Welcome everybody to The Tuesday Night Cigar Club’s 6th Annual St. Patty’s Day Drinking & Then Drinking Ridiculous Amounts More Celebration Extravaganza Bonanza! Or some bullshit like that. Tonight we celebrate in style with our very special guest Laurel Tilley, brand ambassador for Macanudo Cigars, as she classes up The Corner of No Hope and drops a ton of knowledge on us regarding all things Macanudo. Then it’s time to light up, drink up, and go up in space with our favorite little green horror icon. So click the links below and JOIN THE PARTY!!!
THE CIGAR – INSPIRADO GREEN by MACANUDO
Size: 6 x 50
Wrapper: Brazilian Marapiraca
Binder: Indonesia
Filler: Colombia & Dominican Republic
Price: $7.39 (and please remember when purchasing some fine Macanudo cigars or other brands from FamousSmokeShop.com to use your new favorite promo code TNCC20 at checkout where it will knock $20 off your purchase of $100 or more)
We’ve featured a Macanudo cigar here on the podcast previously, way back in 2018 before the world came crashing down on our beautiful little party, on Episode 72. We reviewed the Inspirado Red and we all highly enjoyed its wasabi-like burn on the retrohale, it’s dominant strong leather note, and looking back at my notes on it we all remarked that it had a crazy awesome aroma. It’s funny, when I went back to scan over our thoughts on the Inspirado Red, I noticed this interesting tidbit as our observations “Prior to lighting up the Inspirado Red, there’s an earthy aroma present when sniffing the foot. If you run your fingers up and down the cigar, the wrapper feels identical to a well-worn leather jacket. It’s like rubbing Indiana Jones back and forth in your hand.” We all thought that was a very odd thing for Tut to say, but I’ll bet no other cigar media has ever used that description before! So here we are tonight featuring the Inspirado Green which is only fitting as it is our 6th Annual St. Patty’s Day Drinking and Drinking Some More Extravaganza Bonanza Fiesta, or something to that effect. And we were thrilled to have Macanudo’s Laurel Tilley stop by to introduce the cigar.
There’s a faint barnyard aroma emitting off the wrapper but there’s a chewy sweetness that’s very present when sniffing the foot directly and it’s also loud and clear on the cold draw. Upon ignition, there’s a minimal amount of black pepper spice on the nose but we discovered a TNCC anomaly in that a distinct mild chocolate flavor showed up quickly on the retrohale where as that particular note is usually always found for us via the draw. Very interesting… Speaking of the draw, there’s a warm woodsy oak note that dominates the first third of the smoking experience.
A slight coffee essence shows up on the draw and it pairs well with oak and the hint of sweetness that has also gathered some steam here towards the second half. The retrohale is holding steady with medium spice and that touch of chocolate. Construction has been phenomenal so far with a strong ash and copious smoke production. In the final third, both a leather and a bready toast component arise on the draw and those flavors gel very well with everything else going on. You gotta love that complexity at play here in the last act.
The Inspirado Green is a medium strength, medium body, highly enjoyable cigar with excellent construction and some really nice pronounced flavors of dark chocolate, oak, leather, and spice. It flirts will full body and full strength in the final third but it doesn’t quite get there. The sweetness is always minimal and it certainly comes and goes but, when it’s there, this cigar really shines. Especially at this price point!
TNCC FINAL GRADE = 90
THE BEERS
Once again folks, usually (before this mini apocalypse was thrust upon all of us) we would carefully – some of you have said “expertly” – pair our evening’s beer with the cigar and movie and we’d all drink that same beer and compare notes. But since this whole COVID-19 shitshow has happened, each member of the TNCC is now solely responsible for risking their lives out in the wild and acquiring their own beers for each episode…
THE DOCTOR’S BEER – SPACE CAMPER COSMIC IPA by BOULEVARD BREWING
This brewery, which none of us had ever heard of, has been around since 1989! Coming in at 5.9% and 50 IBUs, it features some tropical flavors and The Doc felt that it would pair well with a spice-forward stogie BUT he can’t smoke with us so we’ll just have to take his word for it. PARING GRADE = B-
TUT’S BEER – GUINNESS
We all love Guinness, everybody loves Guinness. Starting way back in 1759 (take that Boulevard Brewing!), Guinness deserves all the praise it has ever received and it pairs beautifully with almost every cigar we’ve ever saddled up with it. And this is our massive St. Patty’s Day Drinking Bonanza Shitfaced Extravaganza after all, so Tut gets an obligatory A for his pairing grade. If you smoke a cigar that tastes bad with Guinness, you’ve just got yourself a bad cigar.
CADE’S 1st BEER – PHANTOM BRIDE IPA by BELCHING BEAVER BREWERY
At 7.1% and 55 IBUS, this might be the first honest assessment of IBUs by a brewer that we’ve featured here on the podcast. The citrus aroma immediately grabs your attention but there’s a maltiness front and center that overshadows any bitterness going on. That heavy malt presence is aided by some orange and grapefruit flavors that also mute the mostly subtle hops at play. It’s fairly smooth, not bad and not great, and pairing-wise it did just okay in that it stayed out of the cigar’s way. But our movie tonight features the Leprechaun taking a BRIDE so my collective pairing grade is obviously an A+ for the night.
Deftones
My beer is named after the Deftones song “Phantom Bride” and I’ll say this, while the band has been around for a long time, I arrived very late to the Deftones party. I started listening to them quite a bit last year after really liking a new song they released during the pandemic called “Ohms” and they’re pretty fucking good. Seek both them and this beer out ASAP!
CADE’S 2nd BEER – KUNG FU ROBOT by 4TH TAP BREWING CO-OP
We all drooled over this delicious IPA way back on Episode 72 (you can read our thoughts on it HERE) and I thought it would be the perfect citrus-heavy beer to pair with tonight’s cigar. And guess what? I was right. No surprise there!
YAK BOY’S BEER – IRISH GOODNIGHT by AVERY BREWING COMPANY
From Avery’s Barrel Aged Series, this whopper of an Imperial Milk Stout aged in Irish whisky barrels clocks in at a massive 16% ABV. So obviously Yak Boy nursed this one beer all night long, literally he bought ONE bottle because it was $14, and we appreciated that because otherwise he would’ve gotten really sloppy even for the TNCC. However, this proved to be one of those rare beers that retained beer-like qualities rather than just tasting like the barrels it was aged in (in other words, it didn’t have that strong alcohol taste profile that so many barrel-aged beers tend to have). YAK BOY’S PAIRING GRADE: A-
THE FILM – LEPRECHAUN 4: IN SPACE (1996)
We of course discussed 2018’s Leprechaun Returns back on our 3rd annual Saint Patty’s Day Drinking & Chugging Beer & Drinking Stupendathon and here we are about to see what mischief this little guy gets in to UP IN SPACE! How could this possibly go wrong?
Well folks, you can only throw so many ingredients in a blender and expect anything to stand out as particularly special. There’s a shit ton of things going on in Leprechaun 4: In Space and some of them eventually work in the film’s favor, while other stuff sticks out like a green turd in the punch bowl. Nevertheless, your favorite crew of tipsy numbnuts has a blast dissecting this movie, so click on the links below to watch or listen NOW!
THE NUB
Please leave us comments on the YouTube episode page and subscribe while you’re there, provide us with a review on iTunes, or be a real stud and do both! All these seemingly small gestures would be greatly appreciated as they let us know exactly what you’re thinking about this sweat-soaked tidal wave of hardbodied insanity we like to call The Tuesday Night Cigar Club.
Three hours later we’re all nice and drunk, after drinking fifty beers who would have thunk? Happy St. Patrick’s Day laddies!
Below is tonight’s full episode for both your viewing and listening pleasure. Thank you for checking out The Tuesday Night Cigar Club and we’ll see you next time when we review another cigar, adult beverage, and film. May the wings of liberty never lose a feather…
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