Brewmaster Wayne Wambles is a consummate storyteller, and beer is his preferred storytelling medium. For the entirety of his career he’s used malted barley, yeast, water, hops and a myriad of special ingredients and processes to tell stories of places, people and experiences while using those ingredients to also create new narratives in the world of beer. Sometimes that narrative needs to be told in a series of beers, and our Dark Woods Series is a great example of using a suite of beers as a tool to tell a story.
Through years of study and hands-on experience, Wayne has become a leading authority aging beer in wooden vessels and using wood in his recipes to express idiosyncratic aspects of those recipes (so much so that he was asked to write the introduction to Peter Bouckaert and Dick Cantwell’s recent book “Wood & Beer: A Brewer’s Guide”). Searching for the proper forum to further explore the world of wood-aged beers, Wayne has developed The Dark Woods Series, a succession of beers dark in color and aged on wood of various origins and formats. In the past, the series has utilized wood sourced from the United States, France and Hungary and has explored the use of the same wood toasted to different levels of color and flavor to enhance different flavors and qualities of the oak. For this iteration, Wayne has selected padauk wood from Central Africa and sugar maple sourced from the northeastern US.
This year’s Dark Woods began life as a svelt Strong Brown Ale of 7.3% ABV brewed with Golden Promise, a complex base malt from the United Kingdom, and five other special malt varieties for a depth of flavor not commonly found in the style. Additionally, the ale was hopped (and dry-hopped) with HBC 472, an experimental hop that adds flavors of coconut and a rustic woodiness to the dark, rich beer. After primary fermentation was completed, African padauk and sugar maple spirals were added to the beer to impart woody, rustic notes and subtle hints of brown sugar as well as wood tannins for texture. Rich aromas of molasses, bread crust and toffee in the finished beer are complemented by more subtle notes of vanilla and coconut on the nose, while a formidable maltiness on the tongue hints at bitter chocolate and and black licorice. Tannins and vanilla character from the wood and an herbal hop character bring the formidable brown ale into perfect balance, making the beer at once approachable and worthy of careful consideration.
The process for adding wood to The Dark Woods beers is as unique as the beers themselves. Rather than age the beer in wooden vessels, a process that is fraught with the dangers of oxidation and infection, we instead use wooden spirals. Measuring in at 48” long, these spirals are made from the same wood that is used for barrel staves. The spirals go into a unique vessel called a Spinbot fashioned at Cigar City from an old beer serving tank. Our team fitted the tank with inlets and outlets to create a vessel capable of continual beer re-circulation. After the spirals are put into the tank, a pump moves the beer from the fermenter and into the tank where it’s spun at 50 cycles per second over the spirals before being sent back into the fermentation vessel. This continual re-circulation of beer over the spirals allows us to use fewer spirals and complete the wood-ageing process in a significantly shorter period of time.
We at Cigar City are proud to share this unique beer series with our friends in and out of a wooded setting. We recommend enjoying Dark Woods Imperial Brown Ale around a smokey campfire, under an oak tree heavy with Spanish moss, or while taking in a canopy of wintertime constellations far from the bright city lights. Here’s to beer in the dark!