Caribbean Chocolate Cake
Welcome to Caribbean Chocolate Cake 2025, the series that marks the start of the festive season. It's our favourite project to work on, and a massive privilege to bring you this set of four incredible stouts.
Purchase the set below to enjoy at home, or scroll down to view our launch sites including our Tap Yard and Reading Bar
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.
Introducing 2025 Caribbean Chocolate Cake Beers
Milk Chocolate Caribbean Chocolate Cake
A slightly different approach this year, with the classic OG CCC split into Milk and Dark variants. This gives us a chance to lean into different aspects of flavour. Milk chocolate is on the sweeter, creamy side, super smooth with a hint of vanilla and coconut.
Dark Chocolate Caribbean Chocolate Cake
A slightly different approach this year, with the classic OG CCC split into Milk and Dark variants. This gives us a chance to lean into different aspects of flavour. Dark chocolate is more intense and serious, with a hint of coffee from high % chocolate and accentuated with sea salt.
The 2024 edition is the richest, thickest, most indulgent so far, with aromatic Amburana wood and silky vanilla.
Deconstructed Barrel Chocolate Caribbean Chocolate Cake
Inspired by our Barrel Aged CCC, but with a profile built an entirely different way. We use our own chopped up barrel staves to infuse flavour, along with barrel aged cacao nibs and soaked Cypress spirals. A perfect middle ground between the barrel fans, and those who like the idea, but don't like barrel ageing to take over too much.
Darth By Caribbean Chocolate Cake
Where to go with this beer? It's one of our favourite creations of all time, and we try hard every year to keep improving it that extra 1%. For the first time last year we introduced a guest brewery into CCC. This year we invited Emperor's into the fold, known for making incredible imperial stouts. With their input, we've levelled up again!
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.
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, and the distinctive spicy notes of Amburana.
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.
