Jai Alai Cedar Aged IPA

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cercueil

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This is a modifed recipe that I found online for Cigar City's Humidor Series which are several types of beers that are aged on Cedar. The cedar brings out the grapefruit/piney taste of the hops and is very subtle. As per Cigar City the type of cedar used is spanish cedar which is from South America and is part of the mahogony family..not American Cedar. Also, be sure to add untreated cedar. I was going to add it to the secondary and taste it after 2 weeks to see how much came out into the beer.

OG: 1.073
FG: 1.018
IBU: 100
ABV: 7.2

Efficiency: 65%

Grains

2-Row Malt 14 lbs
Caramel 60L Malt 0.75 lb
German CaraMunich I 0.75 lb
Victory Malt 0.25 lb

Hops

Ahtanum .5 oz FWH
Columbus(Tomahawk) .5 oz FWH

Amarillo 1 oz 60 Min
Ahtanum .5 oz 60 Min

Cascade 1 oz 15 Min
Centennial 1 oz 15 Min
Columbus(Tomahawk) .5 oz 15 Min

Cascade .75 oz 5 Min
Ahtanum .5 oz 5 Min
Amarillo .50 oz 5 Min

Dry Hop Cold: 2 oz Simcoe for 2 weeks.
Add 13 inch piece of spanish cedar

Mash: 154F 60 min

Yeast
2 packets of US-05
 
Please let us know how this turns out. It's one of my favorites, though I prefer the version without cedar. I've had both at the brewery and it's even better than the ones distributed.
 
I was fortunate enough to go to a Cigar City beer event in NY and they had 26 different Cigar City beers on tap! I wish I could have tried them all but I had about 5 of them. I'm starting to see it pop up on tap in places in manhattan here but I would assume it will take a long time for bottles to reach us. I really enjoyed all of the beers and I think they are definitely an up and coming brewery. I'm brewing it tomorrow so first young taste will be in about 6 weeks. I will post the results.
 
I had a hard time finding spanish cedar so I wound up ordering it online at amazon. It was about $10 with shipping and came in 3 days so that was good. There are specialty wood stores near me but unfortunately they are mostly for contractors so the wood was in 9 foot by 5 foot sheets and about $50. The dimensions of the wood are 1/4'' x 1-1/2'' x 24''. The recipe calls for 13 inches but the wood was so thin that I cut it in half and put all the wood in. The smell of it wasn’t that powerful. Definitely had a little smokey-ness to it but not as powerful as American cedar. Cigar city dry hops with Simcoe and cold crashes it for 2 weeks. As per the brewer he likes the pickup of flavor on the dry hops when the beer is cold. They lower the temp 10 degrees ever day until is reaches 34 and keep it there for the remainder of the 2 weeks. I am going to leave the wood and dry hops at room temp for 1 week and then crash for 1 week. I don’t have a temp controller so it will be at refrig temp for the week.

cedar.jpg
 
brewing 10 gallons of this up on saturday. Splitting the yeast, using Burton Ale and S-05. I read that they use Thames Valley by Wyeast.

I'll probably omit the cedar. I'll check back with results.
 
You're right, Chef. I was actually about to post that Cigar City uses Wyeast Thames Valley in all of their beers. I frequent the brewery and get to brew with them sometimes. Wayne, the head brewer is an amazing guy.
 
Sounds like a strange combo with the spanish cedar. I had never heard of this until this thread. Guess it would pair pretty damned well with a cigar!
 
They sell some Cigar City in Orlando. You should try and get some! Humidor Jai Alai is the name of the IPA with the spanish cedar.
 
Boulevard Brewery makes a Bock aged with cedar and it is wonderful.
One of my favorite beers to pair with a cigar!
 
Awesome, I just recently had their cedar IPA and was blown away. I'll def be checking this thread and may make one myself!
 
I had a hard time finding spanish cedar so I wound up ordering it online at amazon. It was about $10 with shipping and came in 3 days so that was good. There are specialty wood stores near me but unfortunately they are mostly for contractors so the wood was in 9 foot by 5 foot sheets and about $50. The dimensions of the wood are 1/4'' x 1-1/2'' x 24''. The recipe calls for 13 inches but the wood was so thin that I cut it in half and put all the wood in. The smell of it wasn’t that powerful. Definitely had a little smokey-ness to it but not as powerful as American cedar. Cigar city dry hops with Simcoe and cold crashes it for 2 weeks. As per the brewer he likes the pickup of flavor on the dry hops when the beer is cold. They lower the temp 10 degrees ever day until is reaches 34 and keep it there for the remainder of the 2 weeks. I am going to leave the wood and dry hops at room temp for 1 week and then crash for 1 week. I don’t have a temp controller so it will be at refrig temp for the week.

cedar.jpg

Wayne alsodry hops with Citra. He loves this hop. When I spoke to him for the first time a couple of months ago, he told me to try using Citra with Simcoe because "they do amazing stuff together."
 
Tasting Update - The beer came out good but definitely no where near the commercial version. I did mess up a few things so I am curious to see when Chefchris taps his what he thought of it. I forgot the gypsum and fermented too high so I got that alcohol hotness too it but it has since subsided so thats good. You can taste the spanish cedar slightly but I'm curious if a) I should have aged it longer than 2 weeks or b) maybe the spanish cedar was old as it didn't have that nice cigar box smell to it. It was kind of mellow. For some reason the beer doesn't taste as citrusy as I remember when I tried the commercial version but maybe that was also me messing up the fermentation temp.
 
How authentic is this recipe? I love this beer and I would love to make it as none of the Cigar City stuff is available in my state. Anyone know a source for spanish cedar infusion spirals?
 
I've taken to making my own, I found some stock at Woodcraft and my buddy has a lathe and we will be turning a few the Friday after Thanksgiving. Wish me luck.

Sounds good to me. As long as the spanish cedar smells good it will hopefully impart a nice flavor in the beer. It would be nice to see the spirals for sale though. I dont see them anywhere.
 
I contacted The Barrel Mill, alleged supplier to Cigar City. They have commercial size spirals, but these won't fit in a carboy. I'm guessing that if you broke it into pieces you could fit it in a bucket, though.
 
So those of you who have made this, any suggestions for mash temp and other things that aren't in this thread so far? I'm thinking about making this next weekend. Might oak it rather than cedar. I was lucky enough to get to try White Oak Jai Alai while I was in Tampa, and it was amazing.
 
So those of you who have made this, any suggestions for mash temp and other things that aren't in this thread so far? I'm thinking about making this next weekend. Might oak it rather than cedar. I was lucky enough to get to try White Oak Jai Alai while I was in Tampa, and it was amazing.

My bad. I'll update it with the mash temp. I mashed at 154F for 60 min.
 
Last night, I visited a cigar shop to see if they had any Spanish Cedar or knew of a place to get any. At first they looked at me rather quizzically, but then a light came on with the woman behind the counter. I followed her into the humidor where she proceeded to go around to each cigar box and pull out a cigar-sized piece of Spanish Cedar from about every tenth box. Apparently these cedar cubes are used as spacers when a cigar is missing... She just gave me about 6 of them, which I figured was enough for this beer. I bought a couple of cigars out of gratitude (and because it was a nice night for a stogie).

The guy at the register told me to bring him a couple of bottles when this beer was finished and he would trade me for a cigar or two...sounded like a fair trade.

Just wanted to you guys know in case you're still looking for an easy source for Spanish Cedar. They smell great.
 
Thats cool..Actually I tried the same thing..I went into a cigar shop and asked if they had any loose cedar. He said no and once I said it was for brewing he looked at me even funnier. Thats cool though that they hooked you up. Please let me know how it turns out.
 
I just had the White Oak Jai Alai I found that the wood took the edge off, almost too restrained. If I brewed this I would bump the hops up slightly, expect it to be very tropical however.
 
I just had the White Oak Jai Alai I found that the wood took the edge off, almost too restrained. If I brewed this I would bump the hops up slightly, expect it to be very tropical however.

THANK YOU for saying that! I was at Cigar City's tasting room a couple of weeks ago with about a dozen other people at the bar. I was the ONLY one that said the white oak jai alai was tropical. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy but I continued to say that it smelled and tasted super tropical.
 
THANK YOU for saying that! I was at Cigar City's tasting room a couple of weeks ago with about a dozen other people at the bar. I was the ONLY one that said the white oak jai alai was tropical. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy but I continued to say that it smelled and tasted super tropical.

I just had the White Oak Jai Alai I found that the wood took the edge off, almost too restrained. If I brewed this I would bump the hops up slightly, expect it to be very tropical however.

You guys are both referencing the white oak version. Have you had the spanish cedar (humidor) version? If so, how do you think the difference in wood species affects the final character? Do you think the white oak adds more of a "tropical" finish than the spanish cedar would?
 
I've had both of the versions. White Oak twice, Humidor several times more than that. There is no doubt a distinct difference between the taste and aroma of each beer. The Humidor does not add a tropical note at all. It's very woody, but not earthy. Spanish cedar has a very unique flavor. The white oak provides a slight cloudy and almost chalky mouthfeel- not over powering, mind you, just noticeable. The flavor/aroma in the white oak is a papaya/pineapple note. They are very different beers. I definitely prefer the Humidor, but the White Oak is nice as well.
 
Ok. Thanks for the input. I haven't had either but the Humidor version seems to be pretty highly regarded so I wanted to try it out for my next IPA.
 
got my clone in the primary right now, and have some cedar that i want to add to the secondary, question is how do you sanitize the cedar?
 
finially got this stuff into a keg this weekend. so far so good. tried a small glass today and it tastes great. I bought some of the real stuff and compared color and hit it spot on. will wait a week or two for a taste test between my brew and the real stuff.
 
For you guys interested in Spanish Cedar I found some here:

http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=18538

I am going to be making a 5 gallon batch soonish and am going to split it up into 5 batches, one plain, one spanish cedar, one white oak, one walnut, and one maple.

Thank you for the link. Please let me know how long you age it on the cedar. 2 weeks for me didn't seem to bring a lot out of the wood. I thought my wood wasn't very fresh though.
 
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