Avalon Juke Blue - With Pictures
Last night after supper, I went to the humis to pick out something as a treat. Right on top were the smokes I got Wednesday past from the Avalon Pass. They had been resting in the open single stick baggie for 2 days and then in the general population for 3 @ ~64% and high 60's temps.
I chose the Juke Blue, a Robusto shape, 5" X 50 RG.
Construction:
Mildly rough very dark wrapper with some prominent veins. The shape was interesting, it seemed to be "pressed" somewhat into a slightly egg shape. The foot was very interesting as the wrapper leaf was "folded over", creating a kind of a flat cap on the foot (I wish I had gotten a picture of this). The head snipped easily, but not real clean with my Xikar, exposing a kind of wonky roll. It seemed it was rolled around a dark coarse leaf in the center, or something.
http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i1...keBlue-001.jpg
Predraw was almost nonexistant due to the "cap" at the foot.
Lghting:
It lit fairly easily, albeit unevenly, maybe due to the foot construction, and once that was burned off, the draw was very nice to me (which may be on the "easy" side for other smokers). Plenty of smoke, an abundance actually, which is another plus. The first few draws were pure tobacco flavours, and after that some flavours (which I won't even try to identify) showed through and were very pleasant.
Problems:
Now I ran into problems. After 10 minutes, it wanted to go out. A couple of quick puffs got it going again with plenty of smoke, but it was burning very hot. Fifteen minutes into the smoke, I noticed the ash wasn't progressing and there were signs of serious tunnelling (see next picture). You can see about 1/4" or so of ash, and about 1" of "shrivelled & dark" wrapper behind that:
http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i1...keBlue-002.jpg
I sat it down for 10 minutes to let it go out and cool, and then cut it again at what I thought was a good point behind the tunnelling:
http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i1...keBlue-003.jpg
The dark centers are a combination (I believe) of the end of the tobacco burnt during the tunnelling, and maybe the dark center you saw in the picture of the snipped cap.
I relit it again, and again, started off very nicely. That lasted 5 minutes, when the burn went south again:
http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i1...keBlue-004.jpg
At this point, it wasn't worth trying to smoke and it had one unbelieveably sour taste. I mercifully tossed it onto the county road on back of my house into traffic to put the cigar out of it's misery quickly. Then I went downstairs, rinsed my mouth out to get rid of the foul taste, and then took a Padron 3000 out and enjoyed the next hour contemplating the Avalon.
To the gentlemen at Avalon Cigars:
I was going to post this last night, but decided to delay my decision on whether or not to post it. I decided this morning if I were in your place, I would want to know people's opinions, good or bad. I am sure (at least, I would hope) that I just ended up with a really bad cigar, and that standard supply of these will be much better than this. Sorry to be brutally honest, but I figure an honest review would be worth more than a bullshit one coated up with sugar and food colouring!
