Brick House Bricktoberfest 2025 | halfwheel

For nearly a decade, J.C. Newman has used its popular Brick House brand for an annual Oktoberfest promotion called Bricktoberfest.

There are two parts of this promotion. First, consumers who purchase a minimum number—this year, it is 10—of Brick House cigars at participating retailers can receive a Bricktoberfest-themed beer stein. Second, there have been some limited edition Bricktoberfest cigars.

While last year’s release was a Nicaraguan puro, the Brick House Bricktoberfest 2025 is a 7 3/4 x 48 Churchill extra that uses an Ecuadorian habano rosado wrapper over a Nicaraguan binder and fillers from Nicaragua.

“My grandfather, J.C. Newman, was born in the only house made out of brick in a small village in Austria-Hungary,” said Eric Newman in a press release when the cigar was announced last month. “He lived with his family on the second floor while the first floor was the local tavern and general store. The ‘Brick House’ cigar label depicts his family’s home. My ancestors gathered in the original ‘brick house’ to relax and celebrate with beer and cigars 150 years ago, and Bricktoberfest is the perfect way to celebrate the season with beer and Brick House cigars today.”

• Cigar Reviewed: Brick House Bricktoberfest 2025
• Country of Origin: Nicaragua
• Factory: J.C. Newman PENSA
• Wrapper: Ecuador (Habano Rosado)
• Binder: Nicaragua
• Filler: Nicaragua
• Length: 7 3/4 Inches
• Ring Gauge: 48
• Shape: Round
• MSRP: $12 (Box of 10, $120)
• Release Date: September 2025
• Number of Cigars Released: Undisclosed
• Number of Cigars Smoked For Review: 3

While lancero is my regular answer to the question of what my favorite vitola is, I’ve always appreciated the elegance of a Churchill. With the extra length, this particular vitola is proportionally more like a larger version of a lancero, so I’m happy with it. However, almost from the start, I have some concerns about the conditions of the cigar. My initial thought is that the cigars feel light in terms of their weight, more on that below. Once out of the cellophane, I find some very squishy cigars. We purchased the cigars from the same store, but only the first two cigars are squishy, whereas the third cigar is quite normal. The aromas from the wrapper are medium-full and remarkably similar: a pretty typical woody cigar flavor over some grape flavors that are close to a wine, leather and a touch of sharpness at the end. The first and third cigars have similar smells from the feet: medium-full with a balanced mixture of milk chocolate and oak. The second cigar is fuller and adds a permanent marker-like chemical sensation to the mixture, which helps fill in some of the gaps the first two cigars have. Sweet milk chocolate is a consistent part of each cigar’s cold draw, though the details are somewhat different. The first cigar is led by the oak flavor, with the bitterest version of the chocolate flavor serving more of a Robin to the Batman, with apple and pecan adding some sweetness. The second and third cigars are led by a sweeter chocolate, with the second having leather, black pepper and creaminess behind it, while the third leans into apple and caramel corn. Each cigar is medium-full and the draws of the first and third cigars are open.

The Brick House Bricktoberfest 2025 starts with less smoke than I would hope for. There’s some spice on the lips and a very woody flavor that has accents of brown mustard, white pepper and toastiness, though only the second cigar gets a second strong flavor beyond the woodiness, in that case, some earthiness. I suspect the poor smoke production and the lack of depth on the medium-full starts are related. After a little while, the smoke has picked up and the flavor is more intense. The woodiness leads each through the first inch, but right around that point, there are a series of puffs that are extremely dry and herbal. It’s a smooth flavor, but it’s a bit like hearing a saxophone show up to a string quartet—it’s jarringly out of place. In a way, I find it to be like the Davidoff mustiness that many people talk about, though it’s decidedly a different flavor. Fortunately, it mostly disappears on the first two cigars, though it’s a much more present part of the third cigar. After that transition, the profile leans into a toasty oak core with oatmeal not too far behind it and white pepper leading into a creamy finish. During the finish, earthiness, herbs, oatmeal and more pepper return. At times, retrohales are pretty pedestrian, but as the second third nears, they get a lot more interesting. Whether the explicit marketing or an organic result, I find myself trying to figure out which style of beer they taste most like. Unfortunately, my beer drinking has been greatly reduced, but it reminds me a lot of the subtle tart and salty combination of a gose; whatever the case, it’s nowhere near heavy enough to be a märzen, the German name for the classic Oktoberfest style. Other flavors include apple, oak and black pepper, before some bitter elements enter during the finish. Flavor is medium-full, body is medium-full and strength is medium-plus. To my surprise, construction has been fine during the first third. During the first cigar, I’m a bit more on edge because I think the cigar could just be 90 seconds from magically going out, but despite the squishiness and the slightly open draws, it never happens.

As the cigars get closer to their halfway marks, the story is becoming more complicated. While I’m mostly enjoying the flavor more than I was, the construction is becoming more of an issue. The upside of the flavor is probably best experienced in the second cigar, where a salty grain mixture—not quite a mixed nuts but neither a salted cracker—joins some of those beer-like flavors from the retrohale. That combination sits atop leather, oak, creaminess and some toastiness; the end result is very enjoyable. Unfortunately, the third cigar continues to want to flirt with the dry herbal flavor from earlier, at one point, I find a whole inch of the cigar dominated by that flavor, but eventually, it always reverts back to a flavor profile that is similar to the other cigars. Retrohales take the flavors I taste in my mouth and make them bolder and a touch cleaner. That means I can get some separation between the nuttiness, saltiness and a multi-grain bread flavor. It sits atop the creaminess, gose beer and a green olive flavor, at least until black pepper comes to dominate the finish. Unfortunately, the third cigar’s retrohale is drier and consistently has the herbal flavor as a secondary note. It doesn’t ruin what’s a very good retrohale, but it does take away from the experience. Perhaps more problematically is that shortly after the halfway mark, maybe an inch, the flavor profile becomes far less consistent. Some puffs have a lot of what I’ve described above, but then there will be puffs where the cigar seems a bit dead, relying on much less vibrant versions of wood, earth and black pepper to excite the taste buds, which doesn’t really happen. Flavor is medium-full—more full during a retrohale—body is medium-full and strength is medium-plus. As for the construction issues: all three cigars need help with combustion, varying between smoke production and burn line, and the first cigar goes out completely, likely due to its draw, which is more open than the other two cigars.

For at least 15 minutes, the Brick House Bricktoberfest 2025 continues its trend of intensifying the flavor profile, though it sputters pretty early into the final third. What’s left is a much less descriptive profile that is getting an increasing amount of burnt flavors. It’s not overwhelming, but given the core of the flavor profile is earthy and bready, the burnt sensation makes for a different-tasting cigar. The most unique flavor is a red pepper on the second cigar, a much more exotic flavor than I typically find and it makes me want to go open up a few of my Flatiron Pepper Co. bottles to try to more accurately identify the exact flavor, but that doesn’t seem like a good idea for the review. The finish is slightly sharper—white pepper increases, but I think it’s mostly due to the earthiness getting more edginess—but also thicker. Retrohales show the clearest separation between the three cigars. The first two are much closer to the flavor in the mouth, more burnt and more pepper, though the creaminess is still quite present. The third cigar’s musty herbal flavor isn’t as strong as it was before, but I can’t perform a single retrohale without it showing up. That said, the reduced intensity means it turns the creamy and earthy parts of the retrohale zestier, which almost makes the herbal flavor worthwhile. Flavor is medium-full, body is medium-plus and strength is medium-plus. The first cigar—the one that needed a full relight in the second third—needs one more touch-up, but construction is otherwise good.

Final Notes

• Most Churchill cigars are either the Cuban standard of 7 x 47 or 7 x 50, though I suspect there are many more of the latter. In my early days of smoking, the Oliva Serie V Churchill Extra was one of my favorite cigars, even if it was a bit too much nicotine for my younger self.
• There’s no question that the first two cigars I smoked were exposed to too much humidity, however, the third one seemed normal. I’m unsure how this happened. The cigars were photographed less than a week after they were shipped to our office and then moved to our review humidor, which is kept at 68 percent relative humidity. Beyond the squishy appearance, the bands on these cigars were quite loose.
• As Patrick Lagreid mentioned in a recent review, I’m not inclined to do much to fix problems like this. The Brick House cigars were purchased from an authorized retailer, one that we buy cigars from at least once per month. None of the cigars we purchased as part of that shipment felt overhumidified, and, the third cigar I smoked didn’t show signs of being overhumidified. For those thinking these two things are related: the cigars were purchased from different stores and Patrick’s cigars were stored mostly in his humidors.
• Despite those signs, the construction was pretty good. It was far from flawless, but the majority of the sections of the cigar were smoked without any issue.
• J.C. Newman advertises on halfwheel.
• The cigars for this review were purchased by halfwheel.

• J.C. Newman lists the cigars as 7 3/4 x 48.
• These cigars felt light to me. However, we no longer have to rely on just my feelings about whether the cigars might have been underfilled. Since we started weighing the cigars, I’ve understood that ring gauge is the key driver of weight. Over the last couple of years, we’ve measured 170 cigars that have had ring gauges between 48-49, and on average, they have weighed 2.42 grams per inch. The Bricktoberfest 2025 cigars were 2.21 grams per inch; two of the cigars would be in the bottom 15-20 percentile, while the third cigar was a 28th percentile result. Based on the data, an average result would be cigars that are 2.5-3 grams heavier.
• This is not definitive proof that the cigars were underfilled. There are lots of variables that could explain these results, including moisture content, the types of tobacco used, the weight of the bands, the shape of the cigar’s head.
• Final making time ranged from two hours and 40 minutes for the second cigar to more than three hours for the third cigar.

Charlie Minato

I am an editor and co-founder of halfwheel.com/Rueda Media, LLC. I previously co-founded and published TheCigarFeed, one of the two predecessors of halfwheel. I have written about the cigar industry for more than a decade, covering everything from product launches to regulation to M&A. In addition, I handle a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff here at halfwheel. I enjoy playing tennis, watching boxing, falling asleep to the Le Mans 24, wearing sweatshirts year-round and eating gyros. echte liebe.