The Pastor and the Shrink - Cigar reviews for your Mind and Spirit

8-17-2010
The Man Shed
Randy Gibbs (AKA - The Pastor) and Dave Anderson (The Shrink)

Brick House
Toro - 6 x 52
J.C. Newman
$ 6.00+ The Cigar Chateau


Wrapper: Havana Subido, Filler: Nicaraguan, Binder: Nicaraguan


Randy and I first tried this cigar in 2009 and we really enjoyed it. In fact it made our list of Favorite new cigars from 2009. We decided to smoke it again to see if it was as good as we remembered.

These are really good looking cigars with minimal veins and a slight oily sheen on the wrapper. They were firm to the touch with no evidence of soft spots or sponginess. They are adorned with a simple and yet elegant label. The construction of these beauties is top notch.

After clipping the cigars we test the draw and it is perfect, just the right amount of resistance. We light them up and settle in for a couple of hours of conversation, adult beverages and hopefully a repeat of a great smoke.

The cigar produces copious amounts of smoke that have a nice silky mouth feel and an enjoyable secondary aroma. This cigar burns really well, with only a slightly wavy burn-line, but no runners and it is self-correcting. It has a mild-medium strength profile with a slight spiciness on the finish that lingers in the back of the mouth.

Tonight we are pairing our smoke with some of Randy's son Ben's English Pale Ale and a bump of Auchentoshan Single malt scotch. The beer has a nice balance of hoppiness and bitterness. The scotch has a very light nose, with sweet and spice flavors followed by a clean finish and a lingering burn.

At the midway point we are both really enjoying this cigar. It has held a consistent medium strength profile and the spiciness at the finish remains although it has mellowed slightly. It has a slight taste of earth and cedar. It continues to burn well although we both had to make minor touch ups.

In the end we were pleased that this cigars was as good as we had remembered it to be. It's flavor was very consistent and it burned very well. We appreciated that the spiciness held throughout the time we smoked it and that the burn issue were minor. We do not smoke these very often as we have never seen them come up in online specials. We generally only smoke them when one of us gets to a B&M shop that carries them.

We rated it a 4 - Great Cigar - one we will definitely smoke again, would not hesitate to recommend to a friend and that we would keep in our humidor. Who knows if we get the opportunity to smoke some more of these they may make their way into the rarefied air of a 5.