I stumbled upon your channel just some time ago, and just now watched this video. Right after you said that (basically) that it’s just not possible for almost all of the cigars to be scored around 90 I jumped to your website. I see that you have stopped doing the blind tasting, which is a shame since I think that could have been the ultimate cigar guide. Good guidelines, deducting highest and lowest scores (like in ski jumping), different type of people on the panel… Perhaps it became difficult to gather all the people at once often, but if you simplify it by saying that everybody besides you two guys (Carl abd Ruben) can smoke whenever and just email you the tasting sheet (make a monthly quota of cigars), you can then just put the review on the website, the two of you nake a small podcast episode about the cigar and you could also put the blind testing as a part of your regular podcast. Sorry if I’m steping out of line here, but when I saw that you gave a Cohiba Meda Siglo an 80 score I was hooked! I’m in marketing and business development basically, if you need any potential help feel free to contact me
I created an account on there a while back. Maybe I should upload on there too just in case, but that platform still just doesn't even have close to the same reach as RUclips sadly. Hopefully if RUclips does go all the way and censors cigars completely the whole community can turn to a different platform in unity.
Interesting. I was just thinking the other day how all review scores typically fall between 87 and 92. I'd definitely like to check out that scoring sheet you guys created. I feel like most reviewers don't really put that much effort into creating their own scoring criteria
I didn't quite grasp the platform relevancy here, but I can use my noggin and guess why. I haven't had a TV in three decades and YT has become a habit for me. I don't know that YT is declining from Google's perspective, but it definitely is from mine and has been for a long trickling time. Lately I thought about YT in a review kind of way, and I realized that the golden days of YT is already 10-20 years behind us. I'm not going to list all the ways it has changed to become increasingly more undemocratic and claustrophobic, but I think now with this latest "anti profanity" algorithm thing (Hello American puritanism we meet again. Fuck you), it's time I realized that I'm going to have to wean myself off the platform. It's not so much that all these controlling and manipulative mechanisms are installed directly, as it is how it affects how people approach the platform creatively and interactively. On the topic of unbanded reviews, as you know, this is how all serious wine tasting is done. (I just recently listened to a podcast with a professional wine taster) This is how the importers and sometimes even retailers decide what wines to buy and how to score or describe them to the customer. As for the scale, it's been an ongoing debate for a very, very long time, and they talked extensively about that too on that podcast. To be brief towards the end here, essentially you can choose this or that scale for your own reasons, but you're never going to be 100% happy with it. To conclude; I've opened stogielads twice since you first popped up on YT. I'll do it more often in the future. Did I get the gist of it? EDIT: I got a warning from YT posting this comment. I couldn't have asked for a better demonstration of what I'm talking about in the first paragraph.
Partially I wanted to post this video as I know many people follow us here on RUclips but don't have Instagram, which is where I've been posting about this blind-tasting project. I also felt it was relevant to communicate why the videos have been slightly less frequent. But you are correct in that we wanted to make these new reviews on a separate platform as RUclips is moving scarily quickly against tobacco related content. It feels good to diversify and have a project going on our own platform in case things really turn grim here on RUclips. Until we're entirely forced off of here I'll continue to also make videos though for sure! Absolutely insane that your comment gave you a warning for containing just one "bad" word! Depressing stuff truly.
Nice to see the point of blind tests raised again. Do you think variety in cigar smokers' demographics is as important as focus and training in a tasting panel? Could you please expand on the importance of not being biased? For example, how do exclude the impact of personal preference that, even in a blind tasting, plays a big role in all reviews (unless you apply sensory analysis norms)? A lot of questions, but genuinely interested in discussing about these.
Thank you for reaching out! I can start off by saying that many of the people on our panel have seen much of your content before and it has been part as a source of inspiration. It's hard to quantify if the demographics are as important as other aspects. Certainly being a man or a woman doesn't have much impact, but different levels of experience definitely does. I think I worded it poorly in the video by saying not being "biased". To expand, what I meant is more that the panel we have put together has a very equal mix of people that prefer light cigars, medium cigars and heavy stuff, as well as a balance between people that like Cubans, non cubans etc. You can easily achieve bias if you have a panel of eight people for example that all absolutely love full bodied heavy maduros but all despise Connecticuts. At that point it is hard to review all types of cigars fairly. I think the topic of personal preference is very interesting and complex. Although we've taken these precautions when assembling this panel, it is impossible to entirely 100% remove any personal preference and it will always factor. Beyond the mixed panel, we've also tried to balance the score sheet to both factor in how much the reviewer is enjoying the flavours of the cigar and also how balanced, complex and prominent the notes are. This is aimed to take in both preference and try to consider the "quality" of the flavours presented in the cigar.
what happened? why no content anymore
I stumbled upon your channel just some time ago, and just now watched this video. Right after you said that (basically) that it’s just not possible for almost all of the cigars to be scored around 90 I jumped to your website. I see that you have stopped doing the blind tasting, which is a shame since I think that could have been the ultimate cigar guide. Good guidelines, deducting highest and lowest scores (like in ski jumping), different type of people on the panel…
Perhaps it became difficult to gather all the people at once often, but if you simplify it by saying that everybody besides you two guys (Carl abd Ruben) can smoke whenever and just email you the tasting sheet (make a monthly quota of cigars), you can then just put the review on the website, the two of you nake a small podcast episode about the cigar and you could also put the blind testing as a part of your regular podcast.
Sorry if I’m steping out of line here, but when I saw that you gave a Cohiba Meda Siglo an 80 score I was hooked! I’m in marketing and business development basically, if you need any potential help feel free to contact me
Any thoughts moving to rumble?
I created an account on there a while back. Maybe I should upload on there too just in case, but that platform still just doesn't even have close to the same reach as RUclips sadly. Hopefully if RUclips does go all the way and censors cigars completely the whole community can turn to a different platform in unity.
Interesting. I was just thinking the other day how all review scores typically fall between 87 and 92. I'd definitely like to check out that scoring sheet you guys created. I feel like most reviewers don't really put that much effort into creating their own scoring criteria
The scoring sheet is up on the blog now! Let us know what you think of it!
I didn't quite grasp the platform relevancy here, but I can use my noggin and guess why.
I haven't had a TV in three decades and YT has become a habit for me. I don't know that YT is declining from Google's perspective, but it definitely is from mine and has been for a long trickling time. Lately I thought about YT in a review kind of way, and I realized that the golden days of YT is already 10-20 years behind us. I'm not going to list all the ways it has changed to become increasingly more undemocratic and claustrophobic, but I think now with this latest "anti profanity" algorithm thing (Hello American puritanism we meet again. Fuck you), it's time I realized that I'm going to have to wean myself off the platform. It's not so much that all these controlling and manipulative mechanisms are installed directly, as it is how it affects how people approach the platform creatively and interactively.
On the topic of unbanded reviews, as you know, this is how all serious wine tasting is done. (I just recently listened to a podcast with a professional wine taster) This is how the importers and sometimes even retailers decide what wines to buy and how to score or describe them to the customer. As for the scale, it's been an ongoing debate for a very, very long time, and they talked extensively about that too on that podcast. To be brief towards the end here, essentially you can choose this or that scale for your own reasons, but you're never going to be 100% happy with it.
To conclude; I've opened stogielads twice since you first popped up on YT. I'll do it more often in the future. Did I get the gist of it?
EDIT: I got a warning from YT posting this comment. I couldn't have asked for a better demonstration of what I'm talking about in the first paragraph.
Partially I wanted to post this video as I know many people follow us here on RUclips but don't have Instagram, which is where I've been posting about this blind-tasting project. I also felt it was relevant to communicate why the videos have been slightly less frequent. But you are correct in that we wanted to make these new reviews on a separate platform as RUclips is moving scarily quickly against tobacco related content. It feels good to diversify and have a project going on our own platform in case things really turn grim here on RUclips. Until we're entirely forced off of here I'll continue to also make videos though for sure! Absolutely insane that your comment gave you a warning for containing just one "bad" word! Depressing stuff truly.
Nice to see the point of blind tests raised again. Do you think variety in cigar smokers' demographics is as important as focus and training in a tasting panel? Could you please expand on the importance of not being biased? For example, how do exclude the impact of personal preference that, even in a blind tasting, plays a big role in all reviews (unless you apply sensory analysis norms)? A lot of questions, but genuinely interested in discussing about these.
Thank you for reaching out! I can start off by saying that many of the people on our panel have seen much of your content before and it has been part as a source of inspiration. It's hard to quantify if the demographics are as important as other aspects. Certainly being a man or a woman doesn't have much impact, but different levels of experience definitely does. I think I worded it poorly in the video by saying not being "biased". To expand, what I meant is more that the panel we have put together has a very equal mix of people that prefer light cigars, medium cigars and heavy stuff, as well as a balance between people that like Cubans, non cubans etc. You can easily achieve bias if you have a panel of eight people for example that all absolutely love full bodied heavy maduros but all despise Connecticuts. At that point it is hard to review all types of cigars fairly. I think the topic of personal preference is very interesting and complex. Although we've taken these precautions when assembling this panel, it is impossible to entirely 100% remove any personal preference and it will always factor. Beyond the mixed panel, we've also tried to balance the score sheet to both factor in how much the reviewer is enjoying the flavours of the cigar and also how balanced, complex and prominent the notes are. This is aimed to take in both preference and try to consider the "quality" of the flavours presented in the cigar.
just watched that blind video a week ago! i looked afterwards to see if you had done anything similar so this is a great surprise
Hope you enjoyed that video! That’s fantastic to hear man, these blind tastings are such a blast!
I’ll miss it bro
Not going away yet haha! The videos will continue, this was just talking about an additional project we have going on our website!
I hope the website does well!! This is a great channel look forward to seeing more content from you guys.
Thank you so much for that man! I hope you enjoy the reviews that are up there so far!