Smoke and Steel records every Tuesday night in my garage in Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania. We’ve been sitting around smoking and talking for years. We just started pointing a camera at it. Episode 55 landed on one of those sultry June nights that make the garage feel like a sauna before the first cigar even gets clipped.

We had Mark, Eric Drumheller, Eric the Elder, Rob, Jimbo the Godfather, and Bruce in the garage that night. And we spent a good chunk of the episode explaining to Mark why he missed a herf he never knew was happening. It got out of hand fast. We also debated the price tag on the new Opus X Baby Shark, added three cigars to our Top 25 list, and Rob told a story about a package mix-up that had him yelling at his own delivery.

Nobody Told Mark About the Herf

Eric and I got on an impromptu herf over the weekend, right there on our own Discord. It wasn’t planned. A bunch of us just ended up logged in at the same time, smoking, talking, having a good time. Rob was there. Dr. TLO showed up too, and we found out his real name is Tony. Eight or nine people rolled through.

Nobody told Mark.

He found out about it after the fact and he was not happy. Eric owned up to it. He said he should have reached out to Mark directly instead of assuming a Discord post would do the job. Rob went the other way. He joked, straight-faced, that Mark wasn’t invited on purpose. He said it just to get a rise out of him, and it worked.

That’s the kind of thing that happens on our Discord these days. If you want to be in on the next one, that’s where to be.

That bit ran the whole night. Every time things got quiet, somebody brought Mark’s snub back up. Rob compared it to Pearl Harbor by the end. Mark said he’d let it go in five years. I don’t believe him.

What We Were Smoking

Mark had a Patina Habano. I lit up a Saint Luis Rey Eiroa 30th Anniversary that Joe Macko sent a while back. I was excited to finally get to it, since the Eiroa name used to carry a lot of weight in this business before the Camacho sale, and I wanted to see what Eiroa was doing recently. The first half had a funky Honduran edge to it. The second half won me over.

Eric the Elder had something from Definition. Rob had an Ashton Heritage, which he called a great cigar, and I agree.

Bruce lit up a Plasencia, toro sized, and mentioned he just became a member at Chartwell Cigar Club. He canceled his longtime membership at his old shop to make the move, which wasn’t an easy call after thirteen years there.

We got a package this week too, courtesy of Gabriel. Some new Don Emmanuel Sun and Moon cigars, sent in as a gift for the show. We’ll be smoking through those soon.

I got a package from Sean this week. Gris Gris Toros from a batch that sold out, a couple Blood Medicines, a couple Definitions, and an Opus X 20th that was actually meant for Eric, tagging along in my shipment. I joked that if Eric hadn’t been in the room with me when I opened it, it might not have made it to its final destination.

The Opus X Baby Shark Debate

Sean sent over the week’s cigar news, and this one turned into a real argument. Arturo Fuente released the Opus X Baby Shark this week, priced at $18.50 MSRP, marketed as one of the most affordable Opus cigars to hit shelves in years. Retailers are already flipping it for double or triple that.

Here’s the catch. The Baby Shark is a small cigar, four and three-eighths inches by a 47 ring gauge. Once we found that out, the affordability argument fell apart for most of us. Eighteen bucks for a tiny cigar isn’t cheap just because the name on the band says Opus. Double or triple that price for something that size is a hard pass for me.

Bruce had the best line of the night on this one. He said get bent, Carito.

I get why people will still buy it. It’s Opus. But I’d rather put that money toward a full-size cigar I already know I love.

Cigar Bands: Glue It, Rip It, or Leave It On

One of out fans sent in a question about cigar bands, and it turned into one of those debates where everyone had a strong opinion. None of us buy a cigar because of the band. But we all admitted the ones that come off clean bother us less than the ones glued down so tight you tear the wrapper trying to get them loose.

Almost everybody in the room said the same thing. If the band comes off in the cellophane, you put it back on the cigar. Every time. We all got a good laugh at ourselves on this one.

Ash, Stash, or Trash

Dave West sent in an idea borrowed from another podcast he used to do. The concept is simple. You smoke a cigar and decide right then whether you’d smoke it again tomorrow, stash it away to age, or trash it. He suggested we take it a step further for our show. Everybody brings a wrapped cigar, we swap them blind before recording, and nobody knows what they’re smoking until it’s lit.

We liked the idea enough to commit to it. That conversation also got us talking about whether we need an actual rating system beyond just talking through a cigar and moving on. Bruce suggested a sword rating, one through five. The problem, as we quickly figured out, is that everybody clusters in the middle. Nobody wants to commit to a one or a five.

We didn’t solve that problem. We’re still working on it.

Rebranded Cigars and Mystery Blends

JJ Creed asked how many cigars out there are the exact same tobacco sold under different names. It’s a good question and none of us really knew the answer. We talked about how common it is for smaller companies to buy pre-built blends from a factory and slap their own band on it. AJ Fernandez came up as an example, since he’s producing for so many different brands that there’s no telling how much overlap exists between them.

I brought up a lounge on High Street that used to sell house blends sourced from Rojas with no bands at all. For all any of us know, that same tobacco is sitting in a dozen other shops under different names right now. We’ll probably never know for sure. Companies keep that close to the vest.

Legacy Brands, Boutique Brands, and Honest Reviews

JJ Creed came back with a second question, and this one hit closer to home. He asked whether cigar influencers are doing people a disservice by only posting the expensive stuff, staying positive to keep the free cigars coming, instead of being honest.

I said back when we started this show, I told everyone we weren’t going to blow smoke. If a cigar’s good, we say it’s good. If it’s not, we say that too. Bruce backed that up with real examples from the night. He liked the Padre Eligito for the story behind it, but was honest that it’s not a cigar he’d buy on a regular basis. He also had three Blood Medicine B Positives blow up on him and said so, even though the rest of us love that cigar.

That’s the whole point. If every reviewer you follow loves every single cigar, it might be time to find a different reviewer.

Three New Additions to the Top 25

We added three cigars to our list this episode, which is more than we usually manage in one sitting.

The Liga Privada No. 9 Belicoso went on at number thirteen, specifically the double corona size, since that’s the vitola most of us have actually smoked. The Black Label Bishop’s Blend also made the cut, landing near the bottom of the list for now until more of us get a chance to smoke it. And the Plasencia Alma Fuerte Colorado finally made it official. We’ve been smoking that cigar on the show for a long time without ever putting it on the list. It landed just below the Ashton VSSG, which tells you how much we think of it.

The Onesie Incident

Rob told a story that had the whole garage laughing. His mother sent his daughter a package of baby onesies for their new grandbaby, and it arrived the same day as his Cigar Page order. He set both boxes on the table, and in what he called a total senior moment, opened the wrong one first. He pulled out a onesie and, for one confused second, genuinely thought Cigar Page had started sending baby clothes with cigar orders.

His wife set him straight. Turns out the onesies were the first gift for the grandbaby, timed to arrive that week on purpose. Rob just grabbed the wrong box off the table.

Why I Can’t Watch a Remake Without Getting Mad

I went on a rant about movie and TV remakes, and I’m not sorry about it. Roadhouse got remade and I refuse to watch it. Overboard got remade and I refuse to watch that too. I heard a rumor that The Rock might play Jack Burton in a Big Trouble in Little China remake, and I genuinely don’t know if I could sit through it.

Little House on the Prairie is getting rebooted, and I don’t know if I want to live in a world where Michael Landon isn’t playing Charles Ingalls. Some remakes work. Top Gun Maverick was fantastic. The 12 Angry Men remake with Jack Lemmon held up. But for every one of those, there are ten Ghostbusters reboots and Sandlot sequels nobody asked for.

Eric the Elder made a fair point back. A lot of the shows we grew up on, like All in the Family, probably couldn’t get made today at all. That doesn’t mean I have to be happy about the remakes we do get.

Nobody in that garage agreed with me on everything. That’s fine. We rarely do.

We closed the night out the way we always do, cigars running low, voices getting hoarse, giving Mark one more round of grief before we called it. It was a good one. Ask Mark in five years and he might even agree.

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