Red Meat Lovers Spicy Beef Stick

Seven years ago, Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust released a new line as a collaboration with the retailer Smoke Inn and the Red Meat Lovers Club, an organization that gathers for meat-centric events with a charitable aim. The aptly named Red Meat Lovers debuted with a single 6 x 56 toro extra size. In 2020, a second vitola—this time, a 6 x 52 toro—was added, again sold exclusively through Smoke Inn. A year later, Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust made Red Meat Lovers a regular production line and released it in four vitolas, all appropriately named after beef.

In 2024, Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust founder Steve Saka announced he would be releasing a spicier variation of the Red Meat Lovers blend in a 6 x 52 box-pressed toro vitola called Fritanga. According to Saka, the Fritanga name comes from a style of Nicaraguan street food centered around grilling meat on an open flame.

Earlier this year, Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust started shipping the Red Meat Lovers Spicy Beef Stick, which Saka said was basically the Red Meat Lovers Fritanga blend in the Beef Stick size, a 6 x 48 toro vitola with a flat cap and a flat closed foot, meaning the cigar’s cylinder is entirely closed. Blend-wise, the Red Meat Lovers Spicy Beef Stick is made with a Connecticut broadleaf wrapper over a Mexican San Andrés binder and fillers from Nicaragua and Pennsylvania. The cigars are made at Nicaragua American Cigars S.A.

Each cigar has an MSRP of $16.95, and it is packaged in 10-count boxes. The cigars were originally scheduled to begin shipping in May, but the release was pushed back due to production issues for the boxes.

If you are wondering how to tell the two Beef Stick releases apart, it is fairly simple: the original release has white lettering, whereas the newer Spicy Beef Stick uses mustard-colored lettering.

• Cigar Reviewed: Red Meat Lovers Spicy Beef Stick
• Country of Origin: Nicaragua
• Factory: Nicaragua American Cigars S.A.
• Wrapper: U.S.A. (Connecticut Broadleaf)
• Binder: Mexico (San Andrés)
• Filler: Nicaragua & U.S.A. (Pennsylvania)
• Length: 6 Inches
• Ring Gauge: 48
• Shape: Round
• MSRP: $16.95 (Box of 10, $169.50)
• Release Date: July 2026
• Number of Cigars Released: Regular Production
• Number of Cigars Smoked For Review: 3

Unique is an accurate way to describe the look of the Red Meat Lovers Spicy Beef Stick: the cigar is flat and covered on both ends, with one small difference: while the cap is completely closed, the foot has a small pinprick in the very middle, more on that in the Final Notes below. The wrappers are a dark reddish brown with abundant splotchy mottling, and they look as if they were dipped in oil just before being packaged. There is also plenty of toothiness when I run my fingers down the wrappers, and while all three cigars are extremely firm when squeezed, I did not find a single soft spot. A sweet earthiness leads the aromas coming from the wrappers—sweeter on the first cigar, more earthy on the second cigar, with the last cigar in the middle—along with creamy leather, black pepper, some barnyard and dry hay. Due to the (almost totally) closed foot, there is virtually no difference when I smell the feet, other than a touch more pepper and a bit more nuttiness. After straight cuts, the cold draws are a bit tight—not unusual when the foot is almost completely covered, of course—but I can still taste aged oak, baker’s spices, peppery breadiness, some nuttiness, dry earth, coffee beans, and a light milk chocolate sweetness.

The three Red Meat Lovers Spicy Beef Sticks start out virtually the same: significant amounts of spice on my tongue and black pepper, along with flavors of earth and maple syrup sweetness. The profiles switch quickly, as cocoa nib and oak flavors become the main notes, followed by less aggressive notes of dry earth, anise, rich coffee beans, sourdough bread, sawdust and leather tack. There is a light but distinct espresso flavor on the finish of all three cigars—strongest on the third—while the retrohales feature plenty of cracked black pepper and not enough milk chocolate sweetness. Flavor ends the first third at full, while both the body and strength reach solid medium. My first cigar runs into enough of a burn issue to need a correction, but the draw resistance and smoke production are fine for all three cigars.

During the second third, there are numerous changes to the profiles, starting with new main flavors of charred meat and coffee grounds for the first and second cigars, while the last cigar sticks with the same combination of cocoa nibs and oak as in the first third. Secondary flavors of dank earth, spicy cedar, leather, barnyard, anise and toasted bread flit in and out, while the note on the finish of all three cigars remains a rich espresso flavor. There is slightly less spice on my tongue than in the first third, but a new red pepper note shows up on the retrohale, combining nicely with a new sweetness that reminds me of Jello chocolate pudding. Flavor is at full, the body hits medium-plus, and the strength lands at medium-full. One of the cigars needs a quick touch-up with my lighter to stay on track, but that is the only construction issue of note.

The spice that is present in the profile—both on my tongue and on the palate—fades a bit in the final third, while the main flavors of toasted bread and cocoa nibs become fairly consistent for all three cigars. Additional flavors of charred meat, gritty earth, baker’s spices, dry hay, anise and generic nuttiness show up at various points, while the finish of all three cigars still features a rich espresso flavor. The combination of red pepper and Jell-O chocolate pudding also continues to dominate the retrohales—not a bad thing at all—although it is slightly less distinct in the first cigar compared other the other two. Flavor ends at full, the body stays at medium-plus, but the strength hits the full mark. Two separate burn corrections are needed for my third cigar, but the other two cigars are fine in that regard, and there are no other problems with construction.

Final Notes

• Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust sold a prerelease version of the Red Meat Lovers Spicy Beef Stick during The Great Smoke 2026 in March, but only 300 bundles of 10 cigars were available for the event.
• I was a bit conflicted about how to cut these cigars: the obvious choice was a punch, but I decided to cut them straight and ended up with excellent draw resistance on all three cigars.
• While cigars that are capped at both ends are not new—Viaje has released multiple versions of both its Zombie and C-4 cigars with that attribute—I don’t recall ever seeing a cigar with double-capped ends that are both flat.

• Along with the above, Viaje did run into some issues with those double-capped cigars: since both ends were sealed, moisture accumulated during the manufacturing process could not escape as easily as with open-ended cigars, leading to combustion issues. Subsequent releases of those Viaje cigars featured a pinhole in the foot as an attempt to alleviate those issues, which the Red Meat Lovers Spicy Beef Stick also has, as you can see in the photograph above.
• Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust advertises on halfwheel.
• The cigars for this review were purchased by halfwheel.

• These cigars are listed as being 6 x 48 vitolas. Above are the measurements we took when we measured them.
• The final smoking time averaged out to two hours and four minutes for all three cigars.
• If you would like to purchase any of the Red Meat Lovers Spicy Beef Stick cigars, site sponsors Atlantic Cigar Co., Cigars Daily, Cigars Direct, Corona Cigar Co., JR Cigars, and Small Batch Cigar sell them on their respective websites.

Brooks Whittington

I have worn many hats in my life up to this point: I started out as a photojournalist for the Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, then transitioned to photographing weddings—both internationally and in the U.S.—for more than a decade. After realizing that there was a need for a cigar website containing better photographs and more in-depth information about each release, I founded my first cigar blog, SmokingStogie, in 2008. SmokingStogie quickly became one of the more influential cigar blogs on the internet, known for reviewing preproduction, prerelease, rare, extremely hard-to-find and expensive cigars, and it was one of the predecessors to halfwheel, which I co-founded.