Deep Wood Summer 2026 | Revolution Brewing
It’s July and that means Revolution Brewing “surprises” everyone with a Deep Wood drop in the dead of heat. This summer drop does what Revolution always does – a couple that are fruit forward and a couple of mainstays (or a new take on a mainstay). Supermassive Café Deth and D.B.S.J. show up in 12 ounce 4-packs while Mixed Berry Supermassive Café Deth and Peach Apricot D.B.V.S.O.J. come in the form of Twenty Ten Variant 19.2 ounce cans.
Supermassive Café Deth – 14% ABV
An irregular regular to the lineup, Supermassive Café Deth first appeared in cans in 2020 and has shown up sporadically ever since. Its last iteration released in 2024 so it’s a due for a refresh. As per usual, it features a lot more coffee than Café Deth does, usually around ten pounds per barrel. Yeah, that’s a lot of coffee.
Upon pouring Supermassive Café Deth you smell it. It pours like a not terribly thick stout, with some brown highlights and a thin layer of head. But you’re probably not looking at the beer before you smell the coffee. The immediate area around me smelled like a coffee shop roasting beans. Of course I dove in a got smacked in the nose with coffee – specifically a dark roast coffee. Some lighter fruits like raisins and maybe cherries along with a bit of chocolate play in the background. Bourbon joins in the fun at the end of the sniff as well.
Supermassive Café Deth’s aroma matches the taste as dark roast coffee absolutely obliterates your palate. It’s pretty much all dark roast coffee with some bourbon notes on the finish. However there’s not much joining in from the stout; I typically like a chocolate or creamy addition to things. The mouthfeel is spot on medium, leaving behind a ton of roast and bourbon but not much else.
Supermassive Café Deth absolutely nails the coffee addition to the beer. As a fan of coffee beers this is the baseline for them. In order to reach a higher tier I usually like a supplemental flavor joining in and this really doesn’t have that. That doesn’t mean the beer is bad (as I’ll be getting another 4-pack of it happily) but it could’ve been more. Coffee beer fans can go all in on this; others might want to try before they buy.
D.B.S.J. – 16.5% ABV
A surprising and wholly new beer, D.B.S.J. (which stands for Double Barrel Straight Jacket) features a blend of 20 month and 16 month aged beers. Barrelmaster Marty Scott told me to think of it as “petite VSOJ” and that “the chocolate was back.” And he’s not wrong.
D.B.S.J. pours a caramel brown color just like Straight Jacket and has a similar alcohol stain on the glass with legs all over the place. The head quickly vanishes. D.B.S.J. is much darker in the glass than Straight Jacket. Whereas I can usually hold it up to the light and get the crimson highlights, D.B.S.J. maintains a very dark brown appearance throughout. Only right next to a light could I see the crimson tones throughout the glass.
The comparisons to Straight Jacket are inevitable so here it goes. Straight Jacket typically is caramel, butterscotch, and bourbon with fruit notes and chocolate on the aroma depending on the year. D.B.S.J. kind of upends that. While caramel and butterscotch are there, they are not as upfront or the star. Instead, D.B.S.J. is more of a “dark side” barleywine, leaning more towards brown sugar, molasses and chocolate. You get a complex and interesting aroma on this one.
As it is with a lot of the Deep Wood series, D.B.S.J. goes down smooth with little to no alcohol burn. But the flavors are vastly different and mirror the aroma. Molasses, brown sugar, and chocolate star while caramel supports and butterscotch is not really there at all. It also doesn’t come off as sweet as some recent vintages of Straight Jacket (or DBVSOJ) which makes it really dangerous. I honestly don’t know if I’d guess this was a Straight Jacket beer blind as it presents closer to something Private Press would release (or something like Pelican Brewing’s Mother of All Storms from the before times). It is a welcome change that I am here for.
Those “new” flavors – molasses, brown sugar, and chocolate – hang around long after you’ve finished your sip. While I love Straight Jacket, D.B.S.J. presents a new take on the beer that I hope takes hold as a counterpoint to the “light side” barleywines they typically make. It’s just as drinkable, flavorful and delicious as any Straight Jacket variant but for different reasons. An absolute winner.
The Twenty Ten Variants
But what of the Twenty Ten Variants – Peach Apricot D.B.V.S.O.J. and Mixed Berry Supermassive Café Deth? Those will appear on our upcoming summer Deep Wood podcast so tune in! But I do have some thoughts (and experience) on these.
Peach Apricot D.B.V.S.O.J. is basically Peach Brandy Barrel D.B.V.S.O.J. (from their recent April one-off release) with some additions. I reviewed that beer for the site and we had it on our MoBAB 6: Back In The Groove episode. Peach Apricot D.B.V.S.O.J. is that beer but with three additional months of barrel time as well as peaches and apricots added. It’s also barrelmaster Marty Scott’s “new obsession.” Do with that information what you will.
Mixed Berry Supermassive Café Deth, on the other hand, I actually have experience with. I was lucky enough to get a pull of it from the tank and had a chance to sip on it (thanks Marty!). Big coffee aroma but, unlike regular Supermassive, there’s some heavy fruit joining in as well. Upon drinking, the coffee roast hits first but then things shift towards tartness from the fruit addition. It’s all seamless and melds together very well. It reminds me of Goose Island Clybourn’s Vaingloruous (although with a different barrel blend) or something from Cruz Blanca (although those aren’t usually stouts). Something like this doesn’t come around terribly often so try it while you can.
