Caribbean Chocolate Cake 2024
Welcome to Chocolate Heaven!
You're here to learn more about our annual Caribbean Chocolate Cake series. In amongst the story, you'll find out all about this year's beers, including an education on the history of the project, the techniques used to create the beers, and more.
The Caribbean Chocolate Cake story began all the way back in 2013. With a collaboration in mind, emails started flying between Finchampstead and Florida, the home of Cigar City Brewing. We were blown away with their experimentation into the relationship between wood and beer, and not just barrel ageing.
They were producing some unique and outstanding results and we wanted in. Cigar City founder, Wayne Wambles, agreed to work on a recipe with us, and kindly shared some of the knowledge and experience that they had picked up over the years. The result was our most indulgent beer yet. CCC broke all the rules, racking up an ingredients bill that made Siren founder Darron’s eyes water. A trio of imported cacao nibs, Cypress wood spirals and brand new experimental hops landed at our fledgling brewery.
This was a new level of ambitious brewing.
Caribbean Chocolate Cake
The beer that started it all. Caribbean Chocolate Cake is a dense, rich and luxurious stout. Hand-roasted cacao nibs give hints of tamarind and soft lemon, along with a beautiful chocolate baseline. The malts provide coffee and roast notes in abundance, while the hop profile adds orange and coconut flavours. Spinning on Cypress wood is the icing on the cake - offering lightly toasted vanilla wafers and delicate tannins, balancing the inherent sweetness of the beer. This year, we're going back to basics and leaving the familiar Nitro dosing out of the equation. This is pure canned indulgence.
Chocolate!
Let's start with the most important thing, chocolate! After early brews it made sense for us to work with an expert in their field to source our cacao nibs. Someone who could not only supply ingredients, but also work with us to improve the overall impact on the beer. Enter Willie’s Cacao.
Willie's passion for chocolate was born of a love of adventure. That spirit took him to Venezuela, led him to buy Hacienda El Tesoro high in the cloud forest, and remains with him as his quest to make great chocolate takes him on the cacao trail around the Equator in search of the finest beans. Willie's chocolate is all about flavour.
It was Willie that recommended the use of husks, as well as nibs, which helped to elevate the Caribbean Chocolate Cake flavour profile to a new level. It's this passion and love for Cacao that made Willie's the perfect Cacao partner for Caribbean Chocolate Cake.
Death By C.C.C.
Death by C.C.C. is the epitome of the Caribbean Chocolate Cake series. What would happen if we took one of the nation’s best loved, super-indulgent desserts for inspiration, and applied it to our most indulgent beer? Even more cacao nibs, even more cacao husks and even more wood. It’s doubled down and ramped up to imperial strength. Once again, Amburana wood is arguably the star of the show here. These spicy, fragrant spirals impart all kind of flavours, not dissimilar to the complexity of tonka beans, and it's remarkable how everyone seems to pick up something different from them.
The 2024 edition is the richest, thickest, most indulgent so far, with aromatic Amburana wood and silky vanilla.
The Wood
One of the main inspirations behind Caribbean Chocolate Cake has been our obsession with the combination of wood and beer since our very first brew. While our anniversary beer, Maiden, kick started our barrel ageing project, Cigar City Brewing got us thinking about what could be achieved by adding wood-to-beer rather than beer-to-wood. Here’s a little bit more information about the secret ingredients that hold this series of beers together.
Caribbean Chocolate Cake beers tend to use a combination of different wood spirals, including Cypress wood, Maple, and the distinctive spicy notes of Amburana.
Caribbean Chocolate Cake: Chocolate Orange Tiramisu
A Caribbean Chocolate Cake special inspired by rich, decadent tiramisu. Picture biscuits doused in espresso and orange liqueur, cream and mascarpone whipped with melted chocolate, topped by a generous dusting of cocoa powder.
The Spinbot
With all of these incredible extra ingredients to play with, we turn our attention to making the most out of them. We’ve found the best method for this is with a Spinbot. It’s essentially a hop-saturating, adjunct spinning and flavour maxing piece of engineering, and now plays a key part in bringing Caribbean Chocolate Cake to life.
With the Spinbot, we’re able to saturate large amounts of ingredients, such as berries, coffee, flowers, herbs, and of course, wood spirals and cacao… the possibilities are endless using this equipment. For more on the spinbot.
Caribbean Chocolate Cake: Rocky Road Brownie
Rocky Road is the influence for this fun and flavourful Caribbean Chocolate Cake. It's dense and fudgy, with sprinklings of marshmallows, honeycomb and biscuits. Made with the help of our special guests, Vault City.
