Smokin' a Stovepipe - BHK52

Well from time to time, letting a cigar dry out for awhile is NOT the best idea.  I tend to like em better a bit dry, but I should have cut and tested this one before I let it dry for a week in a desktop humidor.  I saved it for this weekend's smokal activities.  After I tested it on Friday night, I decided I could only hope to let it sponge up some moisture for a day, and put it into an ice chest for 24 hours.   I pulled it out on Saturday night and it was still a bit of a stovepipe, but what are you gonna do?  I was looking forward to the smoke, I have been smoking my worst cigars lately it seems.  I had to ice ax arrest my fall down the glacier.  So I poured a half a Maredsous ale and headed outside to try the evening air.  

The cigar was of course, way too airy on the draw, but it was lit now, and I wasn't going to put it off any longer anyway.  It was tough to pinpoint as many great flavors as I had the last time out on this smoke, but in the cigar's defense, it was not as bad as the Montecristo Edmundo I had on Friday night as a consolation for the BHK52 not working out.  THAT cigar was terrible, too tight to enjoy any flavors outside of the standard "tight cigar taste".  With this BHK52, there were light, sweet and cedary tastes, with a little cocoa, but on the whole, this cigar was going to have to tighten up a bit for me to get anything great out of it.  And in time, it did.  I kept pushing the band up, which for me is always a good sign.  For a $30 cigar, these are WAY short.  So if its GOOD, you have to push that band WAY up there.  And I did...twice.  As the cigar burned and tightened up slightly, the flavors became more round and sweet and candied, and I mean that in a good way, not overly sweet, more of the white russian-type flavor I had tasted when the first one got smoked last year.  I can't give this one a high score per se, but it was one of those cigars I have had lately, where I feel kind of bad that I have to even say things like this, but it was good enough to be a welcome breath of fresh air in a dearth of good smokes lately.

To hear people tell it, I need to be smoking the FRESH cigars out of Cuba these days, they say they are great.  But I don't really HAVE any, so aged ones it is.  Oh the humanity, lol.