JFR Lunatic Loco Review

 Hey all! Back again with another stellar review!

I have to warn you..... Today's review is a real ass kicker! No, I mean that totally. It's not a joke. With that being said, I bring you the JFR Lunatic Loco :

Now, Meatloaf calls me up and says he has a new cigar for me to try. He says he got a great deal on a box of 10 from Cigar Monster for around $70. 

Imagine my surprise when he hands me over this log of a cigar! 

Weighing in at a size of  5 1/2 x 80, yes I said 80,  that's an inch and a quarter diameter. Believe me, this cigar has some heft to it! 

Cigars International describes this cigar as such:

A Nicaraguan puro containing nothing but the best leaves from Aganorsa’s own farms, the Loco wears a special shade-grown Jalapa Corojo wrapper dripping with oils and as dark as a good cup o’ Joe. You can definitely expect this beauty to greet you with full-bodied, spicy flavors, and keep you interested with smooth earth, pepper, dark fruit, cedar, and leather notes. 

First thing you notice, obviously, is it's huge size. At an 80 ring gauge you really feel the heft in your hand. This large perfecto has a dark oily wrapper with slight veins. 

Sitting in the early evening air on Meatloaf's deck we cut the heads and take a cold draw. There is little resistance and surprisingly no taste to the draw. That's new. Neither of us have ever had that happen before. Puzzling..... 

It's about 6:25,  After a quick light, we get a subtle taste of pepper on the draw. 

Meatloaf notices that there is a cap at both ends, with the foot having been cut.  Another first for us. After about 10 minutes he says he is feeling a buzz already..... Is this a sign? 

At a half hour in, this cigar has barely burned down. Definitely a slow burner. It's burn is uneven for both of us. The ash is silvery white, indicating that there was alot of nitrogen in the soil. 

Spice is still present and I am getting leather taste. Meatloaf admits he has never recognized leather in any cigar, but is getting the dryness in his mouth that is typical with the leather. Everyone is different where it comes to palate. Meatloaf says that he is learning to recognize the leather tastes from the dryness. There is a taste there he doesn't recognize but surmises that is what leather is to his palate. 

Everyone's palate evolves as we smoke more and more, trying different cigars. So if you don't get the tastes described about a cigar, don't fret, it will eventually come to you as you continue to smoke cigars. 

An hour has passed and I am getting a little wood flavor. Still slow burning not even close to the halfway point. I look at my watch and it's about 7:30. Meatloaf harasses me about having to be home by a certain curfew as my wife likes me home by a certain time....happy wife happy life I say..... LOL 

We noticed that you can't get a good volume of smoke with just one puff. It takes a good 3 to 4 to make a good cloud. We attribute that to the gargantuan ring gauge. 

8:00 o'clock comes and I am feeling a bit of a buzz. I'm getting a sweetness to the smoke now. Meatloaf is starting to get the wood flavor. At an hour and a half this cigar has finally reached its halfway point. 

8:15  Meatloaf gets a nicotine overload. He starts to sweat and he feels woozy. He says his forearms even get clammy. I myself am feeling the euphoric ride of the nicotine wave. I'm thinking to myself how am I going to finish this cigar? 

8:25 Meatloaf says that the sweats have passed. 

8:30 I have to throw in the towel. At over halfway through the cigar I am really not feeling so good. Too much nicotine. I resolve to finish my cigar the next day. Meatloaf says he's fine, with his chest all puffed out, he's going to finish his tonight! 

We say our goodbyes and I head home. I get home and relate my experience with Mrs CigarMoose. She says I'm crazy and why would I smoke such a big cigar? For the same reason people climb Everest, because it's there..... LOL 

I'm sitting on my deck for some fresh air. After over 15 minutes after leaving Meatloaf's house I am still buzzing except at a more comfortable level. My cell phone dings indicating that I have received a message. It's Meatloaf.... He had to throw in the towel too. The sweats came back! LOL 

Round 2

So the next day I sit on the deck. The rest of the Lunatic is calling my name from my Stinky Ashtray. 

I stare at it in my hand and let out a breath of reservation, thinking of what it did to me the night before. 

So I decide to attack this in a different way. I stick it in the end of my corncob pipe! 

I could barely fit the head into the opening but surprisingly it made a good seal. It didn't take long to relight. Right off the bat I was right where I left off the night before. A blast of very full flavor with pepper, leather, and wood. 

10 minutes goes by and I start buzzing already! My God! What the hell do they put in this bastard? 

A half hour later and it doesn't even look like it has burned down hardly! 

A full hour from start and I am done. It's just too full flavored, too full in strength. I messaged Meatloaf and he says that he isn't even going to try to finish his. 

Look at it! It didn't really burn down that much! 

Well, what can we say? 

From start to finish this was a good 3 hour cigar. So plan accordingly. 

Buzz rating :  10 out of 10

This really was an ass kicker! We both agree that it was just too much. Even at a second sitting I could not finish it. To be fair, most people would not smoke it down as far as me in a pipe but on the other hand, there was enough left that it would probably be equal to what you would normally smoke it. 

Overall rating : 3 out of 5

This one was just too strong for both of us! And we are seasoned smokers! It had good flavor. It never unwrapped. You definitely want to set aside a good 3 hours for this cigar. If it had been a bit weaker it could have been a solid 4 to 4.5.

I would not Probably buy these for my humidor, but will happily help Meatloaf smoke the other 8!

Well they can't be that bad if you want to smoke them again!, you might say. 

And you're right. But be warned.... You have to smoke these under the right conditions. Full stomach, keep drinking, take your time, 3 plus hours..... That's my advice..... It's not for the rookie smoker and even seasoned smokers will have a time with it. 

You have been warned!!! 

Till next post....... Peace! 

Unbranded Nicaraguan Cigar Review Lake Placid NY

 Hey All!  Here we are with a new cigar review!

Mrs. CigarMoose and I decided to take a day trip to one of our favorite places we hadn't been to in awhile, because of this whole Covid  thing running rampant through our world. That Place would be Lake Placid New York home of the Winter Olympic Training Grounds.

Main Street is where all the action is with bars, restaurants, stores, and gift shops you would expect from a "Resort Town".

In that picture, it's just around that bend and on the right you will find the Alpine Mall.

It is here you will find a store called Stouts and Stogies. If you look back in my reviews I showcased this store when I reviewed the Room 101 The Big Payback cigar. The store has stood the test of time despite the dwindling economy, due to a virus that has swept our world. 

Entering this day I was greeted by the patrons wife welcoming us to the store. She also apologized for the lack of inventory in the humidor due to being unable to get proper stock from their suppliers. Despite her warning, I didn't feel the choices were that underwhelming. There were ample choices, in my opinion, with the average price being around $15 per cigar. Now don't let that alarm you. All the cigars present were super premium cigars and remember that these are resort town prices. I was able to find an unbranded Nicaraguan maduro cigar for $8.50 per stick, so that's where this review is coming from. 

Now I'll be honest......I was not expecting much for this unbranded cigar, Was I ever fooled! I Will say that this was one of the best unbranded cigars I have had in a very long time, and I have had quite a few. Because I have literally no information about this cigar other than its Nicaraguan we have to go in all blind into this one. By "We" I mean me and my trustworthy compadre Meatloaf!

Lets start of by talking about appearance. Defiantly dark maduro wrapper which has little slight veins, It has to be a a shade wrapper. You can barely see the seams where it is wrapped, simply flawlessly wrapped. So whoever produces this cigar has some very experienced torcedors. 

The wrapper has a very nice sheen to it exuding with oil. I can even feel the the silkiness of the oils on my finger tips where I have touched wrapper. What a nicely aged wrapper is all I can say.

The body smells like sweet straw. the foot smells of rich sweet tobaccos that you would expect from a maduro..

We cut the head and take a cold draw. Great airflow, not like a straw, but in the middle ground between a straw and medium airflow.

After a quick toasting of the foot, we light up. Immediately we are blasted with peppery spice. very intense. this should have been a foreboding for me.........Meatloaf is also pleasantly surprised at this show of strength right of the starting line.

But with a few puffs the spice disappears just as fast as it came and the cigar mellow right out with a Hazel nut taste and slight woody undertones.

Conversation ensues as it always does while partaking in cigars. Some of the most deep and meaningful conversations I've had have been with someone over a cigar. Isn't it funny somehow a cigar can level the playing field in opinions during discussions? Somehow you can hold your opinion yet listen to others and see their point of view and vise versa. It's no wonder it has been a long tradition for our leaders to share a cigar during negotiations throughout the world. With Meatloaf and I its usually about old times, the tv shows we have been binging, cigars we are considering, and the current opinions of the worlds affairs. Its all good.......

My cigar is burning slightly uneven. Soon it is time to make our first tap of the ash. No cone . The ash is quite dense and silvery in color.

 Meatloaf has noticed a small tunnel in his cigar but says it's not affecting the draw.

More conversation ensues while we listen to Big Hair bands on satellite radio. It's a hot muggy evening, but we started late and the sun has set bringing on the night. The drinks continue to flow (for Meatloaf anyway) and it has cooled just slightly making the outdoors all that more manageable.

Getting into the last third of the cigar Meatloaf shows me the tunnel has run the the whole length of the cigar. But again and luckily it hasn't affected the draw at all.

So I take a look at mine and low and behold there is a tunnel in mine too! If I hadn't looked I would never have known as it is smoking fine.

At this point I stick the cigar in my Corn Cob Pipe, "The McArthur", from Missouri Meerschaum Company. Why you may ask? Because cigars are expensive now and I'm going to smoke them till they are almost nothing dammit! Not that I am defending myself or anything.... LOL

Everything was going fine up to this point. Then the strength started coming back.......

I take my last couple of puffs and things take a big turn. Suddenly my stomach starts to not feel so good....... I start to get dizzy and hot. Droplets of sweat start beading on my head. I relay this to Meatloaf. He says that I am looking a little pale.....

Now I can count on one hand how many times this has ever happened to me in the 15 years I have been smoking cigars. And most of them have been early on in my cigar smoking life I chock up to just not having the tolerance for the nicotine in strong cigars at that point in my life. But this cigar.... Has me by the balls.....

Meatloaf looks at me and says "Well you haven't drank anything since we started. You got to keep something in your stomach."  I have to concede he's right. So I amble my way to the fridge, grab a Green Tea, and make my way back to my chair. Half a bottle later the sweating has stopped and stomach feels much better. All I am left with is a euphoric buzz which comes in waves like the ocean. This cigar almost had me...... All the while that damn Meatloaf just snickers and smiles at my almost demise! He feels just fine, but does concede it did get stronger on the end.

So here is where the chips lay:

Buzz Rating: 7 out of 10 

Both of us agree. A nice comfortable numb...... After it's strength subsided in me. 

Overall: 4 stars out of 5

We both thought that it was a good tasting strong cigar. Full flavored with a couple of surprises in spice. Nice medium in between the the 2 spice blasts. This was a very good and eventful cigar that ranks right up there with some of the brand name big dogs we have experienced in our opinion. We would have given it a 4.25 overall but the tunnels we had detracted that quarter star. Definitely will grab a couple every time I am up there and you should too. For $8.50 it's a premium cigar at a good price by today's standards. I wish I could find more about this cigar so I could track down where I could get them online.

I might have to do a little investigating........

Till next post......... PEACE! 

Cigar Moose Back from the Dead!

 Hey all! CigarMoose is back from the dead! 

It's been 10 years since I started this blog. And I truly apologize that it's been 5 years since I have posted anything. Life happens and things fall to the wayside and are forgotten. So with my new logo in hand I am starting up again.

Let's face it...... These are trying times, hard financial times. If anything, we cigar smokers are in a tight squeeze trying to find affordable smokes with cigar prices soaring through the roof, as if there is a tobacco shortage like in the 90's. 

Have you seen the prices at your local shops rising? Have you seen online retailers slowly raising their prices for the last 5 years steadily? I've seen cigars like CI Legends Copper Label go from a starting price of $50 a box (and we thought that was expensive at the time!) go up in price to $100 a box! Outrageous! Now I am not oblivious to the fact that the FDA has imposed some strict rules on the tobaccos industry. But even then does that justify the doubling in price in cigars by retailers? I don't feel it is.

So now, more than ever, is a time that I feel the need to get back on track and search out for decent priced sticks (by today's standards), that I can find and pass on to you with a review. Now that doesn't mean I won't be reviewing more expensive sticks. Let's face it, we all are willing to pay the price for something we haven't had yet, within reason. 

But for the most part, I am always on the lookout for bargain priced good smokes.  Let's be honest, before the big rise in prices, I always tried and often found good name brand cigars for under  $6 a stick. At $7 a stick I was pushing out of my comfort zone. Today though we are all being forced to pay above that as the norm for singles more and more.

So in the next week I'll be getting together with Meatloaf to review a couple of cigars to get us started.

I am hoping in the future to try and add video reviews. Also I would like to update you all on how the Cigar Lounge came along. 

Stay tuned!

Till next post........ Peace!