HBD’s Blind Taste-Test: Review Summaries (READ FIRST)

[Herfin Bigdog]

During the past 3-4 months I have been running a blind taste test. I used members of two different cigar bulletin boards, Cigar Weekly and Cigar Pass. Very few members of either board knew I was running this taste test as I did not announce this publicly on either board while looking for taste-test participants. I choose participants based on their having been an experienced cigar smoker for at least a year. Most of the participants have been smoking 2 or more years. I also looked at the cigar review ‘rooms’ of each board and choose members that had posted, in my opinion very thorough cigar reviews.

In total, I choose 7 participants. I asked that each participant record their thoughts on the standard review criteria such as: appearance, feel, pre-light draw and taste/flavor, quality and appearance of ash, draw while smoking and over-all flavor. As you will see by reading the reviews, the styles of recording reviews differed between each participant, almost as much as their reviews differed between each cigar.

4 different cigars were being blind tested. I sent each participant 2 of each of the 4 cigars for a total of eight cigars.

The Rationale behind the taste-test:
I did this taste-test for a few different reasons. The First reason, I did a blind taste-test because I did not want any participant to be influenced either positively or negatively by knowing what cigar they were smoking. The Second reason (which I believe ties in with the first reason), is because of the cigars I choose with which to perform the reviews. Let’s just say that with each of these cigars, many people have a preconceived notion that I wanted to try to eliminate by performing the taste test as a blind.

This preconceived notion can be strongly influenced, consciously or otherwise by what others opinions and thoughts are about these particular cigars. I attempted to negate those notions by performing the taste test in a blind fashion. I also believe that some people will errantly lump a particular cigar in with others because of factors like name recognition and because they don’t like Brand A cigar, they won’t even give Brand B cigar a try because it is made by the same company that makes Brand A cigar, and therefore they may be denying themselves something that they might otherwise find enjoyable.

Based on the reviews by each of the participants, I believe that I succeeded in what I set out to do by negating those earlier conceived, biased thoughts. I say this because I was surprised by some of the opinions of some of the participants with certain cigars. I hope that the participants will be pleasantly surprised after reading their thoughts about what they smoked as well as after reading each other’s thoughts.

By the way, the participants have not read each other’s reviews on the cigars.

I will post 6 threads in total. The first titled, HBD’s Blind Taste-Test Review Summaries, (this thread) will consist of any summaries that the participants contributed. This was not a requirement of the taste-test. Only two of the seven participants actually posted something in the way of a general summary review. And you can find out who the taste test participants were, and what cigar board(s) they belong to.

Threads 1-4 will consist of the review for each of the cigars. I labeled the cigars 1, 2, 3 & 4 before being sent to each participant. Each participant’s review will be on the corresponding thread for each cigar. The thread titles will be HBD’s Blind Taste-Test Review #1, HBD’s Blind Taste-Test Review #2, HBD’s Blind Taste-Test Review #3, and HBD’s Blind Taste-Test Review #4.

The 6th and final thread will be titled, HBD's Blind Taste-Test Review – The Cigars Revealed. I will post this a few days after posting the results of the review for the reason that I believe that if some people were to learn of the name of the cigar before reading the reviews, they won’t even bother to read the review for that cigar because of a preconceived bias against that cigar.


General Summaries:

The seven participants and their Summary if they included one.
(Participants, Please expect a PM from me by tomorrow evening.)

AVB (Cigar Pass member)
No summary included

Black Plague Reviews (Cigar Weekly member)
So there you have it, the final review. I'm anxious to find out what all these sticks were. Oh, and if you need it, here's my overall summary...

Of all the cigars reviewed, if I had to pick a winner, it would be Mystery Cigar #1. By far the most complex and enjoyable of the bunch. None of the other smokes came close to it. The distant second would be #4, since it had a very good first half, though faltered in the last half. Distant third place would be #3, bourbon being the only thing that saved it. #2 would be last, as I enjoyed it the least of them all. Out of all of them, the only one I'd buy a box of would be #1. From what I understand, these are cigars that have acquired a bad reputation. As far as I'm concerned, all but #1 deserve it, and #1 most certainly is a diamond in the rough.

BrewMeister (Cigar Pass and Cigar Weekly member)
No summary included

Elk Twins Review Summary (Cigar Weekly member)
My rating system is fairly straightforward - unless I die or vomit, every cigar gets points for being combustible. In the end it generally comes out like this:

< 50 = Crime against man
50-60 = Pretty vile
60-70 = Flammable but mildly offensive
70-80 = Good, average cigar
80-90 = Above average
90-100 = Exceptional

I didn't care much for 1 and 2 (2 especially, that one should come with a warning label) I liked 3 and 4 a lot. Of the two, I thought 4 were good but 3 showed more potential. I appreciate the opportunity to participate and can't wait to hear the rest of the story.

SevenMag (Cigar Weekly member)
No summary included

Steve Hawk (Cigar Pass member)
No summary included

Wilkey (Cigar Pass member)
No summary included