I'm new to the whole cigar scene so I may have made many faux pas in sampling this cigar, I don't know. I've read guides on smoking cigars and most of them are pretty consistent and I try the techniques to try and find the flavors and what not.
A Padilla Limitado Edicion Especial 2006 arrived from one of my OCD CI Sampler purchases about 2 or 3 weeks ago when I started this hobby, so it hasn't had time to set too long. I pulled the cello to try and prep this for smoking sooner, maybe that was the first mistake...
When I arrived at my weekly beach/:ss run it was close to sunset and cooling off nicely. There was also a stiff breeze (prolly the second mistake: smoking in the wind).
I popped open my little 5 stick travel humidor and chose the Padilla. The
wrapper was dark n sexy, the smell of it made my eyes roll back into my head and I was quite excited about trying this lil guy out.
I had to max my torch lighter and almost touch it to the foot to get enough heat to roast this thing. I finally get it lit and it appears to be lit evenly.
The draw was good, the smoke seemed to be thin but had great flavor while I could keep it lit. I was trying to take it slow and enjoy this smoke but I couldn't keep it lit, even if I tried to freight train the thing... I noticed the ash had an olive greenish sections towards the middle, I'm not sure if that's common or if I didn't have it lit as well as I thought. After about and inch of screwing around and relighting, retouching and people trying to bum cigarettes off me, I decided to move us to a picnic bench behind the seawall in a bit of a swale which dropped the wind significantly (YAY!). Hope is renewed!
Take 23 of trying to light this guy was a screaming success with a huge billowing cloud of smoke that surprised me and caused me to choke because I inhaled a bit >.<
The flavor picked up a lot and I was happy and thought I was in business, that was a short lived triumph. I noticed the filler was burning down but the wrapper wasn't, ok retouching again. Oh shite! it went out again, relight time, sweet it's relit. Puff a bit...Hmm I think it's dead again... Relight... *click click click* goes the lighter... *Click click*... WTF?!? Stare at it a bit puzzled. *Click Click* it's sparking. Hold it up to my ear *click click* OMFG! I'm outta butane now! Lighter is dead. After almost throwing it into the ocean I remembered I brought matches as a back up. The matches wont stay lit. After 3 or 4 match attempts I hang my head in defeat. After smoking maybe half of it I toss it into a warm BBQ pit that wasn't being used to give it a final send off. Now that I think about it I probably should have tried to lite it off the coals but I was so frustrated and irritated by this cigar and my situation I just packed up and headed home...
On the up side, the sunset was quite beautiful with the clouds and from the info gathered from my fellow brothers on this thread there maybe hope for the others I have in the Humi. I really did like ths cigar when I could keep it burning, just a shitter of an evening for burnin.
Crap this took to long to write, back to work!
Chris