Vitola: Toro- 6” x 54 ring gauge
- Gifted by a friend
Background
When my friend gifted me a bunch of cigars out of his humidor a few weeks ago, I was a little surprised to find something like the Drew Estate Smoking Monk Porter in the collection. Surprised mostly because I had never heard of it. For good reason since I had pretty much sworn off buying cigars online (at least from the usual suspect “mega-online-retailers”) a decade ago. That’s where these were sold, so that’s almost definitely where he got them…and never got into the 5-pack that was bequeathed to me.
So apparently Drew Estate decided to make a series of cigars “inspired by” craft beer at some point in the last 5 years or so. They weren’t the only ones to try to ride the craft beer wave, but they may have been the only ones to do so with flavored..or “infused”…cigars. I don’t know exactly when these came out, but I saw online store reviews dating back to 2016. None of the retailers gave blend specifics, so I don’t know what kind of leaf was used.
A DE rep told me these were not infused, but several of the online retailers mentioned “subtle infusion” to give flavors of dark chocolate, coffee, and caramel. I’m not a big “flavored” cigar fan, but I’ve had a couple of these already and I did like them…probably because the infusion isn’t that heavy. This particular cigar is made to go with Porter, but they made 4 other varieties to go with other beer styles, as well: Triple Belgian, Imperial Stout, IPA, and Hefeweizen. Keep your eyes open and you may run across them somewhere…or be gifted some as I was
Notes
The websites I looked at called this wrapper leaf a Maduro, and it makes sense to pair a Maduro with a Porter (or Stout), but this wrapper leaf seemed to be on the lighter side of the Maduro scale…really a milk chocolate brown at most. It had an aroma of earth and coffee beans, while the foot had a definitively chocolate note that makes the infused nature of the cigar pretty evident, really.
The infusion is pretty subtle on the prelight draw, though, and I think that’s what made me wonder and question heather this one was actually flavored. Through the first couple times I smoked this blend, I went back and forth on the matter a couple times. Once fired up the infusion is even more questionable. I got earthiness right up front, followed by cedar, then espresso bean and unsweetened cocoa powder, along with just the tiniest amount of sweetness. A more mildly sweetened chocolate note came out on the retrohale.
I decided I should try to pair this cigar with a beer for this article. Porters are a little hard to find, though, especially in the summer. Stouts, though, are an outgrowth of the Porter style of beer…a “stout porter,” one source says. Apparently Guinness “Extra Stout” was originally called “Extra Superior Porter.” It’s not a hard and fast fact, but it seems that porters seem to be 4 to 7% ABV, stouts come in between 6 and 9%, and imperial stouts weigh in at 9% or more…I’ve had them upwards of 16%. With all that in mind, the Guinness Nitro Cold Brew Coffee beer I found seemed to be a good way to represent a porter.
This beer was much thinner in consistency than I’m used to with Guinness, which will tend to happen at 4% ABV. It was incredibly creamy, though, owing to the nitrogen-infusion, which made it more like a regular Guinness. It had a very nice cold brew coffee flavor, along with touches of caramel and chocolate.
As for the pairing, it’s hard to see how it could be better. Both brought their core notes of “Nicaraguan cigar” and “stout” while overlapping in the coffee and varying flavors of chocolate areas. Together they really were very nice. The infusion on the cigar continued to be so mild as to be almost undetectable in most puffs. Yes, it tasted like something else was there, but I’ve gotten clearer flavor notes of coffee or chocolate on cigars that were decidedly NOT infused, so it’s easy to see how I was confused on this one.
