The Light Through the Deep Wood

Welcome to the beginning of a story our brewers have been writing for years. We've found that there's no shortcut to time in building the kind of barrel-aged beers that carry our name. But that time gives us the space to experiment, to learn, and to make something even more special. And between what's new and what's always been here, we think you'll find a very alluring spot in the Deep Wood this time through.

Summertime Deep Wood releases began in 2019 as a toe into the unfamiliar waters of warm-weather big beer. Not even half a decade in, we’re cannonballing into the deep end while our Summer Fun playlist bathes the surrounding area in the carefully curated works of Eddie Van Halen.

Two new beers, and a third that’s never the same thing twice. July’s going to be a fun one.

Dread & Breakfast

“My baby,” is how Barrel Program Manager Marty Scott refers to Dread & Breakfast, who built this breakfast blend entirely out of the components that have existed in the barrel states for years. He may have used more colorful descriptive language than that, but we’ll spare you until you overhear such colorful language from him on release day.

The components are almost entirely Very Special Old barrels, Double Barrel Very Special Old barrels, and Extra Old Barrels (a note on what that means here). The producers are a who’s-who of revered bourbon staves, including WhistlePig, Willet, Heaven Hill, Elijah Craig, and even some Saxum red wine barrels. There’s some Deth’s Tar finished in Brazilian Amburana. There’s single-forest French oak. There’s freshly roasted cacao-fermented Guatemalan Catui coffee from Dark Matter Coffee. All of this, done as precisely as possible, with as little adjuncts as possible, to create the ultimate pointillist depiction of the most important meal of the day.

“If that doesn’t get people excited, I quit,” Scott said.

Life Jacket

One day, you’ll have to explain to your friends and loved ones that you once knew a world with only one kind of Straight Jacket. Luckily, progress and evolution are as inevitable as the tides. And just a few short years after the initial Strawberry/Honey two-step, Straight Jacket goes tropical like a Magnum P.I. crossover event.

Our brewers taste a lot of fruit combinations in a lot of beers, precious few of which ever see the light of day for customers. The delicate balance of complementing an existing beer while finding a unique thing to say is extraordinarily difficult. Suffice to say that by the time we landed on the Life Jacket combination, we had no worries for our crew’s vitamin C levels. "We're casting a wide net with the fruit in this beer," Scott said. Possibly as a nautical joke.

Passionfruit brings a bright acidity and assertive new flavor anchor to build from.

Guava adds a smooth, ripe strawberry/pear sweetness and a creamy texture.

Mango brings the sweet concentrated-sunshine flavor that screams summer.

Coconut, toasty, beachy, and lightly nutty, provides contrast and commonality to the barrel-aged typhoon our team has created.

Even then, Life Jacket’s sugar comes mostly (75%) through malt, not fruit. The fruit is high impact in flavor and aroma, but doesn’t serve as a sugar depth charge to throw balance out of whack. It’s a lot. And yet, it’s perfectly dialed in to our priorities as folks who think a whole lot about what barrels can do.

Cuvée de Grâce

As our aspirations have gotten higher, our processes have grown more complex. As we’ve mentioned, there’s no “unaged version” of Deth’s Tar, Straight Jacket, or Ryeway to Heaven. Varied, purpose-built components are threaded together to build every beer we put the name Deep Wood onto. And Cuvée de Grâce is partly to thank for that.

Blending has elbowed its way to the fore of our barrel program over the last half-decade, but it’s also a time-honored brewing tradition worldwide. Our team finds balance, commonalities, contrast, and delightful surprises when new barrel combinations meet. And basing a beer entirely on that process, as we do here, allows you a peek into a moment in time at Revolution, never to be repeated. Beer flavor over time is dynamic, aging follows its own priorities, and in Cuvée we capture interactions between our barrels that might not be possible slightly earlier or slightly later than the day we commit to a blend.

Here you’ll get the benefit of extra time. We could, in theory, call this a V.S.O. Cuvée for the sheer number of two- and three-year barrels lending their voices. You’ll hear Ryeway, Deth’s Tar, and V.S.O. Gravedigger loudest. But they’ve never sung together quite like this. And a bit of V.S.O. Boss Ryeway rounds out Hell’s own barbershop quartet in a way we’ve never seen before, and you’ll never see again.

Deth’s Tar was originally envisioned as the absolute celestial center of the Deep Wood Series, and it remains that way years down the line. But along the way, thanks to some discerning work by our Barrel team and the depth of our relationship with Dark Matter Coffee, the coffee-powered Café Deth became almost identically indispensable to us. The duality of unadorned beer and perfectly adjuncted Deth’s Tar will again serve as the starting line for our fall releases, alongside the long-anticipated return of Deth by Cherries. One release weekend, one brewery, and a very good overview of what one can get from barrel-aged Stout.

The increasing chill in the air brings three heavy hitters, just in time for the holidays. The buddy-cop action of Straight Jacket and Ryeway to Heaven in the same month continues, and we’re bringing back Double Barrel V.S.O.D. with them.

Double Barrel V.S.O.D., last released mid-pandemic, appeared and vanished like a mirage. But fresh off a recent barrel tasting, Scott said that the Buffalo Trace-heavy barrel stock is hitting new heights.

"That beer slaps," he said, slightly muffled from behind a stack of barrels. "People are going to be excited about this."

The end of any given Deep Wood season is usually our time to take big swings. And this year’s curtain call manages to match the early-season chaos energy of July's lineup and maybe even go a little further.

V.S.O.R. Select

There’s always something special at the end of the line when we get hand-selected store pick barrels from Binny’s. They brought Sazerac and Weller 10 wood to the table, and we responded with a clutch of Willet to round things out. We’ve filled them with Ryewine brewed w/ piloncillo, and by the time we transfer them over to packaging, the beer will have been slumbering for a full 27 months.

On & On Part III

Each barrel-aged step we take with our confidants from Half Acre Beer Company takes us that much further through the looking glass. The first time around, we brewed Porter, they brewed Barleywine, as we traipsed through the mirror dimension. In Part III, we’re more or less deconstructing a Stout. A standalone pale/sweet component and a standalone dark/dry component are brewed and aged separately before being reblended into the final product.

Our aim? The antioxidants produced in the darker version won’t be around to hold up the sugar oxidation in the sweet component. So we’ll get the V.S.O.-style sugar aging that powers that series alongside the balancing dryness and roastiness of the dry component. If the ‘23-’24 Deep Wood Series has to end, it’s going to end with one of the most memorable brews we’ve produced and our friends at our side to share the first taste.