Smoke and Steel episode 76 is the first one I thought about scrapping.

We sat down in the garage on a Tuesday night, hit record, and started the way we always do. About eleven seconds in, my audio recorder quit. I didn’t catch it for roughly 50 minutes. The cameras kept running, so I still have audio for that stretch. It’s echoey and rough. The last part of the night sounds the way you’re used to.

I didn’t want to toss it. I also didn’t want to drop it into the regular schedule and make everybody sit through muffled audio. So it’s going to people who join the new Stogie Review email list. Sign up and the episode shows up in your inbox. It isn’t going on the channel and it isn’t going in Discord. Call it a hidden track.

Why I Finally Started an Email List

A while back, I noticed that most of the videos on a friend of the show’s YouTube channel were gone. He runs a cigar channel. I asked him about it, and we ended up trading private messages.

He told me YouTube had hit him with community guideline strikes on some very old videos. The strikes were vague. He wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong. To protect the channel, he made most of his back catalog private.

That stuck with me. Smoke and Steel has been building for about a year and a half, and almost all of it lives on platforms I don’t control. YouTube. Facebook. Instagram. Discord. Any of them can change a rule or flag something. I’ve also watched Discord servers disappear without a word of warning. I’m not predicting that for us. I’m saying I’ve seen it happen to somebody I know.

So the list is insurance. If something ever goes sideways, I can reach the people who showed up for us, including the ones who never joined the Discord. That’s the whole reason.

What’s in Smoke and Steel Episode 076

It’s a loose night. We spend a good stretch still talking about Louisiana. The Padron 50th comes up, and so does the Lampert Ocean Breeze we smoked blind at LACC.

Then there’s the hot dog argument. It started as a point about smoking your cigars instead of hoarding them. It stopped being about that pretty fast. I’m not sure any of us could follow the analogies by the end.

That leads into mold and beetles. There’s a story about a cigar lit two puffs before the mold gave it away, and one about a live beetle in a brand new box at a shop. Fair warning if you’re about to go check your humidor.

Mark also sent in a humidor question “for a friend.” It’s about what you do with the door after somebody lets one go. We took it seriously. Sort of.

This is an unfiltered night in the garage, and the language shows it.

What Else Comes Through the List

I don’t know yet. Maybe a digest every couple of weeks, or once a month. Maybe highlights from an episode or two. Maybe something only list members get to see. I’m not going to promise a schedule I can’t keep.

What I can tell you is that episode 76 is the first thing you’ll get. I’d rather build the list and never need it than need it and not have it.

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Smoke and Steel is part of the Stogie Review YouTube channel, and a lot of the after-show talk happens in the Stogie Review Discord. If you want to support the show, the Smoke and Steel Merch Store helps. And if you haven’t signed up yet, the form is up near the top of this post.