Tier 1 · $14.99 · Coming Soon
The Cigar
Field Manual
From First Light to First Box — 25 cigars, the lounge, the humidor, the pairings, and the cigars to skip.
10
Chapters
~28K
Words
25
Cigars
Launch waitlist
Field Manual ships at $14.99 ($9.99 launch-day price for waitlist subscribers). Drop your email and we'll send the Stripe Payment Link the moment it goes live, plus the free First Light primer to start with right now.
One email. One launch alert. Unsubscribe anytime.
What's inside
Ten chapters built for the smoker who finished First Light and wants the deep technique, the 25-cigar reference, and the honest assessment of what actually deserves your shelf space.
Chapter 01
The First One You Actually Smoked
Why most first cigars fail — five compounding technical errors, the nicotine biology that nobody explains, and the historical context that makes cigars 1500-year-distant cousins of cigarettes.
Chapter 02
Anatomy of a Cigar
Wrapper, binder, filler, vitola, ring gauge, origin. The seven wrappers that matter. Why wrapper + origin = 90% of what you taste, and why most other cigar shopping signals are noise.
Chapter 03
Cut, Light, Draw
Five-minute setup, sixty-minute payoff. Cutters, butane, the toast, the gentle pace, the retrohale. Twelve common problems with remedies — canoeing, tunneling, plugged draw, ammonia, sour smoke.
Chapter 04
The First 25 Cigars
The reference vault. 25 cigars across 5 tiers ($5-25), every entry with flavor profile, price, wrapper, origin, strength, and a direct buy link. Mild Connecticut to premium Maduro. Cuban sidebar.
Chapter 05
The Cigar Lounge
How to walk in, what to ask, what not to pay. The walk-in humidor protocol. Three modes of buying. Tobacconist relationships. The smoking-room etiquette nobody actually writes down.
Chapter 06
Storage at Three Setups
Tupperdor at $25. FreshBox at $89. Wood humidor at $200+. Boveda packs as the universal answer. Seasoning a wood humidor. The aging dimension. When to upgrade between tiers.
Chapter 07
Pairing — The Matrix
Bourbon × cigar by tier. Coffee × cigar by roast. Beer × cigar (and why hops fight tobacco). Wine × cigar (mostly fails — except Port). The four pairings worth memorizing.
Chapter 08
The Verdict Vocabulary
25 tasting words that mean things. 50 filler words to avoid. The three-sentence useful tasting note. A worked example from a Padrón 1964, complete with metadata.
Chapter 09
Five Cigars That Will Embarrass You
The corrective chapter the cigar magazines won't write. Romeo y Julieta 1875 standard, the non-Cuban Cohiba, the Don Carlos, the Drew Estate Acid line, tourist-shop Cuban-style cigars.
Chapter 10
Where to Go From Here
Three honest paths after cigar 25. The 12-cigar rotating library. Subscription clubs (and why most aren't worth it). Apprenticeship paths. Bridges to the Codex ($39.99) and Vault ($99).
The cigar ebook ladder
The Field Manual is Tier 1 of a four-tier cigar education from Boozemakers.
- Free — First Light. 30 pages, 5 starter cigars. Tells you whether you actually want to keep going.
- $14.99 — The Cigar Field Manual. 25 cigars, lounge etiquette, three-tier humidor strategy, full pairing matrix. (This book.)
- $39.99 — The Connoisseur's Codex. 100 cigars deep-dived. Wrapper terroir, aging, the Cuba chapter, bourbon-cigar matrix at five-degree resolution. Coming Q3 2026.
- $99 — The Vault Edition. Leather-bound printed Codex, members-only digital wing, 30-cigar curated buying manifest, annual virtual tasting. Coming Q4 2026.
Start free. Browse the full Boozemakers catalog →
Get the launch alert.
The Field Manual ships at $14.99 ($9.99 for waitlist subscribers). One email gets you the launch alert plus the free First Light primer to start with right now.