I’ll Make This Short: Cigars and Smoke Grenades

A V-cut gets its moment, John Adams delivers leather without becoming a spice bomb, and the TSA finds something much worse than an oversized bottle of shampoo.

The Liberty Cigars John Adams is a 6-by-52 belicoso with a Habano wrapper. And for me, that means one thing: a V-cut.

Tony admitted that when he first saw Liberty Cigars, he thought, “This is some shtick.” But the company has built an entire brand around American history, and the cigars we’ve tried have been solid. This one, of course, is named after John Adams, the second president of the United States.

A V-cut slices a wedge from the cap rather than removing the entire tip. I especially like it on torpedoes and belicosos because it preserves that tapered shape while still giving you a full draw.

You keep the shape the blender intended, but you still open the cigar enough to smoke it properly. That’s where the V-cut earns its place.

The John Adams Torpedo from Liberty Cigar features a Habano wrapper, a Connecticut broadleaf binder, and a blend of Cuban-seed Dominican and Nicaraguan filler tobaccos.

And yes, Tony loves him some Connecticut broadleaf.

Right after lighting it, I picked up a pleasant touch of pepper, plenty of tobacco flavor and maybe a little leather. There wasn’t a whole lot of complexity yet, but it also wasn’t overly spicy.

This is not a spice bomb.

At least, not yet.

A traveler flying out of Indianapolis International Airport allegedly tried to pack two smoke grenades inside jars of peanut butter in his checked luggage.

Not one smoke grenade. Two.

The jars had been hollowed out so peanut butter remained around the sides, making them look normal at a glance. For once, we looked at the TSA and said, “Well done.”

What was this guy thinking? Nobody knows.

Just be normal.

There’s a Reese’s joke in here somewhere: You got smoke grenades in my peanut butter. You got peanut butter on my smoke grenades.

Some products should never collaborate.

John Adams, a V-cut and smoke grenades in peanut butter. America is still very much America.