Background
A few weeks back, I fired up one of the latest small-batch releases from Ezra Zion Cigar Company, Lucille…inspired by Negan’s barb-wire-wrapped baseball bat from the show, The Walking Dead. I had one cigar left and a friend gifted me a bottle of Lucille beer to go with it…so I decided to save the cigar until I had time to enjoy a whole 500mL bottle of fairly high gravity beer.
In case you have forgotten, Negan is the latest in a string of “big bad” villains in TWD, making his appearance in legendary manner by swinging his bat—Lucille—for the fences…right through the heads of a couple of our favorite characters from the Grimes Gang. Now I’m prepared to take a double-shot to the head…a big bomber bottle of beer and one last wire-wrapped cigar.
Terrapin Beer Company is based in Athens, Georgia. They describe Lucille as…
an Imperial Stout brewed with blackstrap molasses and vanilla. Swinging for the fences, we aged this beer on hickory, maple, and white ash, the three woods that are used to produce baseball bats. Big and menacing, its flavors hit hard.
As noted in the previous review of the Lucille cigar, I purchased a 5-pack of the cigars from Ezra Zion. The Lucille beer was gifted to me by a friend.
Notes
The Lucille is as black as Negan’s heart when poured into the glass…as a stout should be. I sipped a little and it was thick and creamy with a very full bodied feel on the tongue. I got a definite molasses sweetness at the tip of the tongue and just a hint of vanilla in the mix before it melted away into a traditional stout beer flavor with a woody finish.
The cigar smoked much as it did before…woody and earthy. I noted before that it’s more of a “novelty” cigar than a truly great cigar and that plays against it here. It has trouble holding its own against what is actually a well-crafted…er…craft beer. The beer simply has more complexity and flavor going for it that it kind of emphasizes the relative flatness of the smoke.
Lucille the beer continued to please even as I got into my second glass out of the large bottle. The cigar continued to be adequate, if not inspiring. The bottom line was that long before I finished either, I could definitely see buying more of the beer, but a 5-pack of the cigars was enough.
