Smokes For Sale

A few nice cigars images I found:

Cigar City / Grassroots / Hill Farmstead Either Or


Image by Bernt Rostad
Two collaboration beers at BrewDog Aberdeen.

The Either and Or Black Ales were brewed by Hill Farmstead, Grassroots and Cigar City Brewing at the Cigar City brewery in Tampa, Florida.

The beers are both 11,2% abv black IPAs brewed with lots of Citra, Mt. Rainier and Simcoe hops along with Ty Ty honey from North Florida and aged on medium toast Spanish Cedar. But there are some differences, Or was brewed by Grassroots and Hill Farmstead using pilsner malt instead of 2-row barley that Cigar City used when brewing Either. There are also some differences in the hop additions. Anyhow, I was anxious to do a parallel tasting of the two.

Both beers poured pitch black with no head to speak of. The Either sported a mild bourbon like aroma, with vanilla and caramel notes, while Or had coffee, smoke and some wood notes. The mouthfeel of both were full bodied but flat, no carbonation at all. The flavor of Either started out sweet, with caramel and honey notes, some vanilla and wood notes before the bittering hops gave it a bitter finish with some lingering honey. The Or started out with smoke, almost peated like an Islay whisky, which balanced fairly well with the honey. It seemed a bit drier though, with a crisp, bitter hopped finish.

The two beers, despite their similarities, appeared very different – both in aroma and flavor. A cool experiment with pretty good results.

Cigar in the Sky


Image by FotoCavallo
This is a different view after it got a little larger.
I’ve heard these called "cigar" clouds before, but they’re better known as "roll" clouds. We saw this formation on the way home from a wedding in MA. This was right before a pretty intense thunderstorm. I was super excited to see this because I’ve heard they’re fairly rare. This is only the second time in my 27 years of life that I’ve seen one in person.

wine & cigar


Image by ColumbusCameraOp
some chianti and a good cigar