Smoking and smoking and smoking

On Friday after work, I decided to use my late afternoon and evening as an opportunity to smoke some beef ribs and flanken-cut rib meat and have a beer.  And what goes better with beef and beer than a fine cigar.  I selected a Diplomaticos No.5  for smoking while I lit up a chimney full of coals.  I learned something on this cook that made me a little upset.  I have been using the wrong fuel for years.  Because I understood lump charcoal to be a superior product in comparison with charcoal briquets, I have used it exclusively for years.  But it is the wrong fuel for me in two major ways, in fact the only two ways it can be wrong.  I already KNEW that it is said to burn HOTTER than briquets, but I never thought of that as a bad thing.  But NOW I KNOW....who cares!  I smoke meat through indirect heat, and hotter has nothing to sell me.  And what's more, like a supernova, it burns hot AND FAST.  And I wondered why I was replacing my coals two or three times in a cook. So I ran out of lump charcoal this weekend, and while I was buying steel wire, I saw that 13.9 lb bags of Kingsford Briquets were on sale for 2 for $5.88.  Great price, but NOT my good old lump coal.  And here is where the learning came in.  I laid in 2/3 of a chimney of briquets for a full rack of Beef Ribs, and it burned for the entire cook.  I was stunned....and happy.  And the ribs were fantastic by the way.  So now unless I am cooking a steak, there is no need to ever buy the lump charcoal.  And I rarely DO THAT.  So it's bricks for me.


Where was I??  Oh yes, the Diplomaticos No.5.  NOT a good cigar tonight.  I bought 4 boxes a few years ago, and have had very few excellent cigars from these boxes, and tonight's smoke was poor at best.  AND YET I nubbed it.  It showed an occasional flash of flavor, sweet and tangy, but mostly tasted like wet newspaper.

After the ribs were done, I still had a glass of Arrogant Bastard ale left in the bomber, so I lit up a Punch Royal Selection No. 12, and burned about half of it before retiring for the evening.  It was also not so hot.  But when I sat down to write this, I remembered that these were from the cedar 'road' box of cigars I left in a drawer for almost a year without humidification.  Derh.  I am surprised either of them burned well or tasted like anything.  So all in all,  this evening was a major success.
No rating on either of the cigars, thanks to my own stupidity.