The Good Stuff:

The EP Carrillo Dusk was named #18 cigar of the year by Cigar Aficionado. The Dusk is one of the newer additions to Ernesto Perez-Carrillo’s portfolio making it’s debut in 2016 at the IPCPR show in Las Vegas. The Dusk is part of the Classics series and is a full-production cigar. The EP Carrillo Dusk carries an undisclosed Maduro wrapper form the United States, Ecuadorian binder, and Nicaraguan fillers. The cigars are being manufactured at the Tabacalera La Alianza factory in Dominican Republic and come in four sizes: Robusto (5 x 50), Stout Toro (6 x 52), Obscure (7 x 54), and the Solidos (6 x 60). All formats are packaged in boxes of 20 and run between $7.15 and $9.55 a stick.  A big thanks goes out to Cuenca Cigar for sending these our way. You can purchase these directly from Cuenca, or as part of their Cigar Aficionado Top 25 Cigars of 2017 sampler pack.

Size: 6 x 60
Wrapper: Undisclosed United States
Binder: Ecuadorian
Filler: Nicaraguan
Body: Medium
Strength: Medium
Price: $9.55
Pairing: Founders 2018 Kentucky Breakfast Stout (KBS) (12.3% Imperial Stout)

Prelight:

The EP Carrillo Dusk is wrapper in an extremely dark brown, “Dusk themed” wrapper which is consistent in color minus the darker natural webbing scattered throughout the wrapper’s leaf. The texture on the wrapper is pretty coarse and toothy with a very large amount of oils coating the wrapper. The wrapper feels very thick, dense, and firm while the filler is packed extremely tight resulting in a cigar that feels like a dry erase marker. The cigar is then polished off with a round, double wrapped cap and a beautiful navy blue and gold band sporting the EP Carrillo crest and the Dusk logo embosses in the front.

The wrapper on the EP Carrillo gives off great cocoa and spice aromas while the foot of the cigar carries much more pepper, spice, and natural tobacco scents. The cap cut clean and easily using my Xikar XO double bladed cutter. The cold draw produces great chocolate, spice, pepper, and dirt flavors.

First Third:

The EP Carrillo Dusk starts out with a blast of black pepper which quickly faded after the first few puffs to reveal a soft palate of dark chocolate, coffee, slight sweetness, brown sugar, and cedar. The draw is great. There is something about larger ring gauge cigars that causes the cigar to release a great amount of smoke with little effort. At first, I was scared the cigar would be packed too tightly, but it’s smoking like a dream. The burn line is slightly wavy, but razor sharp. The Ash is decently compacted and medium gray which held on for about an inch before falling into my ashtray.

Second Third:

Into the second third of the EP Carrillo Dusk the cedar has really taken the prominent role in the flavor palate backed by dark chocolate, soft coffee and a bit of musk. The sweetness has almost completely faded out. The retrohale is nice and smooth coating my nasal passage with coffee, cocoa, and soft spice which isn’t too prominent in the standard experience. The burnline is still slightly wavy but holding strong as I close out the second third with nothing in terms of nicotine kick.

Finish:

The cedar has really started to overpower all the other flavors in the final third of the EP Carrillo Dusk. While the cocoa, musk, and coffee still remain they really just kind of pop in and out at this point as they battle through the overwhelming cedar flavor. While I do enjoy it, I wish the cigar ended just a bit more balanced. The burn line was a bit wacky throughout but I never once had to touchup or relight the cigar so no marks taken there. I never once experience any harshness nor extended heat in the 2 hours it took to take this cigar down to the nub. I close out with no signs of nicotine at all.

Overview:

I am a big fan of EP Carrillo cigars, but this one just didn’t do it for me. The flavors seemed a bit muted from the beginning and as I hoped they’d ramp up as the cigar progressed, they actually dampened. I smoked three of these cigars and two of the three (not this particular one which came from a different box than the previous two) had a strange metallic flavor throughout the experience. Since it didn’t happen on all of them I didn’t feel right mentioning it in the review, nor dock the cigar marks for that. The burn and construction were great though as the cigar performed flawlessly. So if the above flavor profile matches something you think you’d like then by all means pick it up, and let me know what you think about it. I’d love to hear it.

Pairing:

Let’s face it, we all know and love Founder’s KBS. Each year this is one of the most sought after beer releases. Brewed at the Founder’s Brewery in Michigan this Imperial stout with Coffee and Chocolate added is aged is Oak Bourbon Barrels before getting bottled and poured with a 12.3% ABV. KBS starts out with a great amount of sweet chocolate, mild coffee, bourbon bite, vanilla, and malt with a heavy mouthfeel before finishing sweet with more chocolate, coffee, vanilla, toffee, and a slight bourbon bite. The alcohol is very well hidden in this dangerously drinkable stout. I paired it with the Dusk hoping that the complimentary flavors would help pull some more body out of the cigar, which it did, but still not enough to get my attention.

The post E.P. Carrillo Dusk Solidos appeared first on Cigar Reviews | Beer Pairings | Casas Fumando.

I recently received a package from a good friend Mike (@KnightRid) over at Stogie Review. Inside that package was a couple of sticks that Mike had known I have been wanting to try for quite sometime now. Alas, the time has come to fire up EP Carrillo’s Edicion Inaugural 2009.

The Good Stuff: Early last year Ernesto Perez-Carrillo decided it was time to seperate from his long time partnership with General cigar to set out and create his own family boutique brand. The first blend hitting the shelves of that brand is the EP Carrillo Edicion Inaugural 2009 which was announced at laster year’s IPCPR in New Orleans.

The EP Carrillo Edicion Inaugural takes a spin on standard cigar manufacturing by using two different binders in this blend. One Dominican, and one Nicaraguan which is then surround by a Ecuadorian Habano wrapper. The wrapper itself will not be able to be produced for a few years to come, even at that point who knows if this is a cigar that will be added to Carrillo’s standard portfolio. With only 150,000 sticks being made, it is safe to say that this is one exclusive cigar that you don’t want to miss getting your hands on.

Size: 5.5 x 52  –  Wrapper: Ecuadorian  –  Binder/Filler: Dominican/Nicaraguan  –  Body: Mild/Medium

Prelight: The EP Carrillo Edicion Inaugural 2009 sports a very consistent light, almost sandy brown wrapper. Many very small veins can be found throughout the wrapper which is polished off by a very smooth, rounded cap that blend seamlessly into the body of the cigar. The Edicion Inaugural is extremely firm to the touch with little bounce-back, and absolutely no soft spots. Construction on these cigars a subpurb. The Edicion Inaugural is fixed with a dual band system, one smaller red one with the title of the blend embossed in cold ink, and a much larger band with the EP Carrillo emblem resting upon a earthy yellow, gold and black wrap with small tobacco leaves embed upon it. The wrapper gives off a very sweet, graham cracker aroma as the foot of the cigar only enhances the graham smell with a bit of earth toned tobacco. The head clipped right off with my double bladed Palio cutter.  The cold draw produced a spicy, graham cracker, and bread type flavor mixture.

First Smoke: This Ep Carrillo lit up with extreme ease under my triple flame butane torch. The first few draws of the Ep Carrillo Edicion Inaugural produced a very smooth, yet complex mixture of graham cracker, cinnamon, natural tobacco, and almost a citrus zest. The draw is effortless and produces a great amount of thick, grey smoke.  The Edicion Inaugural produced a whole mess of  woodsy, tobacco scented stationary smoke.  The burnline started out a bit rigid and sharp, but quickly corrected itself leaving behind a beautiful tight, white ash. The ash lasted  about an inch and a half before falling to it’s fate in my ash tray.

EP Carrillo Edicion Inaugural 2009

Halfway There: Halfway through this EP Carrillo Edicion Inaugural I noticed s light change up in taste. The dominant flavor is now that of pine wood with a heck of a little spice kick and citrus taking the back seat. Even the stationary smoke aroma became more woodsy than it already was. The retro hale at this point is very tasteful and smooth. Unlike most of Carrillo’s blends the Edicion Inaugural is very smooth and mild. I am not feeling even the slightest bit of nicotine as I truck through this bad boy.  The burnline is still perfectly even, and razor sharp.

Finish: The larger of the two bands had a massive amount of unnecessary glue applied and took a rather large chunk of the cigar’s wrapper along with it. Thank god the Edicion Inaugural has more binder than normal or this could have caused quite a few problems. Lucky for me, the missing portion of the wrapper didn’t cause any problems in the draw, but it did lead to quite a bit of cracking. It just goes to show how frail this Ecuadorian wrapper can be. I didn’t get any harshness at all from this EP Carrillo. In fact, I am pretty surprised the entire experience was as smooth as it was. The finishing flavors were a bit more bold in the pine-wood department, with strong tobacco flavors and subtle spice and graham cracker. The burn was perfect all the way through with no needs to touch up, or relight. Again, no nicotine kick whatsoever, no harsh build up towards the end, smooth pine, and tobacco flavored finish.

Overview: If it wasn’t for the fragile wrapper and excess in glue on the band I would have walked away with absolutely nothing bad to say about this cigar. Even with that, I think it was a very pleasurable experience and would highly recommend this smoke to the novice, and the enthusiast. Again, it will be a matter of years before the wrapper on this cigar can be produced again, and even then it is unclear if we will ever see this cigar hit production again. So if you are luckily enough to stumble across these cigars I strongly urge you not to pass them up. You will regret it.

Pairing: I decided to pair this EP Carrillo Edicion Inaugural with some Erdinger Dark Heffeweissen (Dunkelweissen). Erdinger dark is a heavy, unfiltered wheat based beer with light citrus notes and dominant cinnamon and brown sugar flavors. The match was near perfect as it complimented the sweet notes of the EP Carrillo while really bringing the zest out of the cigar.

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