Digging the Sound of This Cigar? You Might Also Like...

Crowned Heads "Mil Dias Maduro"

Lovely Cigars "Bay City Cigar Maduro"

Esteban Carreras "Las Cañas"

Initial Smoke

Milk chocolate, spice cake, medium-powered corojo flavors, and a shot of soil and leather waste no time in touching down on the tongue. Retrohales are mid-grade in potency, with a focus on leather, soil, and spice being their primary purpose for the first ten minutes or so. Body is medium, as is strength and flavor, with the finish being a touch charry and dry at times.

1st Half

Sunny corojo tastes turn what would normally be a dark maduro first third smoke session into a much brighter experience. Making things lighter yet is the taste of baking soda, which is oddly refreshing and a touch tingly on the tongue. There's also the fleeting taste of cotton candy sans sugar, and this somehow works with the mild peppery tastes from the corojo leaf inside the stick. 

As dark and light chocolate notes come and go, malted milk flavors colonize on the backend of each exhale. Eventually, this note grows toffee-like, and the salty flavor it imbues flows into a much-anticipated brownie batter note that has been studded with walnuts. This is right where the sweet spot in the cigar sits, and with the oiliness of the smoke moving toward medium-full, maduro smokers will surely savor the center section of the cigar to the maximum.

2nd Half

But with corojo coming in strong on each retrohale, and the overall spiciness of the blend building, things get peppery for a hot minute, and the palate grows confused. Smoked chilis and that nutty, salty, spice-rich mole sauce circle back around, and with them comes that smack of baking soda. This transition is not something I would refer to as unpleasant, just a touch obtuse and oddly refreshing on the finish. 

Sweet tastes and a more balanced approach to spiciness turn the final third into a much more focused moment, allowing the return of milk and bittersweet chocolate to bloom once more. There's a sizable serving of soil and leather underneath all of this, and it hits especially hard on retrohale, with the finish holding a balanced blend of all of the above. 

Parting Puffs

Toasted grains, medium sweet retrohales that favor chocolate over soil and leather, and a bitter black patent malt taste are the more enjoyable notes found within parting puffs. Sadly, these are quickly overcome by an oily tar taste and an excessively hot burn.

Ash / Burn / Smoke / Draw

Although there wasn't any need for a touch-up, the burn on my review cigar continuously sloped to one side. This was joined by a pretty unappealing ash that was dirty brown in sections and prone to blooming out in areas. The draw was good, though, and the gradual increase in smoke body and its oiliness was enjoyable.

Final Thoughts

There are moments when I wonder if my overall assessment of a cigar is going to merit a decent review. This would be one of those times, as I discovered just as many miscues as appeals within the Hot Cake Maduro, depending upon what was being detected and assessed at the moment. 

Strong points for this cigar are its ability to be more corojo than maduro in certain sections, without going overboard. It also has some pleasant, earthy retrohales and the ability to produce enough chocolate cake-like tastes to keep the hardcore maduro smoker puffing. I also found those little fizzles of baking soda to be an oddly refreshing interlude in the action, making the overall vibe feel brighter.

Combustion concerns, some lengthy stalls in flavor delivery, and frumpy, unrefined looks led to moments of disinterest, too, though. There's also the issue of consistency, as two of the four cigars I smoked were notably spicier than the others. This leaves me with the opinion that this blend is not so much of a hot cake, but more of a half-baked maduro batter. Which, depending on the smoker, could either be a good or a bad thing...

Overall Balance & Repeatability