ARK OF THE COVENANT

Waaaay back in 2010 during my tour of my post apocalyptic life I made a decision to acquire a new hobby and that was smoking cigars!  Now at the time I wasn't in my right mind in the least bit!  To be honest of was a maniac recovering from a Judas-like scenario!  

Jump in the time machine and a few years earlier I was hanging around my good friend EDG's desk when a Thompson Cigar catalog caught my eye amidst all the hydraulic reports and bridge crap!  I picked that magazine up and took it on break.  When I opened up that magazine I felt like a big kid...all those beautiful cigars!  Right then I wanted to smoke every single one of em!  Sadly that day never came because I soon acquired a girlfriend and began a string of terrible life decisions culminating in where this post started!

May of 2010 I ordered a Thompson Cigar sampler with a 25 count humidor!  The cigars I bought were Thompson's signature brand and needless to say they weren't the best quality but it was a start!  For the record the month of May that year was probably the worst month of my life with the highlights only being the Mastodon Concert I saw with Darth Mango and Evil Arm in Champaign at the Canopy Club followed by K-Chubs graduating from U of I and me and his older bro Steveo being there to witness it!  That particular weekend was a small yet pivotal point in my cigar life!

A few years earlier I was at an auction trying to buy a table for my wife (at the time).  Sadly I didn't get that table because some arsehole old man outbid me!  I didn't want to come home empty handed so I stopped by a local antique shop and saw a Lane brand cedar chest.  A few days earlier we were at this same antique shop and she (X) fell in love with this cedar chest.  I wouldn't buy it because I was planning on dropping $$$ for that table I mentioned and the antique mall wanted $60 for that cedar chest and I thought that was outlandish!  So I stop in this antique shop and I see that same cedar chest was marked down to $10.  Apparently they couldn't sell it!  So not wanting to disappoint her I bought it!  She was surprised (but not happy, she was never happy) and I planned on restoring it for her!

I never got around to doing that before she left.  So here this cedar chest sat in my workshop!  Despite running solo I started to refinish this cedar chest to give to her as a goodwill gesture (one among many).  So I worked like a dog and finished this thing!  Now like I mentioned May was a bad bad BAD month for me.  I made an executive decision not to part with this cedar chest and instead convert it to a humidor for my aspiring cigar collection!  So that was the plan!

As I said one of the highlights in May was seeing Steveo's brother K-Chubs graduate from U of I!  While we were in town we decided to stop into a small Cigar-Pipe Shop on Green St. in Campus Town called John's Pipe Shop!  While in there we met this eccentric arshole smoking a pipe wearing the ugliest sweater vest I've ever seen.  I told this jackass my plan to convert my newly refinished Lane cedar chest to a humidor!  Instead of being a cool dude and offering advice he was a condescending prick and talked down to me.  He laughed at me and made me feel like a douche!  So I made it my mission to convert that cedar chest to a pimp ass humidor!  

I scoured the web and eventually found a forum where people had posted pics and stories of how they converted various items to humidors.  From wardrobes to coolers they used it all and made it into a functioning humidor!  However one post caught my eye...a guy who converted an old lane cedar chest to a humidor!  I read and re-read his post and began making plans to do my own conversion and prove that prick at John's wrong!  

So November 2010 I bought three Tupperware containers and filled them with floral foam from Hobby Lobby.  I filled each tub with distilled nursery water and placed them in the cedar chest.  I let the tubs sit in the chest for about a week to season the inside of chest and get the humidity and temp just right (70%, 70 degrees).  From the post I found that if you keep your cigars in the actual Spanish cedar boxes while they're in the American Cedar lines chest then it's OK!  Also I noticed that several cigar shops i visited had large humidors not lines with Spanish Cedar but rather basic rooms with hundreds of cigars in their Spanish Cedar boxes.  After I achieved the desirable humidity and temp I placed my cigars in their boxes in the cedar chest and began a long tedious process of waiting and experimenting to see if this was going to work!  

It did and rather well I should say!  Cedar chests have metal flashing bands around the lids and seal very well actually!  They hold humidity very well!  I operated the three tub system from November 2010 to July of 2012.  For the record the system I used is called passive humidification where there is no pneumatic device to control the humidity just the natural humidification provided by the tubs of floral foam and water! I also wanna say this system worked great.  However I still didn't have the humidor I wanted!  So I did another retrofit!  

Around June 2012 I bought several large sheets of Spanish Cedar aromatic veneer.  I also bought a can of marine quality, low odor contact cement.  I then took a sheet of 1/8" Birch plywood, measured my inside dimensions of my cedar chest, then cut the plywood to fit the interior on all sides and bottom.  I then lined the sheets with Spanish Cedar veneer using the contact cement.  I then fastened the sheets to the interior of the cedar chest creating a box within a box.  Lastly I lined the lid of the cedar chest with veneer!  I purchased an electronic humidification device from Cigars International.  And put all this together and I have a bulk storage humidor that can hold a shit ton of cigars out in the open without the spanish cedar boxes.  This has basically given me 4 cubic feet of storage for all my present and future!

I have less than $150 dollars int the whole project and that is great!  I can say that the damn thing is functioning well and I have around 300 cigars in it aging as I type! So if you love to collect cigars and would like to store a shit load of them and don't want to pay out the ass for a high capacity humidor...make your own...you get a helluva lot of satisfaction out of it!  I did!  Lastly that guy at John's...Buddy you can suck my D.....


Cheers!

G'KNIGHT @oskarblues

From my previous posts you can probably tell I have a raging boner for Oskar Blues beer!  I've reviewed both their Dale's Pale Ale and the Gubna which are both great beers!  Well here is a third beer from Oskar Blues that I absolutely love...G'Knight Imperial Red!  This is a most excellent beer and is described below in their (Oskar Blues) own words!

Our “Velvet M-80” is a hefty, dry hopped double-red ale with a nose full of aroma, a sticky mouthfeel, a malty middle and unctuous hop flavors. G’Knight sports a surprisingly sensuous finish for a beer of its size (8.7% ABV, 60 IBUs). It’s brewed in tribute to a fellow Colorado craft beer pioneer and Vietnam vet who died fighting a 2002 wild fire outside of our Lyons hometown.  For all the details behind this tribute follow this link to www.N3978Y.com. G’Mornin’.  G’Day.  G’Knight.


I first tried this beer in a flight when Steveo and I visited Oskar blues in May 2011 during my Freedom Tour!  This beer stood out and held it's own against its more hopped out brothers!  When I was in Colorado for the Bolder Boulder 10K I packed a 4 pack of cans and lugged those babies back here to Illinois and placed in my beer fridge at McHooligans!  

From start to finish this beer is great.  It's exceptionally smooth with a very distinct but not overpowering hop finish!  Actually if you're turned off by IPAs I would highly suggest trying Red Ales.  Red Ales are among my favorite beers because they're complex yet smooth with just the right amount of hops to make give them a distinct finish on your pallet!  

I have two cans of G'Knight left in the fridge and I plan on getting some more next trip out west so hopefully if you're around McHooligans for the start of NFL season I might be gracious enough o split one with you!  

Cheers!

ROAD TRIP UPLAND BREWERY

Post Zombie 5K Turbo and I decided we'd sidetrack on our way home and stop in Bloomington, IN to visit Upland Brewery.  Now as I've said in the past I really have no use for that hole of a city or even the state of Indiana for that matter.  Indiana is full of ultra conservative neo-bible beating jackasses who'd rather see us return to the dark ages when everyone was under the control of the mighty hand of Christianity and believed God was gonna solve all their problems! How'd that work for you dirty cocksuckers in Europe during the plague?  That's what I thought!  Equally annoying is New York state and that hole of city they harbor.  It's full of a bunch elite left wing douches who think they're better than everyone!  Ever met anyone from New York?  They make pricks from Chicago seem hospitable!  Fuck that State and that communist City they claim is the Big Apple!  I hope it gets swallowed by melting glaciers!  I'm off tangent!  Like I said Turbo and I rolled into Bloomington to sample some brew!

A few years back Turbo went all Christopher Columbus and discovered Upland on one of his maniacal road trips more than likely he took because he was having woman problems and needed to clear his mind!  What he brought back was Upland's signature beer-Double Dragonfly but the kicker was it was oak aged.  this was the first oak aged beer I had ever tried and at the time my pallet wasn't advanced enough to handle the complex flavors this behemoth delivered!  I and everyone else in McHooligan's (my basement bar) took a definite pass on Turbo's Growler of Oak Aged Double Dragonfly!  However there was one person who cowboy'd right up and helped Turbo polish off his growler...none other than the Trilogy!  The Trilogy is a definite spirits connoisseur having both brewed beer and wine as well as makes a hobby out of drinking period!  So the Trilogy and Turbo drank this whole growler which is roughly 4.5 pints of beer give or take a few drops!  Needless to say at the end of the night I'm really not sure how the Trilogy drove home, but I know that Turbo drove his ass right to my couch and commenced a mega siesta of sobering up!  

So naturally when we get to Upland with our own empty growlers in hand Oak Aged Double Dragonfly was the first beer we asked for!  Of course they didn't have it because it is a seasonal beer only brewed in the fall!  Strike two (strike one being the fact I was in Bloomington)!  Naturally after a race I'm pretty hungry so I got a menu and ordered up some food!  Now I will admit Upland had some pretty good if not great food!  I ordered the Bison Burger and it was delicious!  But what pissed me off though was that the week after I was there they (Upland) debuted their brat on a pretzel bun!  WT....FUCK!  I would've loved that!  Strike three! 

Along with eating we ordered up some beer (huge surprise)!  I started off with an imperial pint (22 oz) of Helios Ale!  I thought it was very good beer!  Since I was driving I only had one of course because I'm not a retard!  Turbo started off with a Bad Elmer's Porter!  Bad Elmer is Upland's mascot apparently and he definitely looks like a Hoosier!  The Porter was also a very good beer!  Not sure what Turbo had to eat but I'm sure it was the best ever like everything he tries!  For the record Upland has around 7 year round beers on tap in their taproom!  They are as follows: Upland Wheat, Dragonfly IPA, Helios Ale, Bad Elmer's Porter, Preservation Pilsner, Rad Red Amber Ale, and Double Dragonfly Imperial IPA!  I've sampled most of their beers with Dragonfly and Double Dragonfly being my favorite offerings from Upland!  We finished up and got a couple growlers for the road!

All in all I give Upland Brewpub a 3.5 stars out of 5!  Their waitresses ranged from marginally attractive to not real good looking!  The crowd and clientele all seemed like good people and to be honest I may slam Indiana but most people from that state are nice because if they're not they won't get into heaven...but the bible doesn't say anything about making meth...nice loophole God!  The Brewery is very nice but a little hard to get too if you're not familiar with the area!  

All that being said I recommend stopping by Upland Brewery for their beer and that damn brat on the pretzel bun!  Turbo and I plan on heading back this fall for a few Growlers of Oak Aged Double Dragonfly!  I'm sure Turbo will drink more than his fill and pass out on my $2800 dollar couch I bought to make someone happy which like everything else I did ultimately didn't accomplish the goal!  Oh Well I have pretty sweet furniture!

Cheers!

Update:  After reading this post Turbo wanted to clarify a few ties he thought were erroneously posted (Of Course)!  First off the reason he thinks everything he tries is amazing and the best ever is because he has an advanced pallet and us neanderthals don't have the skill to taste how awesome things are!  And second although I was correct in stating the Double Dragonfly was oak aged it was specifically aged in an oaken bourbon barrel so it was actually Bourbon Barrel Double Dragonfly!

CIGAR AND COGNAC

About a year ago I was circulating my Cigar Aficionado (magazine) around the office!  My buddy EDG read an article in this particular issue about pairing cigars and cognac!  We usually drink beer, scotch, or Amaretto on the rocks when we herf it up!  However EDG after reading the article decided to take it upon himself to buy a bottle of Courvoisier (cognac) and bring it on over to the Porch of Wisdom for a combo taste test.

SPOILER ALERT!

EDG thought it tasted like shit! 

 Although quite strong I thought the Courvoisier was smooth tasting!  Turbo who likes everything that other people don't like (just to prove he's better) loved it of course!

Flash forward to a few weeks ago and I decide to crack that same bottle and our myself a glass of lighter fluid tasty goodness and light up a stick!

I paired the Courvoisier with a contraband cigar Koolaid brought me back from his wanderlust trip to the Dominican Republic!  I have to admit that the Cuban-non Cuban-Cuban cigar went very well with the cognac!  The taste of both played well with one another (how ghay did that sound?)!  First few sips of cognac are a little rough but after you pop your cherry it gets smoother and smoother and maybe that's because you're catching a buzz?  Just this past week Steveo and I were at a cigar bar in Denver and I ordered up a glass of Courvoisier and enjoyed it along with a Crown and Ginger while smoking a Cohiba Robusto! I'll admit it was pretty fucking tasty and Steveo agreed!  The only drawback is drinking it makes you look ghay apparently as we found out when the extremely drunk little prick who decided to crash our man party asked Steveo and I if we "were together"!  So I guess my point is if you're gonna enjoy a cigar while having a glass of cognac...do it at home so you don't look ghay!

Cheers!