Summary: Half Ashed Episode 018 Welcome, folks! We're back, and only slightly agitated with the unexpected loss of Episode 017 last week. Thanks for joining us. I'll be brief with the summary this week and try to hit all the details quickly. Our Cigar of the Week is one of Craig's offerings, the 2006 Partagas Serie du Connoisseur. We had several news items pop up this week, as we begin to enter the season of rapidfire updates in the days leading up to IPCPR. Here are a few we covered: News Items Eddie Ortega has been showing off the artwork for his October release in the Wild Bunch series, featuring DaByrdman (Ashley Byrd, cofounder of the B&B Cigar Club) Quesada will be adding a 5"X43 corona to the Oktoberfest lineup this year, which excites both of us greatly. I already love the blend, especially in the Bavarian size...I can't wait to give it a try in a corona. Production numbers appear to be only about 500 boxes of 20, and MSRP is about $7.25. EP Carrillo is going to release a 7"X70 monster into the INCH line. Erik Espinosa published a press release earlier this week detailing the upcoming La Bomba Warhead. L'Atelier published a picture of the packaging for the upcoming Extension de la Racine, which will feature a similar blend to their core line but be wrapped in Sungrown Criollo. Miami Cigar gave a few details about this year's Casa Miranda - Chapter Two. On a pipe tobacco note, two legendary blends will soon be in the US market after decades of being unavailable here. What have we been smoking? Craig: Wynwood, La Aroma de Cuba Mi Amor Reserva Kip: Oliva Serie V Maduro, Padilla Miami 8&11, EPC Short Run 2013, Cuenca 5 Anniversary, Opus - Tauros the Bull Miscellany There were a number of discussions in this episode to point out my ever-increasing age and my perception of time since certain cigars were released.... Additionally, we took the opportunity to cover a great number of emails this week. We needed to catch up after losing last week's episode to the Great Wide YouTube Universe. We actually got through 9 of them in the episode, some followups to previous correspondence. Keep those coming! We love to hear from you all - just drop us a line through any of the means below. Wrap Be sure you all come back next week for Episode 019, which will be a live show at 9pm EST Friday night (June 14). We will be smoking a Monte Pascoal, a tasty blend coming out of Brazil. In the meantime, if you would like to contact us, you can reach us through the contact page or at the following email addresses: kip@thecigarmy.com or craig@thecigarmy.com. Don’t forget to get those emails in this month to be entered in our current giveaway. Also, remember you can always go back and listen to previous episodes, which can be found in the Half Ashed Archive. You can download this week’s audio directly below (right-click “Download” and save), or find us on iTunes. Video, as always, will be available on Cigar Federation homepage or at the CigFed Half Ashed Video Archive. P.S. – If you have unbanded suggestions or contributions, you can get those to us by sending an email to info@thecigarmy.com. This email address goes directly to my wife, so you can simply suggest an unbanded cigar for her to source, or send me an email to kip@thecigarmy.com if you have something you’d like to send in. I will provide an address to send them. Thanks!
