Well it's been a month so I decided to give one a go tonight and see how they were.

I think there may have been some humidity issues in the infusion as there's a crack at the head and seems a slight swelling at the foot but none the less no "real" damage to it. I had the bottom 2/3 of them covered in the coffee/cocoa so perhaps not enough air to keep the RH stable throughout the stick. No damaged noted on the other 2 so perhaps this one was damaged before and I hadn't noticed, none the less, no mold so let's see how it turned out.




Pre-light it smells like you're about to light up a coffee crisp. Wife brought to my attention that those of you south of the border don't have coffee crisp, so Coffee Crisp is a chocolate bar made in Canada. It consists of alternating layers of vanilla wafer and a foamed coffee-flavoured soft candy, covered with a milk chocolate outer layer. A personal favorite of mine.

I used the built in punch on my lotus lighter and the pre-light draw was like sipping on a strong coffee liquor, think Kahlua but stronger. Through the first third I was nearly impressed. There was sweetness and a very light coffee taste. It has some of the coffee liquor flavor that could be tasted on the pre-light draw, but not as much infused flavor as I was hoping for.

Sadly though by the end of the first third the "make-up on a pig" so to speak was being over powered by the flavor of the Gispert that I wasn't overly fond of. There was a faint chocolately mocha flavor with a bitterness similar to the taste of straight vanilla extract that could be picked up slightly through the original flavor.

Getting into the final third the "off" flavor I disliked eased and a creaminess melded in with the chocolate/mocha flavor and actually wasn't too bad. Burn was nearly perfect the whole way through, the crack at the head caused no problems and the smoke output of this thing was great as I find these cigars usually are.

Not going to say this was a total success, but I will say I didn't ruin them, and managed to infuse some flavor into it. Every other puff or so I'd really get hit hard with chocolate, perhaps just smelling residual cocoa powder on it as I brought it in for the draw, but this was nice. I pulled the other 2 out from the coffee/cocoa mix and laid them on it instead, hopefully allowing more even humidity in them. I think I'll give them another month and try another and see what effect a little more time will have.