. So on my deck, on my deck, I have a high top table and high top chairs.
Ah. So I'm actually closer to the action than I would be if I was sitting like we are now. I, you know, low to the ground. Well, we
**Rooster:** both have those garage heaters
**Gizmo:** I was gonna say. And then where, but we're, you know, we're, we're fortunate. We have really amazing heaters in the garage. You do? So our garages aren't finished.
And gotta get my wife's car out. . .
**Bam Bam:** That's a battle. Have you? That is a battle. Hold on. Have you ever smoked in Mrs. Rooster's car?
**Gizmo:** Yes. Are you with her
**Rooster:** in it? Kidding me, with her in it. That was the last time. I don't know. First time I could, I could. How do
**Bam Bam:** you get away with all this?
**Rooster:** I just say, , you're a real man, huh?
I'm gonna smoke a cigar. . And you'd [00:29:00] roll down your window. . .
**Gizmo:** You're not gonna let the wind affect your cigar .
**Rooster:** No, she's uh, she is great. She's very, yeah, she lets me smoke in the
**Gizmo:** house by the fireplace. That's
**Bam Bam:** awesome. Gizmo's got a one inch ash, beautifully stacking D look at. Perfect,
**Pagoda:** perfect. Right. But, but then again, you know, joining a lounge like this, which is 24 hours Oh yeah.
In the winter is
**Bam Bam:** Chris's godsend.
**Gizmo:** I wish this place is a godsend. I wish this for every lizard who's listening right now. Yeah. I wish that they could find a place like the, that we have here. I can't believe 24 7 axis is the key. That is the freedom in that is just, even though I don't use it, I don't come here at 2:00 AM No, no.
I don't come here at 6:00 AM But the fact that I can makes
**Bam Bam:** it worth it to me. But you've been here past 11. Past 12. Many, many times. Yeah. We close it up all the time. It's tremendous. It's tremendous. It's awesome.
Yeah,
**Pagoda:** it, it really worked well for me because I would come, uh, at 9, 9 30 after putting the [00:30:00] kids to bed. Yeah. And you're so close. Yeah.
**Gizmo:** Yeah. Yeah. This cigars really nice. Mm-hmm. ,
**Bam Bam:** what's everybody drinking tonight? It's
**Gizmo:** a great question. I was just gonna say that. So, uh, for the, for the lizards out there keeping score, we decided tonight, uh, since we're doing two cigars and there's only three of us that are gonna be having, uh, some sort of spirit tonight that we wouldn't do a liquor rating.
So we all kind of B yd. This was lizard B y o tonight. So, uh, pagoda, what are you having? I'm
**Pagoda:** having abor. Oh, okay. It's uh, ba
**Gizmo:** bam. Um, we did that on the pod. Correct? My pleasure. Yeah, we did that. My
**Bam Bam:** pleasure. It's an excellent
**Pagoda:** drink, isn't it? Delicious? Yeah. You know, I forgot how good it is. It's so good. I think I need to get a bottle
**Bam Bam:** soon.
It's a great after dinner drink cuz there's a little bit of sweetness in it. It's really nice.
**Pagoda:** It had the sweetness and I, yeah, no, for some reason I like a little bit of Sweden whiles monks gz. Yeah, of course. Yes,
**Gizmo:** absolutely. Hold on, I'm gonna see what we rated that it's gotta be
**Rooster:** a lower eight or nine.
Yeah, I think it was an eight. [00:31:00] Eight point something. Eight and a
**Pagoda:** half. It was definitely rated higher than what we thought we would.
**Gizmo:** Why don't, oh, I don't have a, we didn't actually. All right, so the AAL or 12, we didn't start rating the liquors until two episodes after that. That's true. We did that on episode 12 with the Don Carlos Eye of the Shark. Hmm.
**Bam Bam:** Oh, what a great night
**Gizmo:** that was. Yeah. That was a. So what are you drinking? Bam. I'm sorry.
**Bam Bam:** Uh, I'm drinking. What? You're drinking? Oh, yes.
**Gizmo:** You're having the Don Julio Ajo as well? Yes, sir. Excellent. With ice. Uh, yes. That's, uh, uh, no on . Chef Ricky's recommendation.
**Bam Bam:** Ricky, you didn't hear this bunch of ice .
**Rooster:** So talking about ice, I was at, you know, here at 10 86 this past Sunday, and I spoke to somebody, uh, who is a frequent member here, and, uh, started talking.
He's, he was talking about ice. I said, yeah, I mean, I like, I like, like a big cube and whatever I'm drinking. He's like, [00:32:00] yeah, but you know, when you make ice, it gets cloudy. How do you, how do you prevent? I said, I don't know. I said, I said, I know we, you know, I use, uh, reverse osmosis and the whole house is like, you know, filtered water and uh, you know, the whole nine yards.
Mm-hmm. , but still the, the cubes are kind of cloudy. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, he is a hardcore SCOs Riner, and he's like, I. Make my own ice. I said, well, yeah, everybody makes their own ice. He's like, no, I make a slab of ice. So he said, wow, ice. He said, when you, when you make a slab of ice, what happens is the impurities kind of settle down.
So the top layer is clear. So he, he makes a slab and he cuts somehow the bottom layer. Wow. And he, and showed, he showed me a whole video about how he makes it. Wow. And he cuts the bottom. Is it, it's kind of like, it's kind of like in a, like a, like a kind, like a thing picture, like a sheet pen, but a deeper sheet pen.
Ah, that's about three to four inches high. Nice. So [00:33:00] he takes that out and he cuts the bottom. So he has like a clear slab of ice. Then he cuts that into a cube. That's
**Gizmo:** unbelievable. That's amazing. And, uh, how
**Rooster:** does he cut it though? He just cuts it with a, I think a chainsaw? No, no. He uses chainsaw. You know, the guys that carved the ice, it breaks off pretty easily because he just uses like a knife, like a serrated knife and just kind of makes like a little edge and it smash and it breaks off pretty easy.
It seriously,
**Pagoda:** it seems like a load of work though. It
**Gizmo:** does. I want to
**Rooster:** try it. Yeah. He's hardcore mean. This guy, his matches on mozzarella, he makes his own. We started talking, we actually started talking about pizza ovens. Oh yeah. I think we talked about that in the past, but I was asking him, really? It's like, yeah, it's like the dough is the key.
He gave me a whole thing about pizza ovens and, and, uh, you know, how to make the dough and, you know, the whole nine yards. But anyway, the ice thing was
**Gizmo:** pretty cool. So I actually, I actually, my, my mom bought me one year as a gift, bought me a, a unique ice tray. So it's a traditional rubber ice tray for square cubes.
Mm-hmm. . And it sits [00:34:00] in a plastic. Liner and then that plastic liner goes in a styrofoam. Oh, wow. Like a one-inch styrofoam thing. It, and you don't throw any of that away. And when you use, when you do this with any water, the ice crystal clear straight through it. That's
**Rooster:** awesome. What, what makes it clear
**Gizmo:** though?
I don't know. There's something about the, the separation with the styrofoam. The p the way the plastic and then the way that the ice sits. So like the rubber tray has holes under each cube. Oh, okay. So it's, it's like I Do you think the impurities are like kind imp purs are going down then? The top layers?
Yeah, exactly. Like if you look at, so it's, it's essentially what, what you're saying this other member does, but yeah, it's kind of automatic.
**Rooster:** So, you know, if you look at a lake, like a frozen lake, you always see the top is like kind of clear. and
**Bam Bam:** you know, because the impurities have, I think maybe it has something to do with the dimension and the, if you're, if you're casting ice and it's in a larger vessel, it gives the impurities a place to go.
Where if it's in a con concentrated ice tray yeah, there's really nowhere for it to go. [00:35:00] Right. It's concentrated, but if you spread it out and make, give it a larger dimension, probably there's some physics there, I guess something to be said about a crystal clear ice Cuban you drink. Yeah, yeah,
**Gizmo:** totally.
It's nice. Totally, very elegant. Yeah. Especially with a, you know, a spirit like, I think the guy you're talking about, I mean, he just got a bottle of Macallan 25 is a gift. Ah, I mean, when you're, when you have a, it's not, it's not him . Oh. Uh, when you, when you're having a spirit that, well,
**Rooster:** I could, I couldn't say his name.
Yeah, it's for todo.
**Gizmo:** That's what we're talking about. He's got the Macallan 25. He's got the one Macallan 25. Yeah. I thought that was Henry. No, that's, that's That's Fortune. That's Fortune. Ah, yeah. Fortune got the Macallan 25 as a gift. Yeah. Oh, nice. But I'm like mozzarella, pizza ovens. That's definitely fortune.
**Bam Bam:** He's gotta show us how he cuts the ice.
**Gizmo:** I want to know. Yeah, I want, see, he's got, he's got
**Rooster:** a video I want. Oh, he showed me three videos. One was about how to make mozzarella. One was about the pizza dough and the third one was about ice.
Well,
**Bam Bam:** there's something to be said about being industrious like that.
That's, I agree. Very cool. You know, I admire Puba and his [00:36:00] qu, you know, Art is art. Art artistry in the kitchen. Yeah. Or on a barbecue. It's, there's a lot to be said about cooking for your family. It's great. Yeah, it's great. Yeah. I don't do, I wish I was better at it. Yeah. I stopped making Bolognese . Well you have to after Mr.
Reprimanded me.
**Rooster:** No, .
**Gizmo:** You have to have the
**Rooster:** passion for
**Gizmo:** cooking. You do. Yeah. See I don't have that
**Rooster:** neither. We all have a passion to eat, but .
**Gizmo:** Oh yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So, uh, we're about halfway through here, boys on the Ramons. I'm a little ahead of you. Yeah, yeah,
**Rooster:** yeah.
I'm
**Gizmo:** gonna take this. I think mine's burning a little slower.
It, I've been having, cuz of the draw issues. It's packed tight. Yeah, it's packed pretty tight. So, but, um, I'm really enjoying this, I think for a short smoke. This is exactly what I would want in
**Bam Bam:** moments like that. Yeah. I will be giving this a nice score. Yeah, me too. No doubt about it. Yeah. Yeah.
**Rooster:** Could you picture yourself smoking this in the
**Gizmo:** morning?
Yeah, I would. I'd say no with a co I've done it. I say no. I would do it with a coffee. I With a coffee and. Maybe like an Americano. Give it a [00:37:00] try. Maybe an Americano something strong. If I'm having a regular cup of, of really nice coffee of some sort. Yeah. I don't think I would do it. Yeah. But I would do it with, uh, with, with something a little stronger.
**Bam Bam:** It's fantastic. With a coffee in the morning. Yeah,
**Rooster:** yeah. Yeah. The Americano out of the Jira.
**Gizmo:** Mm-hmm. . Oh, now you're talking . I love my German man. . I'm so grateful for you for turning me onto that. So great,
**Rooster:** great machine. Yeah. If anybody's looking for, recommend for a fully automatic coffee maker, easiest thing to use.
Nope. Perfect. There's not a lot of programming involved. I mean, you can make various drinks like macchiatos, lattes, espressos, double espressos, flat whites. The machine is awesome. Yeah. It's amazing. It cleans itself. It's my second one over like, probably like
**Gizmo:** 15, so, so price. 15 years. Wow. Now they are quite pricey.
They are, but I actually, I actually bought a refurb directly from Dura I remember. So my price was pretty damn good. . Yeah. You paid about two, right? Uh, a little under two. [00:38:00] But for how much I spent at Starbucks, it's like I paid for it in like three months. There's no doubt about it. Between the wife, the kid, nine, family of four,
**Rooster:** going to Starbucks, it's like a 20, $20, uh, day , $20 day every day.
Yeah. You're spending 600 a month. Yeah. I,
**Pagoda:** I've stopped going to Starbucks. How come? Because. I tend to drink at least three to four, maybe even sometimes more coffee, uh, cups a day. And, uh, Starbucks was just becoming very expensive. Yeah. I remember paying a dollar 65, 5 years ago. Two 15. Yeah. Wow. And now the same drink is like 2 75 for the sh you know, just for a
**Gizmo:** tall pike.
And I just don't think their coffee's that great. They're regular
**Rooster:** coffee. Yeah. You know, another thing about this lounge, like a lot of times, oh, if I'm coming here in the evening, I would grab a Starbucks on the way. Yeah. Right? Yep. So when I'm coming here, I'm like, wait a minute, I can just come to 10 86.
Yep. And grab a double
**Gizmo:** espresso. It's a huge perk, honestly. It's great. And he [00:39:00] has the, uh, he has the lava, the lavasa cups, which is the, those are the beans we use in the Dura. Yeah. I
**Bam Bam:** totally look forward to making my coffee
**Gizmo:** when I get here. And I like too, that he has decafs, so if you're looking for a late night again with a half Corona after a few drinks, yeah.
You throw a decaf in, you have a half Corona, half hour, you're
**Bam Bam:** in and out. Exactly. Yeah. You know the nice thing about this place, you know, I've had moments where I've signed really great projects for what I do for a living. I feel in a celebratory mood, and it's very late at night. Yep. I'll come here alone, have the complete freedom to walk in whenever I want, make my coffee.
Poor glass of scotch and light up a cigar. It's great. That's awesome. It's, it's just such a great feeling. Yeah.
**Gizmo:** We're very lucky.
**Pagoda:** Yeah. Yeah. I, no, we are very lucky. Uh, uh, I've had friends come over from, uh, you know, uh, long Island and, uh, different places and, uh, they love the model and they've been, uh, looking for a 24 hour lounge, Long Island.
Now it's, I
**Gizmo:** did a, I did a four hour zoom last night with a bunch of the guys from Friends of a Bonos, f o h, [00:40:00] uh, and, uh, the proprietor there. and when I was telling some of the guys about our clubhouse, like there was a guy on there from Calgary, there was a guy from Pennsylvania that obviously Rob is in Australia.
Australia, yep. These guys were like completely blown away that we have access to a club like this. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's just, you can't, you don't find this every day.
**Bam Bam:** Now, before we found this place, we were contemplating building our own, starting our
**Gizmo:** own place. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I
**Rooster:** mean, we went to look at a few places.
Oh, we did, right?
**Gizmo:** Yeah. Came pretty
**Bam Bam:** close. Very close. We did until the, until the flood came, . Until the
**Gizmo:** flood . Until the hurricane, yeah. That's right. Remember that? Actually, I was over there today. I was, I was there two days ago. I was over there today picking up a, picking up a, a, an item over there. . And, uh, the bridge is completely rebuilt and it is, it was hopping.
There's a
**Bam Bam:** new tenant in that little beautiful
**Gizmo:** bungalow. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Did that, did that get
**Rooster:** flooded?
**Gizmo:** Yeah, the whole bridge got, the bridge got blown away. Wow. Yeah. No,
**Rooster:** but the actual structure that we were looking at, it's still there.
**Gizmo:** The, the shop shop, the little, it's still there. The little sh the little that was flooded.
[00:41:00] It was the whole, that
**Bam Bam:** whole park, uh, it was, there was water two feet above that floor level. Oh, wow. Which is what took out the bridge. Yeah. And the barn, the big beautiful red barn. Yeah. Which is what I really wanted. That was water. Two feet above. Oh. I mean, it's, it's awful spot's. Horrible. That's horrible.
Yeah. So this
**Gizmo:** was
**Rooster:** great timing. Yeah. And you were the first
**Gizmo:** one here. Yes. Yeah. Right. Yeah. You found it. Thank
**Rooster:** God you found it. And Senator actually came that very day and joined. Yes. Signed up. He signed up before you did?
**Gizmo:** Yes. Son of a, I came that evening.
**Bam Bam:** Fucking circumvented
**Gizmo:** again. . He got the pr, he got the prop, uh, the, the Good Locker.
That's right. Yeah.
**Bam Bam:** I love my locker though. Yeah, I do too. I'm happy. Yeah, I do too.
**Rooster:** Yeah. Almost
**Gizmo:** done with this. Yeah, I was gonna say we're coming to the end here, boys. Yeah. It's enjoyable. What are you thinking? It's great. So this is definitely, it's, it's definitely maintained. I feel like it's picked up a little bit in, in the oomph. I'm kind of getting in my mouth in the back of my throat a little bit, but it's not, I am having to work a little harder than I'd like to on it.
But on your stick
**Bam Bam:** cuz it's packed tight. Exactly. Same here. But this is just, uh, we'll [00:42:00] I'll take this down to my fingers. Burn. It's just so delicious. Yeah.
**Gizmo:** It's such a good cigar. The
**Rooster:** spice level picks
**Gizmo:** up in the last, it's definitely spice here. Yeah. And I think some of the fruit has left. Oh, agreed. Agreed.
I'm not getting a lot of the fruit. I wasn't getting
**Rooster:** a lot of fruit even in the beginning. I think I was getting more, mostly cedar. Okay. A little bit of like coffee and a little nuttiness, little bit of nuttiness in the background and some spice. But the spice is picked up in the last third. Yeah.
**Gizmo:** Yeah.
This is really delicious.
**Rooster:** I mean, this is all they, they make the, uh, they make the club Corona, they
**Gizmo:** make the RAs Ramona. They're specially selected. They make the gigante. They make the gigantes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. That's, I've never had that. That's a good stick too. Is it? Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, the gigantes is a double Corona.
I love that stick. You know, uh, you know, though, when we talk about double Corona, so you know, it's a pretty big cigar. So we're talking loosies. Yep. Uh, we're talking the punch double corona punch. I've, I never had the punch, the Hoyo double Corona. So there's four I think. Yeah. Yeah. Hoyos we have had, yeah, I [00:43:00] think, I think, I think to me that Lucy is the king and ganti is right behind that.
Jati is a very mild, I would say mild to medium cigar. . I don't think it gets to full. Yeah.
**Rooster:** It's, it's cigar has a little bit of a sweetness. It does. And I hate to use that word because I can just see Puba, like raising his eyebrow.
**Gizmo:** He does this, he goes, he here he goes. Sweetness. Sweetness. Again, . It's definitely got a fruity thing to it.
It does double
**Rooster:** chord. Yeah. It's def it's a, it's very different than the RAs. Yeah. And different than the cigar for sure.
**Gizmo:** So they also, uh, make the superiors, which we did on the pod superiors. Mm-hmm. , which is the La Casa del Havana exclusive. Yeah. That's funny.
**Rooster:** I had one the other day that cigar in particular, you smoke it and it smokes great.
The first third. The first third is delicious. Yeah. After.
**Gizmo:** It's falls
**Rooster:** apart. Yeah. Really it's, it's not, not good.
**Gizmo:** Wow. Not you get ammonia.
**Rooster:** Don't know what it's, it's [00:44:00] not, it's not ammonia. It's just like flavors are kind of flat, but they get muddled. Those delicious notes that you get in the first third of the stick, they disappear.
They disappear completely. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what it is. Yeah. I mean, I wish if that cigar, you could get those same flavors, like in the beginning, all the way to the end. That would be like a, how much is a. It's not cheap. Maybe 20. The superiors is
**Gizmo:** pretty bu pretty pricey. It comes in. That's expensive.
Comes in a dress box at 10. I mean, you're probably paying, I would assume, two 20 now. Yeah, that's a lot. Yeah.
**Rooster:** Two 40. Yeah. So you know about 2022.
**Gizmo:** And you know, the thing that bummed me out when we did that episode, and again, we're talking about the Ramon on Superiors, we did, um, a little while back. The thing that bummed me out about that is the fact that we were smoking cigars that were six years old.
Yeah. So they really had. . Whereas we're smoking a $6 cigar from Ramon right now. Yeah. It's not six anymore. Well, it's eight, 10, whatever. Okay. Still. So it's under 10, right? It's under 10. It's 10 and
**Bam Bam:** under. It's a bargain. It's a bargain for what you're getting in this little cigar. Yeah, it's a [00:45:00] bargain. This is my
**Rooster:** go-to small
**Bam Bam:** stick.
Yeah. Well this the half Corona. Come on. Yeah.
**Gizmo:** I don't have a, he's not big
**Rooster:** half Corona guy. I'm not a BigMan guy. That's
**Gizmo:** a, that's a problem. That is, that is an atrocity. It kind of
is.
**Rooster:** I have to say I'm just not a big, I just don't feel the upk. I mean,
**Bam Bam:** I find an allure to that brand
**Gizmo:** for some reason. I like the 54, especially the Winston.
Oh, oh, the Sir Winston's are so hard, hard. They're, they are.
**Rooster:** For
**Gizmo:** who? Oh, not for you. . I have, I I've, I've got, I have amassed quite a few actually. Yeah.
**Rooster:** So that, to me, sir Winston is, is the best, you know, H up and then I like the
**Gizmo:** 54.
**Bam Bam:** Well, dude, don't forget the up and two
**Gizmo:** for crying up and two's up and two's good.
Oh, it's not, dude, how good was love? 14 up and two. He did on the pod. Oh, come on. Come on.
**Bam Bam:** Come on. It was amazing. It was good. Rooster. Come on. It was good. You gotta leave. It was good. .
**Gizmo:** We need 'em when there's only four of us tonight. . Yeah, that's true. . We need him for the vote. Yeah,
**Rooster:** I
**Pagoda:** thought the up two was good.
Oh,
**Bam Bam:** it, it [00:46:00] is a worldclass cigar I think for me. Fantastic.
**Gizmo:** So, uh,
**Rooster:** I think the 54 and the 46, if I had to choose in the UND line mm-hmm. and then the number two for me. Oh, you're crazy. I mean, you guys would be like, number two would be
**Gizmo:** on the top of your, it's Winston for me It's Winston. So Winston for sure on the top.
Winston number 2 46. I do smoke more 40 sixes than any cuz they're just easier to get. But the, that would be my top three and I don't really particularly love either of the other Magnum. Yeah. I
**Bam Bam:** have a confession to make. So I've, I had one Winston. Winston,
they have
**Rooster:** to age.
**Gizmo:** Yeah. They have to sit for a while. They need four or five
**Bam Bam:** years. It was good. But the flavor profile was very mild for
**Gizmo:** me. Well, it's meant to be. Yeah, I know. It's, it's built to be a That is elegant. Such an elegant, elegant. It's
**Bam Bam:** velvety smooth, velvet, strong. It's very creamy. Absolutely.
It's just different ab it, it truly is. It is. There's nothing else like this. I need to smoke more of those. Hint [00:47:00] to really
**Gizmo:** get the appreciation. He's talking to you, g. He's talking to rooster. .
**Rooster:** Hand. Hand.
**Gizmo:** So what do you, what do you guys think? I'm burning my fingers. Yeah. You guys ready to rate this thing?
Yeah, man. All right, rooster, you're up.
**Rooster:** So this is one of my favorite small sticks. I mean, the favorite small stick about out of all the small, small sticks out there. Um, I'm gonna give it a nine. All right.
**Gizmo:** Great score. I'm gonna give it a nine. a
**Pagoda:** nine for me too. Yeah. Okay.
**Bam Bam:** I'm going
**Gizmo:** nine. All right. So that is an easy one, a flat 9.0 that is a
**Bam Bam:** stellar score for such a little cigar, but I
**Pagoda:** do wanna see what the half Corona really rates at.
Yeah. I can't wait
**Rooster:** to see that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure the half CRO is gonna get a high rating too. I mean, that's one of our, it's so, okay. Everybody
**Gizmo:** loves that. It's so different. So what do you guys think? You ready to move on to the Arturo Fuente? Yeah. Oh yeah. Short story. [00:48:00] So, uh, we did, uh, the same line, the Hemingway line, we did the signature, which rated very highly.
I think all of us were shocked at how well that performed. Yeah. Uh, and this is another cigar we got out of the 10 86 Humidor tonight, the Arturo Fuente Hemingway short story, which is in natural. So, uh, there actually are in this Violen now from Fuente, there are two other, um, Cigars that have been issued in the same exact size with different variations on the wrapper.
Mm-hmm. , there's the Maduro. Yep. Uh, and then there's the rare pink. Yep. Which is a little different. And I think some of that profit goes toward, uh, breast cancer research. So this is the classic. You can find it anywhere. Short story that we have in our hands right now. It it
**Bam Bam:** is a classic cigar. Absolutely.
It is. And it's a, we start, a lot of us started on that cigar. I had it early in my smoking career. I still have it to this day. It is so, so good. And
**Gizmo:** you talk about a cigar that's perfect in a 30 to 40 minute [00:49:00] scenario. Yeah. Any situation. This is, this is the one
**Bam Bam:** that is at least a half hour cigar. You've never had it?
No.
**Gizmo:** I'm really interested to see what you're think it is tonight. I'm pleasantly surprised now.
**Bam Bam:** I've never had the natural, I'll admit that. I haven't had a lot of, you've only had the Maduro? I've only had the Maduro. Oh, wow. Okay. You've had this, the natural,
**Gizmo:** no, this is how it comes. This is the normal one.
This is the, the Maduro's actually
**Bam Bam:** hard to find. So there's a club down the street in town. They have the Maduro, huh?
**Gizmo:** Yeah. Well, a
**Rooster:** while back when you started, like earlier,
**Bam Bam:** uh, was it a, was it a natural,
**Gizmo:** like It was definitely this. Okay. And I gotta Karo rapper or something. I gotta say I prefer in, in the Hemingway series.
I do prefer this a natural, this rapper. Yeah. So, um, all right boys, let's cut this thing. Do it. So we're getting on the colder on the wrapper's. A very unique shape. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a perfect perfecto. So it's closed on both ends. So it flares out, uh, toward the foot, it gets wider, and then it has a nipple, a nipple on it, as PBA once said.
Right. It has the fuente nipple on it. Understood. Which also [00:50:00] the, the signature did as well. Yeah. But that's, this nipple's pretty big. . , yeah. So it's, uh, it, it starts the, the burn initially is very interesting, trying to get it going. So this cigar, uh, is a Cameroon wrapper. and it is a Dominican binder and filler.
What I find
**Bam Bam:** interesting on the nose, I'm get more on the nose than the cold draw. Hmm. Let me see. The nose is beautiful. The wrapper. There's a, there's a little sweetness to it, which way We hate that term, but it's,
**Gizmo:** it's there. The rap, I agree with you. There's not much on the draw, but the wrapper smells delicious.
Yeah, yeah. Fantastic is sweet. Yes. And the draw is, the draw is wide open. Even though the foot is closed, the draw is wide open. How, how is that? It's amazing,
**Rooster:** I guess. I mean, it's closed, but it's, it's open.
**Gizmo:** Yeah. Yeah. So it's like a soft opening, you know, ,
**Rooster:** it's not like a, like the tattoo High Casa Casas.
That's complete. It's really like a nipple . [00:51:00]
**Gizmo:** All right, boys, let's light this thing. The Arturo Fuente short story. It's a 48 ring gauge by four inch cigar. Again, a perfect perfecto outta Dominican Republic by the Fuente family. Our second of the Hemingway line. We've done on the pod and our second tonight in our short smoke special.
Very exciting. What's cool
**Bam Bam:** about the cigar? You only need to light the extreme tip. Yep. You don't need to blacken it, you don't need to really heavily light it and it just continues all the way through. It's so cool.
**Gizmo:** Great flavor and smoke output to start right off the bat. Yeah. You know, there, there is something to be said and I know we had a tough time with the opus that we got, but there is something about a good fuente and I think their mid, their mid-tier lines are performing better to me than their high-end stuff.
Yeah, yeah. Which is why I'm excited to try that Petron Fuente collaboration. Oh yeah. Um, that's coming out, you know, no November right? Yeah, it [00:52:00] should be out now. Really? Um, yeah, I haven't seen it yet for the holidays. Yeah, it's coming out for the holidays. Yeah. Um, they did, you know, they did the, uh, the last issue is cigar fish and Otto had the Fuente and Patron on the cover, so that was pretty cool.
But, um, Yeah, I, there's something about that classic Fuente flavor profile that
**Bam Bam:** this is unusual, but I'm getting a little citrus a bit really. Maybe that's the wrong term, but it's an unusual flavor profile. It's so freaking good.
**Gizmo:** And I think, you know, I think there's something that happens as it opens up with the flavor.
Yeah. Has a little bump to it.
**Bam Bam:** You know, when you go from a Cuban to this, you really appreciate the flavor that you're getting right off the bat here. Yeah. It's, it's pretty, it's something to be said. So
**Gizmo:** now for the, a great draw as well. Yeah. The draw's perfect, right? Yeah. So for the listener, the reason why we do the Cuban first, and we talked about this a few times, but we always, yeah.
When I take this, this pretty universal for all of us, and, and I've had some listeners ask about [00:53:00] this in the email. When you're smoking a, a few cigars in a row, you always, in my opinion, I'm with you. I know this is my opinion, I know where you're going. You always wanna start with lighter to medium body cigars.
Mm-hmm. and work your way up. Now we're gonna generalize, but Cubans are generally not as full-bodied as a new world. Mm-hmm. as a Dominican, which I would say is kind of in the middle. And the Nicaragua, which is on the, the, the more, I, I don't wanna use the word strong or full, because it's more robust. It's more robust, it's more, it's got more ooph to it than there's more body.
Not in nicotine, not in kicking you around, but just in not fuller, fuller body, a fuller body cigar. So that's why we start with the Cuban and we're gonna finish tonight with
**Bam Bam:** this new world. Yeah. Yeah. And you work your way through.
**Gizmo:** Yeah. This is really nice. Mm. Smoking. Great. Oh yeah. I'm gonna give it a little bit more of a touch on the, uh, on the light though. I don't think I did [00:54:00] enough.
**Bam Bam:** So it's unusual right on the initial few draws. I got that, uh, very sharp citrus for me and it disappeared immediately. Now it's kind of settled in. Hmm.
**Gizmo:** Definitely getting a little bit of pepper. It is definitely a pepper. Yeah. Like a white pepper for me. Yeah. It's not like a bad pepper. Yeah,
**Bam Bam:** no, it's nice white pepper. Yeah,
**Gizmo:** it's really, uh, hmm. I, I don't think I would say that this has, that. This is very sweet. No, it's kind of earthy. A little bit. A little espresso.
A little espresso. A little coffee in it. Yeah. Mm-hmm. . Maybe a touch of Coco Beautiful
**Bam Bam:** rapper. A touch. Yeah. Yeah.
**Gizmo:** So this is
**Rooster:** called The Hemingway. Mm-hmm. short story, right? Yep. Yeah. Homage to the famous
**Gizmo:** named after famous, famous author. Yeah. So the, so the entire line is kind of, uh, [00:55:00] revolves around Ernest Hemingway, who was a, just like, Churchill was an OG lizard.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Um, lived in Cuba for
**Rooster:** Yeah. Quite some time. Yeah. He love Cuba. Yeah. But
**Pagoda:** I don't think Hemingway Gotta try the shot . This, this, this particular one. Yeah. The short story.
**Gizmo:** Yeah. I don't think he ever got to try it. Um, beast Cigars have been around for quite some time. This is kind of a, the core of, I would say the, the Fuente family's line, or, yeah.
I don't know. When,
**Rooster:** when do you think Were they introduced? Because I, I smoked one of these in when I foot, this was my first cigar a long time ago. Yeah. Long time. I was in, I think in
**Gizmo:** 95. I, I would say these are early nineties, early eighties, early nineties. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah.
**Bam Bam:** These go for about what, 15 bucks?
No. 12 to 15?
**Gizmo:** No. In in a retail retail story, you're looking at probably like 10. 10 to 12. With tax. Yeah. Okay. With tax, you're probably looking at 12. There used to be six. Yeah. , there used to be three to five in some markets. [00:56:00]
**Bam Bam:** I love the cigar.
great.
**Gizmo:** Smoke apple. Yeah. This is really nice.
**Rooster:** What, what? It's hard for me to pick out some of the notes from this. Yeah. I don't know what you guys are
**Gizmo:** getting to me. I to say anything about pepper peppery is kind of where I wanna pepper focus. But I want to clarify though, because I agree with you, but I don't, I wouldn't say that the flavor's bad or muddled.
No. It's just there's not specific notes we're jumping at. There's,
**Bam Bam:** there's a richness to it. Yeah. And that's really what I think takes over. And as far as the flavor of it, pepper and I think coffee work, I think that's what I'm getting here. And
**Gizmo:** I, and I think this is a very accessible cigar. Mm-hmm. for a beginner.
Oh yeah. Yeah. First, you know, we talked about that a few episodes back about cigars that we recommend for. for beginners. I know this was the first cigar you ever smoked, right? Rooster? Yeah. So this is a great cigar for people to try cuz it's such a short commitment too. Yeah, that's that's right. And it's not,
**Rooster:** it's not, it's not a mild cigar.
No. You know, I think it's more like a medium, medium bodied [00:57:00] smoke. Yeah. But definitely for somebody who's looking for, you know, to try something from the Fuentes line and doesn't want to get into the opus, you know, the higher end stuff and spend, you know, 30, 30 to $40 a steak, uh, this is a great, uh, entry, great entry into that
**Gizmo:** line.
Listen, if you gave me a budget of spending 50 bucks on Hemingway cigars, , I would buy cigars from the signature line, the, excuse me, the Hemingway line. They like the signature or, or the short story or the best seller over any of the opus. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I know that that's kind of heresy for some of our listeners out there who maybe.
who are big Opus folks, but that's just not
**Rooster:** me. Well, Opus, you know, when Opus first came out Yeah. They were, they were great. I think they were just aging the tobaccos a lot longer. So the cigars were smoother. You were getting some very distinct flavors. Now if you buy an opus and you [00:58:00] smoke it fresh, I mean, although they say it's still more aged tobacco, but it's not quite as aged as they used to be.
Know they'll need,
**Gizmo:** need to sit. They need to sit for a while. So, pagoda, what are you thinking about this? Having this for the first time tonight with us?
**Pagoda:** Um, enjoying, uh, at least a first cent, very peppery, I thought. Yeah. I, I got a puff where I felt . It was a little strong push, but overall strong for you? No, like just a peppery push that came in my tongue.
Oh yeah. I wasn't expecting it. Yeah. Yeah. And uh, yeah. Great. And, uh, draws
**Rooster:** great. It's,
**Pagoda:** uh, smoke output. Oh yeah. It's
**Gizmo:** good. Great smoke output. This is, you know, it's funny you talk about the, the pepper and where it hits for me, I do get a little bit of on my lips, which I is not common for me with a lot of cigars.
Like when I get a pepper thing, I'm not usually getting it on my lips and I, I'm getting in touch of it a
little
**Bam Bam:** bit. Yeah. So I think when you get a little further ahead, yeah. I lost the pepper. Really? And it's really mellowed into this really [00:59:00] rich, delicious kind of unexplainable profile that I'm, I'm really liking a lot.
**Gizmo:** I'm a
**Rooster:** little bit of like melt chocolate kind
**Gizmo:** of thing. Yeah. Deeper chocolate
**Bam Bam:** maybe. Hmm. I think I've started,
**Pagoda:** uh, smoking slow than you guys.
**Gizmo:** Yeah, it's good. You're, you're, you're refined now. It's a rare occurrence.
So, um, in line with, you know, smoking and, you know, grabbing something to smoke, you know, outdoors or whatever. You know, you don't wanna run to the tower. I know you, you, you're a big fan of the, uh, desktop humidor, right? Mm-hmm. .
**Rooster:** Yeah. I love the desktop. Desktop Humidors. Um, I have, I have two. They're both Daniel, Daniel
**Gizmo:** Marshalls, Daniel Marshall.
Um, are they expensive?
**Rooster:** They are. Cheap. They're kind of like in the middle, maybe a little bit on the higher side. Yeah. Like [01:00:00] seven to nine in that range. Oh, wow. Depending on the
**Gizmo:** size. Depending on the size
**Rooster:** and the model. So I have one that holds, I think maybe about 75, and the other one is about 150. Mm-hmm.
But I bought 'em a while back and I think I paid about 800 or eight 50. Wow. But the finish on those is beautiful. Beautiful.
**Gizmo:** They are gorgeous. Like, it's like a piece of furniture. And it's Are they walnut? They're walnut. They're walnut,
**Rooster:** but you know, one of them is I think Rosewood or, uh, wow. Beautiful. Um, but the, the wood and the finish and they keep the cigars so well, really, I mean, they come with the, uh, Humidification unit, but now I just use a bda.
I mean, it just, yeah. Bda, sogar easier. Just stay perfect unless, yes. And what's nice about having a desktop humidor is we, we all have towers, right? We all have the pretty, pretty similar towers. Mm-hmm. . So towers, you know, you have boxes and you have like cigars kind of hidden, like on the shelf sometimes you're kind of looking for certain sticks, so you put it, I kind [01:01:00] of like line up like what I'm gonna smoke, like for that week.
Ah, put it in the desktop humidor. So it's like easy access. You go and you grab a stick and you out the door. That's great. Otherwise you, you spend like 20 minutes in front of the tower with the door open and you're messing up with the humidity and stuff. And, uh, see, but I, I kind of
**Gizmo:** set up a tray in my.
To kind of be that tray. So what I'll do, I'll go as I'm prepping, let's say the next week or two, or I'm, I'm gonna reach in, if I'm gonna grab, let's say a Monte two or a Mag 46 or an to smoke, I'll pull three or four of them and throw 'em in the same
**Rooster:** tray. Yeah. But when Tray, when do you make that decision to smoke those sticks?
Like are you, are you planning like a week ahead? I mean, I'm
**Gizmo:** just always that I kind of always have my regular rotation stuff sitting in that tray and singles. Yeah. So I can just quickly reach in and pop. That makes sense. So I don't have to dig for a box and dig into it. You know, I'm kind of very similar to what you're doing, but the thing that I like about what you do [01:02:00] is that there's an opportunity there, especially if you're in Tupperware.
Let's say, let's say you're a listener who's in Tupperware, which all of us are still at times, and were, um, and it works. It works great. Tupperware er works, Tupper works great. Yeah. Some, some folks argue it works better than anything, but, um, you know, , what you can do is you can have your desktop at a lower humidity.
So let's say you're keeping your tower at 65 or 62 or whatever. You can keep, you know, your, your, your desktop for dry boxing. Pull the humidity down just a little bit more When you throw those sticks in there for a few days or a week mm-hmm. and they're gonna smoke
**Bam Bam:** even better. Yeah. It steps it down, it down, it gives it time to acclimate.
Exactly. .
**Gizmo:** So it's not only elegant and convenient mm-hmm. But it does serve a practical purpose. Sure. Of Right. Really readying the cigars to be smoked. Because let's say you have the box of, you know, let's say you have a box of short stories and you keep them in your tower and they're closer to your humidification [01:03:00] unit than your box of Bova BEUs Pheno.
Or Def force. Or def force, or they're higher up or your, uh, your, your, uh, ramoni onus that we just had the small club and they're also higher up in the tower. Yeah. So let's just say one is, you know, you throw 'em in that desktop. Now it's even Steven. Yeah. On the humidity. Yeah. It's cool. You know, so it kind of helps you have a better smoking.
Oh yes.
**Rooster:** And that's also a great presentation when you have like guests come over, you know, you're sitting outside on your deck. . You can't bring the tower up. . Yeah. You can't, you know, you could bring the, bring the whole tray. You're not
**Gizmo:** trying hard enough. You know, , .
**Rooster:** So you bring that little humidor and it, you know, instead of cigars just sitting out, you bring the humidor in, you present the humidor, right?
Yeah. And, uh, you offer a cigar out of the humidor. That's very nice. It's nice, it's elegant.
**Bam Bam:** It's elegant. It really
**Rooster:** is. Yeah. That's cool. So it's just another added advantage. And it, and it, it is a piece of furniture. I mean, it looks cool. Yeah. Yeah. So you can get a desktop humidor for under a hundred bucks maybe.
Yes. You [01:04:00] know? Yeah.
**Gizmo:** You, that's, that's a great point, rooster that I didn't even think to say. It's, it's not much. You don't have to spend that,
**Rooster:** spend a ton of money on. Yep. So, as a beginner Yeah.
**Gizmo:** If
**Rooster:** you could start off with a sub hundred dollars desktop. Yeah. One for 30, 40, 50 bucks. And then as you start acquiring, acquiring more boxes, get a Tupperware.
Yep. Do the Tupperware thing until you, you know, you want to get a tower if
**Gizmo:** you find the
**Bam Bam:** right desktop for under a hundred bucks. . It's worth, its weighting gold. Yeah. So when my son was born, I bought a $75 humidor holds a hundred cigars. I still have it to this day. Do you still use it? I do use it. Oh, awesome.
I keep my new worlds in there. Okay. It, it, it really keeps the humidity. That's
**Gizmo:** perfect. That's what I was gonna ask you. How does it holds?
**Bam Bam:** It's, it's airtight really. It's, I'm
**Gizmo:** shocked. You know, it's funny, I bought one off of a cigar bid. It's
**Bam Bam:** a cheap, it's a cheap humidor. Yeah. It's got a glass top, which is frowned upon.
Yeah. Cuz you lose, it doesn't lose. It's unbelievable. Yeah. So I, I, there are good ones
**Gizmo:** out there. I bought one on cigar [01:05:00] bid or something for a hundred bucks or seven when I really first started smoking. Man, I seasoned it. I kept trying. I could not keep that thing. It was always, even when it was closed for long periods of time, I could never keep it consistent.
**Bam Bam:** So, you know what I find in that one? I have a bar, a jar of silica. Ah. . And you know, I'm a silica guy now that silica, that jar of silica I've had for 15 years. Wow. I just recharge it with water and it just re it's incredible.
**Gizmo:** So what do you
**Rooster:** do? You sprinkle it with water?
**Bam Bam:** Yeah, well it's an open jar. I take the cap off.
I threw the cap bar distilled. Yeah, yeah. Or actually when I run out of, uh, distilled, oh no, no. I don't use tap. I go right to my tap. It's insane. I've had the same jar of silica for 15 years.
**Rooster:** You don't just spit in
**Bam Bam:** it. . No, that's wild. The silica is magical. I'm a
**Gizmo:** big silica. It really is. It really is. You know, I use silica because my ambient is, is fairly humid where my tower is.
**Bam Bam:** And you have jars on your [01:06:00] shelves as you go up. I
**Gizmo:** have trays of, uh, of, of dry silica. Cat litter, right? Yeah. Kitty litter. Yeah. . So the only, I know you're kidding. For the listener who's just hearing this for the first time. That's right. I use unscented silica kitty litter. Yeah. Because it's the cheapest way to get silica in bulk.
and I microwave it. I dry it out and I throw up my tower and it regulates that shit perfectly. Wow.
**Bam Bam:** That's cool.
**Gizmo:** Yeah. I'm proud of Very industrious. Yeah. I'm proud of myself. So
**Rooster:** the only problem I have with keeping loose sticks in the tower, you're losing space. Like, you know, we all have so many boxes, so I ideally, I just want to keep boxes.
Mm-hmm. and, uh, GI and I are actually, we might, uh, yeah.
**Gizmo:** I, I pulled the trigger. I'm doing it . You guys are outta your mind. I'm
**Rooster:** doing it. Get the, uh, get the, get the new tower. The double wide. The double Forget
**Gizmo:** the double . Help. My wife never
**Rooster:** listens to this episode. . Just kidding, honey.
**Gizmo:** Yeah, we're, we're, we're, we're doubling our space.
Moving
**Pagoda:** on up. Like, she'll definitely see it when it, [01:07:00] when it arrives.
**Rooster:** Yeah. But, so I'm gonna get the unit. Without the glass. Uh, so you can't see. So it's like an so nobody can see inside what's inside. Right. So that will give us, give me at least a lot more room to put stack more boxes. Right? Yeah. And it's, I think it's deeper and it's
**Gizmo:** wider.
Yeah. It's, it's a little deeper, wider. And it, it's, it has a better use of space than, than the furniture kind of look of the one we have now. Any idea how many it holds? I was gonna ask you what, it's supposed to hold 2000. Oh, it's
**Bam Bam:** gotta hold a lot
**Gizmo:** more than, but it it does, it does more. It does. No, but it's, it's rated for 2000, but it can hold three or four.
I think
**Bam Bam:** the single, the single tower that I have, the tower of Power, technically it's written in a specs. 1200 thousand, 2,500 cigars. Oh wow. Okay. I thought it was 3000. I thought the, the one, the larger one you're getting should hold at least 5,000, maybe
**Rooster:** 3000 half Coronas,
**Pagoda:** That'd be fine.
**Gizmo:** Yeah. Yeah. But I'm, so I'm gonna get the one with the glass. So, You know, it has two doors on it. I'm getting no humidity unit. I'm [01:08:00] gonna put my own in humidification. Mm-hmm. , I'm gonna put a cigar oasis in it because I like the wifi control. Nice. Um, I, the wifi
**Rooster:** control, the shelves perforated,
**Gizmo:** or I don't know.
I don't know. I think so. They have that slots like that. Yeah. I think that, I think the shelves have slot, but they're not slanted. They're straight. Yeah.
**Rooster:** Yeah. I like that. I do too. I like when they're straight. Yeah. Um, because this way, you know, the nothing is moving.
Oh,
**Bam Bam:** yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't stack your boxes on a slanted shelf.
It's, it's impossible. I'm respecting the cigar tremendously. I am too. I mean, how I do have this occasionally not enough. Really not enough. Yeah.
**Rooster:** Yeah. Do you guys find, uh, how does it stack up against the Hemingway that we, that we did
**Gizmo:** earlier? I, I like the signature better than this. Yeah. I think thes, I think the, the signature.
Um, I think it has, it's, I think it's a little bit more dynamic. I think it has a little bit more, uh, precise [01:09:00] flavor notes that we can call out. What's the dimension on that
**Bam Bam:** one
**Gizmo:** again? Um, I think it's six by 40,
**Bam Bam:** right? Six. Right. Let me look over. I feel the flavor notes are concentrated in this little guy. I did love that cigar though.
**Pagoda:** I'll tell you right now. But what flavors are you getting now? Like, I'm not getting a lot like Yeah, it's um, it's not very
**Gizmo:** woodiness, it's not very clear with a little bit of
**Bam Bam:** it's, I honestly don't, A little
**Rooster:** bit of milk chocolate type thing. Yeah. There's still that chocolate, you know, that and pepper like it, you, when you smoke the cigar, you feel the pepper and the, the front of your tongue.
Yeah. Yeah. Right. It's got
**Gizmo:** And on my lips, yeah. A little bit. Right at the front. Yep. Right at the front. Yeah. I, I would, so to answer your question, bam, it's, uh, the signature is six by 47. Okay. .
**Bam Bam:** That was a great cigar.
**Gizmo:** A great cigar. Very good. Yeah. That's also a perfect perfecto. Yeah.
**Bam Bam:** And I think we gave it a
**Gizmo:** very nice rating.
We did. Yeah. Yeah. Got a good rating. I, to me, I think that, you know, for all the cigars that we've smoked and how many, you know, how long it's been since I've had this, [01:10:00] um, I, you know, this is not something, did you get this? Again, this is not something that I'm gonna reach for mm-hmm. personally. Um, but it's not bad because I just think that I'm in a different part of the journey.
Yeah. Now, every person that ha comes over my house, I have at any given time 10 to 15 of these on hand because it is perfect for those kind of folks that don't smoke like that. Yeah. That don't smoke often. Yes. And so for what this is, I'm gonna give this a rating for what it is not. how it slots in my rotation.
It's gonna be in this moment how it's smoking. It doesn't mean I'm gonna reach for it, but it's a very
**Bam Bam:** good cigar for me. I totally get what you're saying, but I, I happen to like this a lot and I do have this, maybe in a month I'll have it two or three times. Yeah. I do go for this. It's a probably a good end of evening cigar for me.
If I'm only having two, one or two, I'll grab this and I'm done. Yeah. Because it's really satisfying
**Gizmo:** for me. Yeah. I mean, I think
**Rooster:** I would prefer, like in this line, if I was gonna get a box, [01:11:00] I would get the uh, Hemingway
**Gizmo:** signature. Me too. Yeah. Me.
**Rooster:** Because I mean, I feel there's a lot more choices in a smaller size.
Yeah. Right. And I have enough of those. So I think the signatures series would, uh, satisfy me more. And I remember it being a little bit more flavorful.
**Gizmo:** I agree. Right? I agree. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and not to it. This isn't bad. And I think the rating is gonna reflect that it's not a bad cigar. Mm-hmm. . Um, I just think it's a a a a fairly modest Yeah.
It's
**Bam Bam:** very modest. It's a modest cigar. It's a great way of putting it. Yeah. Yeah.
**Gizmo:** It's not trying too hard. Nope. But you know, as I sip my Don Julio Nek mm-hmm. , the flavor in that knocks this out of the ring . Like it's, you know, it's just, it's not even close, you know? And I'm not saying that it's better, I'm saying just quite literally the flavor in
**Bam Bam:** this.
It's an unusual match. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And we didn't plan that so, . [01:12:00] Um, there is nostalgia wrapped around the cigar for me. Right. Because it's early the smoking days. Yeah,
**Gizmo:** yeah, yeah. No, I've had some great memories of this. Mm-hmm. with folks that don't smoke cigars all the time, and I want to have one.
They want to have one. We sit down, we have a Hemingway. Yeah. You know, it's,
**Bam Bam:** you're, you're hanging out with a common folk at that point. , . You're an elitist.
**Gizmo:** I'm not like Rooster though, where I, I'm sitting there smoking like a patron idiot and he, and he's got like a 30 cigar in his hand. He's, he's handing out, uh, he's handing out junk to his, what, what are you talking about?
to his guests. That was a very funny story.
**Bam Bam:** I'll tell you, that night where you accused me of making fun or or rejecting the 8 98 that Vegas robinia that you gave us. Yeah. With 2011. That's the one
**Gizmo:** that is the one that's the greatest cigar of all time. The one I mentioned that on the, uh, the Friends of a Bono Zoom I did
**Bam Bam:** last night.
It goes back to what I said earlier. When you have that cigar that hits you, you'll never, ever forget it. I
**Gizmo:** said [01:13:00] to, to, it's an unforgettable cigar, Rob Isla from f o h. And I said, oh, that's, you know, I said, you know the greatest cigar I've ever had. We were talking about it. I said, if I could spend, you know what we were talking about, we're talking about Bon Roberts, cuz he owns that the auction house.
You, you can only imagine what
**Rooster:** he has
**Gizmo:** smoked. Oh, I can't imagine. Mm-hmm. . But I said to him, I said, we were talking about people who spend ridiculous amounts of money on cigars, you know, because they have an emotional attachment to it. Right. So someone who's buying a box of age, something that maybe that was the first cigar they smoked or they smoked that with their father or their uncle or their grandfather.
So they spend stupid money on it. Mm-hmm. and, and the rest of our eyes. Sure. And I said, if a box of Vegas Robia Classicos came up from 2011, I don't know that there's a, a number cap that we wouldn't pay, that we would not pay to have another classic. That's exactly right. And he totally. Agreed. That he's like, that was a brilliant star.
Oh yeah. Wow.
**Bam Bam:** Yeah. I love his website. Does he have
**Gizmo:** any ? I didn't ask. I didn't ask. I didn't ask. You should best [01:14:00] He might.
**Rooster:** You don't see them? No. They've just completely disappeared.
**Gizmo:** Yeah. I, you know, I'm afraid of too, is
**Bam Bam:** that a lizard recently acquired a box, right? Yeah.
**Gizmo:** Yeah.
**Rooster:** Puba did. Yes,
**Bam Bam:** he did
**Gizmo:** CX too. You know that he got a box of Classicos.
Yes, he did. Yeah. Oh, that's right. Yeah. And, and didn't I tip him off to it? You did. And because of the
**Bam Bam:** tip.
**Gizmo:** Yeah. He should share. Oh, let's make a note of that. You should make a note. No, you know, I did. I, I remember this now. I tipped him off. It was a little while ago, but I tipped him off, um, because he was the one that introduced us to that cigar.
Right? That's right. So I felt, I felt it was inappropriate if I tried to jump
**Bam Bam:** on. Now it's funny. Puba introduced Senator. Senator introduced me, right. And in his senator lounge, uh, it was, uh, I had, uh, an experience with that cigar. I didn't hear or see anything smoking that thing. It was just, I was enthralled.
It was just, it's
**Gizmo:** a fantastic good rooster did the same [01:15:00] for me. I'll never forget where I was sitting, the temperature, what was on tv, what I was wearing, what he was wearing. It was like such a stamp. What was I wearing? Time. I don't wanna say it. I don't wanna say it on the pod. It's a little, what was I wearing?
It's a little inappropriate. I remember what he was wearing. No, but you know, like, I remember all that. I remember the circumstance, the fire that was on It was, it was, was it just the two of you? It was, it was very romantic.
**Bam Bam:** Now, the ridicule that night was, do I like this better than the 8 98? I mean, that's a hard argument.
What
**Gizmo:** have fire stakes? I mean, come on. They were unbelievable stakes.
**Bam Bam:** You guys were very unfair to me
**Gizmo:** that.
**Rooster:** So I don't know which, which did you have the 2011? Because I have a 2002
**Gizmo:** box
**Bam Bam:** also. No, you gave us a 2011. Okay. Yeah. And you gave us an aged to 8 98. Okay. Yeah,
**Gizmo:** that was a spectacular. How about this?
This is funny. Hold on one second. I'm sorry. So, Mrs. Gizmo just texted me a picture of a cigar, a short, she's smoking a short, she said, no, no, no, no, no. A short story that we're smoking right now, . And she [01:16:00] goes, someone had a cigar with a picture of the dog. Oh yeah. All guilty . So the dog, I guess I left one sitting on, on the bed or something, and the dog got to it.
Look at the, look at the face on the dog. Wait, you had the short story today? No, I had it sitting out to prepare to bring, ah, and he grabbed one, but then I realized, just grabbed one. Yeah. I, I just had it sitting around in case we needed one. But, you know, uh, John here, he has so many boxes of him. Um, so we got 'em here.
But yeah. So the pup, the pup also had a short story tonight.
**Bam Bam:** Pagoda,
**Pagoda:** how you doing over there? I'm really relaxed. I
**Rooster:** see. I love that. Do you remember seeing a post on the, on the Facebook group? So this guy, he takes a picture of Cohiba, Sieg Glo sixes completely destroyed.
**Gizmo:** Oh, that's right. I saw that. I
**Rooster:** saw Complicatedly like, yeah.
Yeah. His, uh, I don't know how old a kid is. Toddler.
**Gizmo:** Toddler, yeah.
**Rooster:** Honestly, he goes upstairs for like two [01:17:00] minutes. He comes back down and this kid has completely destroyed like
**Gizmo:** 20, $2,500. 2,500 per, they're probably fake.
**Bam Bam:** They're probably fake .
**Gizmo:** I don't think so. But his reaction were fake. I don't know. I mean, his reaction was not, what would your reaction
**Bam Bam:** be?
I'd have to leave the house . I would leave the. , that would not be good. . Yeah. No, I'd go for a drive .
**Gizmo:** Calm
**Rooster:** that long. A long drive. Yeah. . And
**Pagoda:** then leave the kid and come
**Rooster:** back. . I won't, I won't come home for days. , , honey. I need some time alone.
**Gizmo:** So we're, I guess, a little bit beyond halfway through here, boys of the Hemingway. Short story. What do you think? Yeah, it's, it's pretty good. It's, it's satisfying. I can't, you know what's so funny is I can't say anything bad about it. No. But I can't sit here and tell you what You're getting great notes about it.
Yeah. Which is, I think you, it's unusual
**Bam Bam:** for us. It's unusual. It is satisfying, but there isn't anything you [01:18:00] can pick up.
**Gizmo:** But I don't think I wanna say that it's muddled. It's
**Bam Bam:** just No, I don't, I don't feel it's muddled. Yeah. Yeah.
**Gizmo:** It's, it's just doing what it, I guess it's supposed to do.
**Pagoda:** Yeah. Yeah. So for me, the one, uh, of flavor that's the peppery tastes like,
**Bam Bam:** Still getting pretty consistent.
You're still getting that? I'm still getting pepper too. Yeah. No, I'm not getting much
**Pagoda:** pepper. A little bit of earthiness wilderness. I don't know. I, yeah,
**Bam Bam:** and just pepper, I'm getting a nice cocoa here.
**Gizmo:** Yeah. Yeah.
**Rooster:** Did you have
**Pagoda:** uh, coffee before this? No.
**Rooster:** Coffee would go well with this. It would.
**Gizmo:** Yeah, it would. I bet coffee might enhance this.
I
**Pagoda:** great. It's going really well with the ablo, I must say. Yeah, I bet
**Bam Bam:** you need a refill. Yeah,
**Gizmo:** I do. . I think this would go well with the bourbon too. Yeah. Thisness of the bourbon. I think a, a sweet bourbon I think would be really good with this. Yep. Yep. Eagle rare. Eagle Rare. Rare Basil Hayden. [01:19:00] Yeah. I'm very excited by the way, they're opening a total wine where pretty close to me in Towa.
Really? Yeah. So another total wine's going up. I'm very excited about that. Wow. Wow. Cool. Never enough wine stores, right? Nope. Especially in New Jersey. . That is
**Rooster:** one store. Like if I need to pick up some like non-alcoholic beer, you're set the selection that they
**Gizmo:** have. You're is good. You're all set. It's unreal.
That's awesome. It's
**Rooster:** huge. It's unreal. Huge. It's privately, I mean, I know exactly where to go. . That's awesome. You know they, yeah. It's like kind of towards the back, like where
**Gizmo:** all the beers are in the, in the storage room by the bathroom. our back in a tent. You should, you should
**Rooster:** see. I mean, the, the selection is, I've seen It
**Gizmo:** is unbelievable.
It is good. Yeah. That's good. That's cool to know. I mean, that's good to note for listeners who, and for guests who don't drink and want to have a beer. Yeah. I mean, it's nice to, that that's a important part of what they're asking. I mean, you can get loggers.
**Rooster:** You can get stouts, you can get porters, you can get, uh, you name it, they have IPAs now.
Wow. [01:20:00] Delicious. All non-alcoholic. All non-alcoholic. And they even have, uh, ciders now. I had a cider and I was like, wow,
**Gizmo:** this is great. Wow. Awesome. That's
**Bam Bam:** awesome. That's cool. , you're no longer living under a rock. , .
**Rooster:** I'm still under a rock. He's
**Gizmo:** still under the rock. So, um, you guys got any, uh, fun stuff coming up for Thanksgiving?
Any travel or anything like that? Food, yeah. work,
**Rooster:** family. It's busy. Yeah. Yeah. Family comes over. Thanks. Family.
**Gizmo:** We, we normally host. You host. Yeah. So it's usually,
**Rooster:** it's a, it's a pretty big ordeal. Right. But we don't like to order out, we like to make stuff. Of course. Us too. Make stuff at all. Sure, sure. So this year mean it'll be much easier to, I'm sorry, much easier to like Yeah.
Just have it catered and you know, but we like to make, there's some traditional, traditional dishes that we make sure. And they have to be made, made at home because nobody else
**Gizmo:** makes it. Yeah. Nobody's making it. Right, right. So,
**Pagoda:** no. But as a vegetarian, what do you, what's
**Rooster:** your primary day? So if, if you look at a [01:21:00] Thanksgiving meal, you eat a lot of, other than Turkey, everything else is vegetarian.
No, I agree. That's true. The stuffing can be easily made vegetarian. Yeah. You do like, you know, side dishes of, we do like cheesy potatoes. Jill makes cheesy potatoes and it's a staple on Thanksgiving. Nice. It's made in a crock pott and takes like three, four hours. Very satisfying. You do the green beans, uh, You know, or Gratin or the Onion.
What I
**Gizmo:** love, I went the corn casserole. Corn cas. Aren't you doing this
**Bam Bam:** too? Yes. You're roasting a soy ball too, aren't you? ?
**Gizmo:** Uh,
**Rooster:** actually, they've, you know, they, they have gotten pretty fancy with these soy balls. . It's soy bowl Trader. Trader Joe's makes like a stuffed Turkey. Oh yeah. Tomato is delicious. It's a roast.
That's cool. Field Roast is another brand that makes it, and they have come a long way. Soy, uh, lot of it is a tofu bake. Soy or tofu or, there's, I mean, there's a lot of different variations of plant-based,
**Gizmo:** uh, roast. Oh yeah. There's a, I guess beyond meat probably.
**Rooster:** I don't think Beyond [01:22:00] Meat has a roast, but Field Roast is a company that, uh, interesting.
Cool. That makes it now That's cool. I mean, there's ev just like non-alcoholic beers. Yeah, there's so much plant-based. We were actually looking at the menu to go to Bareburger. . Right. Just for the heck of it. Bare. That's cool.
**Gizmo:** Bareburger has not for
**Rooster:** Thanksgiving six. No, no, no. I'm just,
**Gizmo:** you know, Actually, they're gonna go
**Rooster:** Thursday night at seven.
That's not a bad, you know what we have done, we have gone to Kin's, uh, for Thanksgiving. They, they do a great, uh, Thanksgiving dinner, by the way. I've heard about
**Gizmo:** that. Yeah, I've heard about that. It's
**Bam Bam:** awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I love that place. Yeah. Great, great
**Rooster:** spot. Yeah. Um, I mean, the plant-based options, I mean, there's just so much out there now that that's amazing.
You know, if you're a vegan or you're a vegetarian, I mean, it's unbelievable. What's,
**Gizmo:** well, I would say it's, to me, I mean, listen, it's a lot different when you go through a store now. I mean, even what you're saying about the beer too, these alternative Yep. Options that are not so alternative anymore. Mm-hmm.
Yeah. That it's like even versus five, 10 years ago. Right. How different it is. [01:23:00] Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, and the way that people are eating has changed. It's, it's, it's very interesting to see that. Yeah.
**Bam Bam:** This is a great time of year. It's more my favorite sustainable, yeah. Thanksgiving's my favorite holiday.
Mine.
**Gizmo:** Mine too. No gifts. No
**Bam Bam:** bullshit. No. Yeah. So we rotate the dinner. I'll host my, my sister will host and my mother-in-law will host this year. We're going to my mother-in-law's. Nice. Um, yeah. And we'll bring dessert.
**Gizmo:** Now, do you
**Rooster:** guys do like a traditional very Thanksgiving or do you do more like an ethnic, so
**Bam Bam:** very traditional.
Yeah. Um, my mother-in-law, because she's from the Middle East, she'll make. Traditional Middle Eastern dishes that compliment the Turkey vary with nicely, like what she'll do. Um, it's something called Met Luba. So it's like a, it's a rice, cauliflower and lamb dish. Huh. Or rice. And, but for Thanksgiving she'll do it with Turkey and it's, it's a, you do it in a big pot and it's a, it's pressure cooked.
It comes out in his little pine nuts in it. It's phenomenal.
**Rooster:** The cauliflower is like chunks of [01:24:00] cauliflower
**Bam Bam:** or is it you, you, you fry the cauliflower ah, before you put it into the rice and it cooks with the rice and the flavor of the cauliflower melds into that rice with the pine nuts. It's incredible.
Now
**Rooster:** you can make that without lamb
**Bam Bam:** of course. And my mother, my mother has done that cuz she's not a meat eater. Right. My mom does not eat meat. Can you have her make me some? Yeah. She's made that for herself and I would use that as a side. Yeah, it is awesome. It sounds, sounds delicious. It's, it's excellent.
Onion and garlic. Fantastic.
**Pagoda:** Russa, are you gonna be making a sauce again?
**Rooster:** Yeah, I'm gonna make that going into the holiday season. Nice. Yeah, it's not gonna be free anymore.
**Gizmo:** So, by the way, is, are you talking the salsa, the hot sauce? ? I, so I, I have the jar for you to, to, I, I,
**Rooster:** I still, I don't need the jar. I have, I have a lot of jar.
I just gotta make a new batch.
**Gizmo:** Okay. Have you had it? Oh yeah. It's amazing, dude. We went through it in two days. You, you had it? Or your, your
**Rooster:** son did. Well,
**Gizmo:** I, I had it as well. Oh you did? It's delicious, but
**Bam Bam:** forgot ate the whole thing we love to do. Hold on. He's very cheap with it. . Yeah, I know. We just, I don't remember the last time I found, you know, you know where we [01:25:00]
**Pagoda:** go to Jar?
We went for dinner that night. He
**Rooster:** finished the whole jar in one sitting. Yeah,
**Bam Bam:** I drank it. I was drinking because we were at, we were at turmeric, tur. I was actually the whole thing. Yeah, I was actually drinking. I at the end of the night I was drinking it. I love that hot sauce. .
**Pagoda:** And we should do another dinner soon, I think with everybody.
Yeah. Think that'd be fun.
**Rooster:** Yeah. Tomorrow night. .
**Pagoda:** Well we are doing dinner tomorrow night. Are we? Listen, we are playing, uh, golf tomorrow after that.
**Bam Bam:** Uh, where are you guys meeting? Cuz? I'll meet you. Um, all right, well, we'll talk about it later. Yes. We
**Rooster:** might end up
**Gizmo:** there. I'll be there. Cool.
**Rooster:** Yeah. Golf is awesome.
Also, this time of the year around Thanksgiving. Yeah. It gets a little chilly, but it's gotta, yeah. You know, once, once the leaves are changing color, like even in October and stuff. Yeah. I mean, it's perfect. Play golf. Yeah, absolutely. Especially when you go up by the, by the mountains. Beautiful. Yeah. You know, we play up by Crystal Springs and stuff.
Mm-hmm. , oh, there's this one hole, it's kind of like, like little bit elevated and you look around and all the leaves are just turning color and I'm like, oh my God. [01:26:00] Fantastic. This just beautiful. Yeah. I hate looking for the balls
**Pagoda:** though.
**Bam Bam:** the leaves. You're dropping a ball. Then
**Gizmo:** what do you, uh, what do you do for Thanksgiving?
What are you doing?
**Pagoda:** Oh, we have, uh, traditional Thanksgiving with Turkey and, yeah, me too. All the basics, you know. Well, um, this time typically we'll have family over, um, or we end up at a friend's place or, you know. Cool. There's, there's always people. It's nice. Um, I, I don't know, I don't know what's being planned for this Thanksgiving.
Yeah. I think
**Bam Bam:** Mrs. Uh, pagoda does it right? Oh, she does. I'm guessing. She's
**Gizmo:** a great, she's a great cook. Great host. That great host can imagine. She'd be a great host. We were over
**Rooster:** their house last year mm-hmm. For Thanksgiving. No, no. He hasn't invited me for Thanksgiving. Where was my invite? . You were there.
We were hanging out outside. Oh. On the deck. And then, then we then started raining and we went, I was garage. Yes. And she walked in and she disappeared for maybe about 15 minutes. Mm-hmm. . And she brought back these, they [01:27:00] were like little mini sandwiches, like canape or Oh, I
**Gizmo:** remember that. Whatever you call them.
That's right.
**Rooster:** Delicious. Like she just, great hosts, just whipped them up. Great hostess. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. A really good
**Gizmo:** cook. Yeah, I'm, uh, she's great. I'm very excited for Thanksgiving, man. I, I love Turkey. I love, I'm doing mine on the Traeger. I think I mentioned that. Oh, yeah. A bunch of episodes back.
But doing the Traeger and want get the brine ready. Wanna get the full report on that? Oh, you'll get it.
**Rooster:** Yeah. Not into the whole shopping thing. Oh, I can't stand that. A lot of people go out and like shop like that, like right after Thanksgiving dinner. And the, the stores actually open. I don't, I don't do
**Bam Bam:** a thing.
I've
**Pagoda:** never ever done that, ever.
**Gizmo:** Black Friday is such a sin to me as far as like the idea of getting up at 2:00 AM and going to standing line to buy a TV at Best Buy. Yeah. It's like nauseating to me and
**Rooster:** getting run over by people. Yeah. Get that. And I can't
**Pagoda:** believe the people actually, you know, they've been killed.
I can't imagine what
**Gizmo:** the hell. It's true. It's like a stampede. It's insane. I mean like for what? To save a
**Rooster:** hundred bucks on a 15 inch screen? I'll give them my [01:28:00] line.
**Pagoda:** Geez. It's like,
**Gizmo:** It's insane. So I've taken this down to the end. I was just gonna say, we're coming
**Bam Bam:** to the end here, boys. I'm, I'm liking it.
Yeah. I
**Gizmo:** like it. I think, uh, like I said, I, I can't say that it's phenomenal. I think our scores will reflect that, but it's not a bad cigar and I think it's perfect for a beginner Yeah. Or someone who, again, the whole purpose of this episode tonight. Yeah. Someone who has 30 minutes once a night's experience.
Yeah. This is a cigar that will stand up in the wind.
**Bam Bam:** Oh, so this outside? Absolutely. So the cigar we smoked earlier, kind of tough to smoke that in the windy, chilly environment. Yes. But this guy, this one would be fun. We, yeah.
**Pagoda:** You know what, this could be good on the golf coast as well. Yes. It would be.
**Rooster:** I
**Gizmo:** be, I'm gonna say that.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
**Bam Bam:** Yeah. May do that tomorrow. . Yeah, maybe
**Gizmo:** it tomorrow. All right, boys. You guys ready to rate this thing? Yeah. Got the formal wizard. . Yeah, I'm gonna give it a seven. That's exactly where I'm at. Me seven.
**Bam Bam:** Me too. Seven. Yeah. It's a good score for the cigar. Seven across the board. [01:29:00] Yeah. Wow. All
**Pagoda:** I think that was easy.
I'm definitely gonna have a few, you know, for
**Gizmo:** guests and I'm telling you, this is the best I, I've given guests all kinds of varieties of things. Good, mediocre . Someone that's like, give me the cheapest thing you have, cuz I've never smoke a cigar. I've given 'em that this is, hits a home run every time with these folks.
Yeah. And
**Bam Bam:** you know, Puba uses this word a lot. The versatility of a cigar. Yeah. This is a very, very versatile cigar on the golf course in the cigar room anywhere it's, it's just, it works outside in the winter. It's great.
**Gizmo:** Awesome. Yeah. All right boys. A 9.0 for the Ramon Iona Small Club Corona from. And a 7.0 for the Arturo Fuente Hemingway in short story.
A fantastic evening, guys. Yes, great episode. Great hanging with you. Great support. Happy Thanksgiving to you guys and your family. Thank you, and happy Thanksgiving to our lizard friends out there. Enjoy. Absolutely. All right, we'll see you guys next week. Cheers. Hope you enjoyed this episode. Thanks for joining us.
You could [01:30:00] find our merch store and ratings archive at our brand new website, lounge lizards pod.com. That's lounge lizards p od.com. Don't forget to leave us a rating and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. If you have any comments, questions, if you wanna reach out, say hello, tell us what you're smoking, email us hello@loungelizardspod.com.
You can also find us on Instagram at Lounge Lizards Pod. We really appreciate your time and we'll uh, we'll see you next week.