well, i LOVE beer, but i also LOVE cigars. most people when considering a proper pairing for a cigar consider the best drinks to be liquors...most notably single malt scotch and fine brandies. i don't know anything about those. another pairing you see a lot of is cigars and coffee. this is definitely a winning combination and one of my favorites if i'm smoking in the morning, but most people don't know good coffee. currently i prefer a dark roasted yemeni coffee (i like starbucks' arabian mocha sanani or arabian mocha timor) with a cigar like partagas spanish rosado or sancho panza. a red dot cohiba or an ashton vsg or heritage would also be fitting, but expensive for a morning smoke. what i truly love to drink though is beer, and what i truly love to smoke is cigars. better than pot or cigarettes.....much more rich and indulgant flavor. the problem is it's hard to pair the two. there is coffee that obviously goes with more full bodied cigars, and coffee that obviously pairs better with mild cigars. same with liquor. beer, on the other hand, seems to have more dimensions of difference in flavor than liquor or coffee do. there are four major factors, as far as i can tell....they are the malt character, the hop character, the glassware, and the temperature. it seems harder to match a good cigar with a good beer than with coffee or liquor. tonight i think i've had the best combination i've had to date, but still not perfect. it was a macanudo maduro with a bottle of stone brewery smoked porter. the macanudo maduro was rich and smooth, but true to macanudo style it was very mild. more full bodied than the macanudo cafe line, of course, but still mild-medium in the grand scheme of things. it tasted terriffic, but the beer was only slightly too hoppy for the cigar. the bitterness of the beer overpowered the mellowness of the smoke. it was close, but no cigar, so to speak. i think a medium bodied but still smooth maduro might be a better combination with this beer. i'm thinking onyx reserve. i think that the macanudo maduro or the helix maduro would both go very well with a gentler dark beer, like guinness draught or young's double chocolate stout. there seems to be very little information about what types of beers go well with what types of cigars. i've shared my only (possibly) worthwhile insight into this topic...that though elusive, mild maduros do exist and go terrifically with really smooth and slightly milder porters and stouts.... do any of you have any good suggestions, some tried and true combinations that you wish to share? i'd be very interested in hearing your ideas and trying them for myself..... this is a topic i have great interest in....
I will occacionally smoke a good cigar but almost never pair it with beer. i drink very good beer and think that smoking a cigar takes away from the flavor of the beer. I like my beer better then cigars, but thats just my opinion.
My favorite combo is a Mother Earth Ambrosia by Drew Estate with a Hazed & Infused by Rockies Brewing Co. Both are very spicy, and I find the combination of spices to be tantalizing to the palate! "Hazed" is very hoppy, but the dry-hopping process gives it a much more fruity/aromatic finish than the other hophead beers on the market. Mother Earth is rolled with asian spices and wrapped in a conneticut shade wrapper, very smooth and spicy. Yum.
tonight i had a great lakes brewing company elliot ness with a CI legends orange label (the rocky patel designed cigar - my first) and found it to be a good combo. i still bet a maduro mac and a young's double chocolate stout would be heaven. i will soon be testing this theory....
well, i'm off saturday, so i will probably try out a few new combos, but i haven't got the money to go out and get beer AND new cigars. i have a lot of these ci orange labels around....and i'm thrilled with that. since i first started smoking cigars a few months ago i've been on a quest to find the perfect cigar for me....the happy medium between affordable prices and good quality...i think i may have found my standard against which that idea is measured, though it feels wierd to have such a good response to a "house blend." i've smoked three of these in the past two days even though i have several other varieties to choose from, including some much more expensive cigars that by all rights -should- be better cigars....and i'm more and more impressed each time i've had one. soon i'll try the other varieties from the sample pack and see what i think of them. suffice it to say, though i paid about three bucks a piece for these they are every bit as good (in quality - not comparable in specific taste) in just about every regard as some of my favorites....cao brazilia, partagas spanish rosado, la flor dominicana double ligero....all of which cost much more than that...the only thing close to a drawback to these cigars is their packaging, which is decently passable but by no means "nice" i also have a few new ones to try, though, apart from ci legends blends....one punch rare corojo, one punch gran puro, one gurkha expedition..... what should i shoot for...its tough, particularly with cigars you haven't even tasted yet
