Are you actually using vessels made from these woods?
No, the problem with vessel construction is, first, it’s very expensive to have cooperage for barrels like this. Second, the chemical compounds in the wood will diminish over time. And you risk infection every time you re-use the barrel. Third, and one of the most important things, these woods may not have the porosity of oak; it might just leak liquid and not be able to hold it. So we conduct our process in stainless steel.
The main beer we use in this process is our IPA; since it is an IPA, we don’t want any excessive oxidation. The hops work really well with the white grapefruit that the wood provides. I used it in the Humidor IPA, and entered it at the GABF [Great American Beer Festival] in 2009, and it won a gold for Wood- and Barrel-aged beer.
Any extra legal hurdles with U.S. Tax and Trade Bureau?
They wanted label approval for any type of wood contact with the beer. So we do have to submit a statement of process.
You seem to have a food lover’s approach to beer.
I agree with that. I was trying to teach myself gourmet cooking when I stumbled across craft beer thanks to a friend and I thought it was really cool. This was back in the early ’90s. At the time I was working in restaurants as a cook, bartender or waiter—always in contact with the food industry. For Christmas one year, I was given a copy of Charlie Papazian’s book. I started reading through it and just fell in love because it was so similar to what I was learning about cooking.
You join a small number of brewers who come into brewing via the culinary route. That’s a different approach to brewing and recipe design.
Even when I was homebrewing, I tried to implement different ideas that tied cuisine and zymurgy together. It’s a really cool way to look at it. When you look at all the grains, all the hops and all the yeast strains as different raw materials, and consider all the processes you can use to change those things, to me, it’s similar to the raw materials used in cooking. Another thing is that you can have a theme or idea. One of my concepts was to research Mayan chocolate production and learn how to implement that in our imperial stout, so it’s harmonious. We ended up developing it, and it’s turned out to be sort of like our Dark Lord that we release once a year.
What’s special about the chocolate?
Historically, Mayan chocolate came from cacao beans and took a great deal of processing. They had to grind the cacao beans on a stone mill, like you would mill corn. It would take hours. It was a drink that was only for royalty, so there’s a lot of romance around it. They’d put chili peppers into it for a little heat and character. They felt it was invigorating and a gift from the gods. In the back of my mind, I was thinking, What if molé wasn’t quite as savory? What if it was more like dessert? So it was a combination of ancient Mayan chocolate production and a dessert molé, and I sort of laid it into our imperial stout. It worked out pretty well.
