Greetings and salutations to my fellow habitual cigar enthusiasts and Weekend Warriors alike. Let me introduce myself. My name is Bill, and I hold the unofficial title of the director of culinary affairs at the Smoke Inn in not so historic Port St.Lucie, Florida aka “The Pizzle”. My desk is adjacent to my good friend and fellow cigar enthusiast D.A. Mayor. I am also a charter member of the Smoke Inn Irregulars.

Like most cigar smokers, I started as a casual cigar smoker. When I first started smoking in high school “I was on a budget” (had to throw that one in there for you Bandit). I would smoke any cheap sticks whenever my friends and I would get together and hang out. Like my palette for food, my taste for cigars has changed over the years. Today I smoke daily, and mix it up depending on my mood or activity. My preference now is definitely for a quality medium to full maduro stick.

The other day I was sitting in the shop with D.A. Mayor smoking a La Flor Dominicana (LFD) DL660 Maduro when Matt, the manager of the Smoke Inn in the “Pizzle”, walked in with his weekly supply of fresh sticks. He said “Billy Boy, I got something for you I know you’re going to love”. D.A. Mayor and I stood there with bated breath like little kids on Christmas day waiting to see what Matt was going to pull from the box. To my surprise he pulled out of the box the “Digger” by LFD. For those of you who are not familiar with this bad ass stick, it is by far one of the largest stogies I’ve ever seen. It has an impressive 60 ring gauge and is a massive eight and half inches long and full of the finest Dominican double ligero binder and filler, wrapped nicely in a beautiful slightly oily Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper. Trust me when I tell you that even Linda Lovelace would think twice about taking this bad boy on!

The LFD Chisel is my regular go to stick! So naturally I had to step up to the plate and purchase two Diggers to see how they would smoke. Typically, I won’t buy such a big stick, because I find the flavor changes half way through and they tend to draw hard and burn unevenly. Today I finished work for the day at 5:15 PM and could not wait until I got to the shop to light up the Digger. So I sparked it up in the car at 5:26PM in route to the shop. When I got to the shop D.A. Mayor had just finished smoking the Digger and raved about it. We got to talking and we wondered how big of an ash this stick would hold. To my amazement, I was able to hold an ash on better than half the stick. Keep in mind we are talking about an 8 ½ inch stick here. Just for kicks, I laid the stick out horizontally three times without losing the ash. I got to about a half inch from the band before the ash finally fell. At no time did the draw or flavor change from start to finish. It took me all of 2 hours and 45 minutes to crush the beast.

For those of you who enjoy a full body stick this is a must have! The best part of all was this gem is an exceptional value at the incredible price of $10.00 a stick.

WARNING: As with all Double Ligero sticks they are not for the faint of heart. You also must make sure you only smoke this one on a full stomach or the Digger will put you in the Grave!!!!!!

Cheers,

Chef Billy

Reposted with permission from thegarshop.com