Robusto- 5×52
- ~$10
- Cigar provided by Cornelius & Anthony Cigars, Beer purchased at Monkey Town Brewing Company
Background
As my last “blogger” act of 2018, I decided to pair a nice Maduro with a new Stout from my favorite hometown brewery, hoping the beer is equally as nice as the cigar.
For the cigar, I chose the Señor Esugars from Cornelius & Anthony Cigars. They sent me a handful of cigars to “review”…but I’ve published full reviews of all of them, so I decided to do some pairing articles with them. Esugars is named after the company’s founder’s dog, Oscar, who was nicknamed “Mr. Sugars.” It is made in Nicaragua at Erik Espinosa’s La Zona factory. It uses Nicaraguan fillers, a USA binder, and a Mexican San Andres Maduro wrapper.
The beer is Black Magic, brewed by Mr. Kirby Garrison of Monkey Town Brewing Company in beautiful downtown Dayton, Tennessee. It is an American Stout, which untapped defines as “a coffee- and chocolate-forward ale, but with a hop aroma and flavor, often from a citrus-forward variety.” It weighs in a 6% ABV and 40 IBU. Expect to pay about $6 a pint if you venture up to Dayton while the brewery still has it available.
Notes
The Señor Esugars held no real surprises for me…I’ve smoked it several times before and enjoyed it. It starts off with roasty coffee notes and a subdued sweetness. There is a little earthiness in the mix and a quick hit of black pepper on the nose.
This is the first time in recent memory that Monkey Town has produced anything but a milk stout or a highly-flavored sweet stout. While I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the cookie and candy bar-conditioned stouts, this Black Magic brings is all back to earth with a nice roasted malts providing most of the flavor, which was solidly in the “coffee” arena. It had a crisp carbonation and subsequent sips had a little more citrus and hoppy bitterness.
The sweetness of Señor Esugars actually went well with the dark brew, which had little of its own sweet flavor. The pair was smooth and smoky together and provided a very nice ending to 2018, a year which had some great discoveries, triumphs and disappointments. Not a bad year at all. Here’s to making 2019 even better!
