The things in my head go 'round and 'round

Sitting on the deck enjoying a good cigar at the end of a good day is a tiny slice of heaven.

Today I bottled one of the partigyle brews I made with a friend a couple of weeks ago. It was the second running, as I want the first running, a Dopple Bock, to sit in the secondary for another week. I am not sure what to name this brew, as this was the first partgyle brew I have ever performed.

Regardless, sitting on the deck with this cigar is very relaxing. It is saving me from destroying my kitchen as I have managed to ruin two loaves of bread yet once again. I do not understand what it is with me and bread. Bread is supposed to be this simple recipe that anyone can make. I can’t make bread. It is either tasteless, gummy, over baked, under baked,or just gross. I follow the recipe. I talk to my friends who are chefs, and bakers. I write down what they tell me, and I still can’t make a loaf of bread to save my soul.

I don’t get it.

But I do get this cigar. It is a Punch Gran Puro. And is it good? Oh yes. It is fantastic. So I will sit here and finish it, ruminating on the remains of this day.

I have said it way too many times in the past, but I do love coffee. Coffee is a passion in my life. And I really do not like bad coffee. Bad coffee exists in many aspects. Weak coffee, burnt coffee, coffee served in dirty cups, coffee brewed in dirty equipment, using stale coffee, grinding stale beans, etc.

I buy my coffee currently in a grocery store, but I know that the beans that they sell bulk are most likely stale. I tend to buy the plastic containers. Why? Because even though the containers are months away from being ground, at least they tried to slow the process of the coffee going stale by sucking air out of the package. And that minimally helps. Minimally. What would improve the process even more would be if I learned how to roast my own beans. You see, green coffee beans will last for a long time in the green state. It is when you roast them that the process of them becoming stale begins. So if I could just roast what I want to use over the next couple of days, I could have fresh roasted coffee on a constant basis.

And I like that idea, because I love coffee. Remember? Anyway, there are a number of methods you can use to roast your own coffee beans. You can put them in the oven, you can use a frying pan, you can use an air popcorn maker, or you can go out and buy a drum roaster. Me, I am going to start with the oven method, and then decide how I want to improve from there.

Because I really love good, fresh coffee.

I do love a good cigar. That being said, a good cigar has to be stored properly to keep its flavor and ability to be smoked properly.

There really isn’t anything much better than a good cigar, and the time to smoke it. Given the time and the right cigar, I could enjoy one pretty much anywhere. But it has to be a good cigar, and a good cigar is one who has been stored under the right conditions

Cigars are a blend of specific tobaccos that have been stored at 70 degrees, at 70% humidity. This means that for each particular cigar, they will have had to have been held at those levels of temperature and humidity from the time of production to the time of enjoyment. That sounds a lot easier than it really is. Once a cigar has been rolled, it is at the mercy of whatever human handles it. And that is as ominous as it sounds. Cigars go from roller to storage, to shipping, to storage yet once again until they are purchases. And it is the retail storage that is the most dicey.

Not all retailers store their cigars as well as they should. Not all retailers have the facilities to store the cigars that you intend to purchase. That being said, you as the cigar purchaser can hedge your bet. And that is where a humidor comes into play. Cigars that lose their humidity lose the flavor they were meant to have. They will burn to hot, and too fast. The outside wrappers might very well separate from the filler.

Humidors are constructed to keep the temperature steady, along with the humidity. This is taken care of by either an internal electric powered humidifier, or by a sponge-like device where once soaked in distilled water the water evaporates in the humidor keeping your cigars at an optimum level of humidity and temperature.

I know I keep harping on those two variables, but they will make or break your cigar storage and your cigar enjoyment. Humidity at 70%, and temperature at 70 degrees. Keep them stable and your stable of good cigars will be there waiting for you to have the time to enjoy them properly.

And the difference between me and you, I won’t argue right or wrong.

Remember that concept:  Keyword Analysis because that is going to tell you whether or not you are going to make money.  And that is why we are here, now isn’t it?  I thought so, so let’s get to work.

You have to figure out what you want to write about, because as you are setting up blogs you have to post content to those blogs. So wrap your head around that reality first.  I write about making beer, and wine, candles, composting, cigars,and worm farming.  It is a heck of a lot easier to write about something you know about than trying to learn about a subject while you are writing.  Because you want to be able to whip content onto your blogs quickly, so that you can start getting traffic.

But baby steps.  Once you have a handful of subjects you want to write about go to google and enter in “Keyword Analysis” in search and hit enter.  Google Adwords Keyword Tool is where you want to go.  Click on that and when the page loads type on of your writing interests in where it says “enter one keyword or phrase”  You will then have to type in the captcha word and hit “get keyword ideas”.  A list of keywords will come up.  We now have to filter them to get an idea of what is worth our time and what isn’t.  On the right you will see a box that has “Broad” in it.  Drop the window down and set that cell to “exact”.  Right above that is a cell that says choose columns to display.  Drop that window down and click on “Show estimated CPC”.  Drop the window down again and click “hide advertiser competition”, and “hide local search volume”.   Finally click on “global monthly search volume” which will bring the most popular searches to the top.

Here is where it gets interesting.  Don’t pay any attention to any keyword that has less than 10,000 visits per month.  Unless their CPC is above $5 they just aren’t worth the energy unless you want to use one just to experiment.  Take a look at some of the monthly clicks and put them to the test of what they could POTENTIALLY mean to you in income.  To do this multiply the CPC by the monthly searches, and then finally by .005.  This will tell you what this keyword could pay you if you were on top of the google seaches for that keyword. That equation looks like this:  cpc x monthly search volume x .005 = $$$.

That is enough for today.  Let me know when you have that completed and we will go on to setting up your blogs.

L8R.