Xaphan Names Its Smoking Wood, and Beechwood Is the Answer

A 5.2 percent smoked dunkel in Blood Brothers' Bloodtoberfest four-pack of lagers. The smoke comes from beechwood, the traditional wood of the German smoked-beer tradition, and the brewery says it stays gentle.

Style: Smoked Dunkel
Release Date: 2026-09-25
ABV: 5.2%
Blood Brothers Brewing (Toronto, ON)

The detail worth stopping on in Blood Brothers Brewing's new smoked dunkel is a single word: beechwood.

Xaphan is a 5.2 percent smoked dunkel, one of four German lagers the Toronto brewery has released together for this year's Bloodtoberfest. The brewery describes it as rich with toasted bread and caramel malt, carrying gentle beechwood smokiness and hints of dark chocolate, with a restrained bitterness and a finish it calls clean, dry and subtly smoky.

Naming the wood matters more in this style than in almost any other. Smoke character in beer comes from malt dried over an open fire, and the wood on that fire decides what the beer tastes of. Beechwood is the traditional choice, most closely associated with the smoked beers of Bamberg in Franconia, and it produces a rounder, softer smoke than the sharper woods brewers sometimes reach for. The word tells a reader roughly where on the spectrum this beer is aiming, which is more than "smoked" on its own can do.

Putting that smoke over a dunkel base is a sympathetic match. Dunkel is a dark Munich lager built on bready, lightly caramelised malt rather than heavy roast, and those toasted bread and caramel notes Blood Brothers list run in the same direction as beechwood smoke rather than against it. The dark chocolate hint sits underneath as the darkest edge of the malt.

At 5.2 percent it is the strongest of the four Bloodtoberfest lagers, though not by much, and the brewery is clearly positioning the smoke as a seasoning rather than the main event.

The name appears to come from demonological tradition, where Xaphan is listed in some historical occult texts as a fallen angel associated with fire. Blood Brothers have not explained the choice, but for a beer made with smoke it is at least a tidy fit.

Xaphan is out now in 473 mL cans from Blood Brothers Brewing in Toronto, alongside Saxon Black, Blau Brau and Woodvar.

Editor’s Take

Smoked beer is the one style where the wood is the recipe, and almost nobody tells you which wood they used. Blood Brothers tell you. Beechwood, which is the traditional answer in Franconia and a genuinely different proposition from the peat or fruitwood or mesquite that turn up elsewhere - softer, rounder, a lot less like a campfire and a lot more like a bakery that also does ham.

The restraint is the interesting part. The brewery is promising gentle smokiness over toasted bread and caramel malt, which is the version of this style that converts people rather than the version that wins arguments. A subtly smoky dunkel next to something grilled is one of the most reliable food pairings in beer, and I would put this one beside sausages and mustard without thinking about it twice. That is a suggestion rather than a promise, but it is not a difficult call to make.

Source & Editorial

JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.