Goose Island’s Bourbon County Stout Lineup 2022

I teased the fact that I had been to Wednesday’s Media Preview for Goose Island Beer Co.’s Bourbon County Stout lineup. I got about 60 “likes,” much more than usual. So I’d better put my other stuff aside and get this revue published. (If you want to go straight to the beer reviews, just jump to it here)

Goose Island is marking the 30th Anniversary of Bourbon County Brand Stout this year, with a new bottling of Original BCS and the annual assortment of variants. The 2022 lineup includes the popular barleywine and coffee variants, a special barrel-aged addition, and what they called the “adjunct” beers with ingredients added after fermenting, including the Chicago-only Proprietor’s. Let’s pause long enough to acknowledge that the actual year when BCS first appeared is still in doubt. The earliest known reference is when it was entered at the 1995 Great American Beer Festival, but they didn’t have a category to judge a barrel-aged beer yet. I know I was in the brewpub when the server said, “Here’s a special beer we made up for our 1,000th batch,” and I got to taste the first batch. But the actual year there is foggy.

And once again, most people will get their chance at BCS through various lotteries at various stores on the morning of Black Friday. Or there may be a tap near you which will be pouring tastes on Black Wednesday.

About 15 beer writers and bloggers showed for the preview, the first live get-together after two years of meeting by Zoom. I’ve been invited to these, and the three live meetings before them… though I had to drop out of the 2019 preview for a medical emergency. We gathered at their Barrel Warehouse on Sacramento Ave., whose exterior is the very definition of “nondescript.” Only a small entrance with an entrance canopy brings guests inside.

We noshed on charcuterie, and chicken and beef sliders. The bar was pouring Goose Island’s original flagship Honker’s Ale, apparently still produced for draft only. Then we got to the presentation in the dining room, which features more walls lined with hundreds of bottles of their specialty beers, including some early BCS examples behind locked cages. The people leading the tasting, whom I may or may not mention further down, were Todd Ahsmann, Goose Island President; Daryl Hoedtke, Senior Brewmaster; Mike Siegel, Senior Innovation Manager; John Zadlo, Senior Brand Manager; and later, Paul Cade and Jason Krasowski, Brewers behind this year’s Prop.

Original Bourbon County Stout (14.3% abv)

This year, our Imperial Stout is aged and blended from freshly emptied bourbon barrels from Heaven Hill, Four Roses, Wild Turkey, and Buffalo Trace distilleries.

Each year I’m happy to come back to this beer and have it “fresh,” technically. It has the usual strong Bourbon smell and notes of oak. Nothing off in the nose. The taste brings in those notes of cocoa and vanilla, with bourbon-soaked oak in equal parts. Also roasty grain, and a bit of stone fruit.

Daryl said there was a coconut edge to the taste, but I didn’t catch it. But again, the usual stickiness and taste of Bourbon on my lips following.

The Four Roses is a new barrel being used in the blend. Daryl said adding it to the barrel mix adds a bourbon known for its high rye flavor.

One question we all had was whether there would be an “Easter egg” for the BCS, in which some of the beer would not be blended, but aged in one of the four single barrels, identified by a code on the label. Off the record, I was told that there just might be a four-pack with these special beers.

Update: The Bourbon County Stout Original will be sold in single 16.9 ounce bottles, as seen at the top of this article. There will also be special 4-packs of 12 oz. bottle’s with this “throwback” label, a shoutout to their first text-heavy packaged BCS releases. Again, no confirmation that these will have single-barrel beers. And no suggested retail price is available.

Bourbon County 30th Anniversary Stout (14.4%)

Going back to the inception of Bourbon County Stout, the 30th Anniversary Stout is aged from a blend of Jim Beam barrels from their Small Batch Bourbon Collection barrels. Each of the remarkable bourbon barrels offer characteristics unique to each bourbon’s distinct nuances. They are then blended together for a complex and balanced expression that celebrates the heritage and legacy of both brands.

We were advised not to finish our samples of Original BCS so we could compare it to the variants in the lineup. There was definitely a difference here. The nose on the 30th Anniversary is a bit more mellow; maybe a little more alcoholic, but also with a few more flavors settling down. The first taste shows the bourbon is more prominent, just not as sweet as in the original. It takes a while to find the barrel char and its vanilla note. This one is definitely more mellow, more of a dessert beer, practically begging to have a scoop of ice cream dropped on it.

Oh, though the description plays up the Jim Beam barrels, the label also notes Beam’s other small batch bourbons like Knob Creek, Booker, Baker’s and Basil Hayden.

Bourbon County Two-Year Barleywine Reserve (17%)

We worked with our friends at (Elijah Craig) Old Fitzgerald to obtain three exceptional sets of barrels of varying ages from the distillery’s Old Fitzgerald’s Bottled-In-Bond Decanter Series. This Reserve offers us a rare opportunity to highlight the distinct characteristics of our rich Barleywine aged in 14-year, 16-year, and 17-year-old barrels of an amazing bourbon pedigree. Bringing back our classic English-style Barleywine for the first time since 2018, we knew this was going to be something special.

They have done a stronger BCS, not a barleywine this big. The barleywine is always one of my two favorite variants, and we tasters are always happy to see it. Siebel notes that they took 60% of the beer and switched them between barrels after the first year. Yeah, like I could have told the difference. Also, he said this version was tweaked from their King Henry barleywine of a few years back.

There’s a big nose of the familiar barleywine smell. Maybe some more malt upfront, but then the smooth bourbon character comes through. Despite the higher alcohol, it’s much smoother; there’s some fruit in the background, and then a bit of wood.

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Bourbon County Coffee Stout (13.2%)

For the first time since 2017, we brought back a coffee variant in partnership with our friends and neighbors Intelligentsia Coffee. Intelligentsia relies on Burundi for some of the cleanest, sweetest coffees in the world that ultimately complement the quality and tasting notes of Bourbon County Stout. The specific coffee blend combined with our Imperial Stout is called Turihamwe, which means “together”, and is a perfect tribute to all the hands that go into making it – from the female coffee farmers in Burundi that produced the blend, to our friends at Intelligentsia, the first brand we worked with on a variant back in 2010

The coffee is my other favorite variant, and they’ve been doing them since 2010. For the first time, I don’t need to mention Kahlua when discussing a coffee beer (except for that last bit, and we’re past that now). Instead, I get a nose of a strong cold-brewed coffee. We were told by Intelligentsia’s Kevin Lardner that the coffee was added first as liquid coffee for acidity (no doubt concentrated), and then the beer was recirculated on a bed of coffee beans.

As I implied, the strong coffee smell is masking the bourbon nose rather easily. The taste is equally strong cold coffee, with a bitter coffee edge. After some more sips, it goes to a slight cocoa note. A big coffee aftertaste. Coincidentally, the Turihamwe coffee is made from the Bourbon variety of Arabica bean, so named because it was introduced from Yemen by French missionaries to Bourbon Island, now La Réunion, in the early 1700s.

Bourbon County Sir Isaac’s Stout (13.9%)

For years, brewers at Goose Island have brainstormed ways to incorporate figs in Bourbon County Stout, but faced a daunting task due to their subtle flavor. After fresh thinking from members of the Goose Island E-commerce team, Melissa Alleguez and Ryan Hubona crafted a recipe inspired by Melissa’s childhood memories of stealing fig cookies out of her grandma’s cookie jar during her summers on Lake Michigan. And thus, the fig cookie and graham cracker-inspired Sir Isaac’s Stout was created. Highlighting the dried fried profiles extracted from the bourbon in the barrels, our brewers used Black Mission figs (10,000 pounds of them, to be specific) to create this variant.

When I first heard the name “Sir Issac,” I thought this would be something to do with apples, since Sir Isaac Newton had nothing to do with Fig Newtons. Instead, we got the full story about how the brewers tried maybe 65 different fig varieties and ways to extract the flavor.

This has the sweetest nose of the beers tonight. Like a Christmas pudding or maybe a fruitcake. This leaves less alcohol in the nose. There’s fruit leather and a note of cinnamon. I could not quite catch any hint of Graham flour to complete the “cookie” taste. Luckily, the figs only their flavor added to the beer, and we don’t have to think about how, like sausage, it’s best to skip the subject of how figs are pollinated.

Bourbon County Biscotti Stout (14.3%)

Inspired by the Italian desserts of her childhood, Jill Cerone, People Manager at Goose Island, dreamed up this variant after grabbing a box of chocolate-dipped biscotti from her cabinet. Working with the brewing team, Jill brought the flavor to life with notes of anise, marzipan, cocoa, and buttered toffee.

The thing about fancy adjunct beers is that some are wildly amazing, others go kind of meh. I’m just not a fan of anise and its black licorice taste, and they said the batch has 450 lb. of star aniseed, plus 3,500 lb. of coca nibs from Ghana and 7,000 lb. of toasted almond slivers for a marzipan taste. Well, for the sake of a big beer, I’ll power through. After a few sips, the anise flavors becomes familiar. With so much anise, the marzipan is a tiny component, and even chocolate is hard to catch. Well, if you like anise flavor, you just might love this.

Bourbon County Proprietor’s Stout (13.4%)

The 2022 Proprietor’s Bourbon County Brand Stout is inspired by a love for cocktails and the vibrant hospitality industry here in Chicago. This recipe was dreamed up after two of our brewers, Jason Krasowski and Paul Cade, spent a night out on the town trying some of the best cocktails the city has to offer. The result is a brewer’s take on a Jungle Bird cocktail that combines banana, coconut, lime, and a new ingredient for the Bourbon County Stout family – pineapple.

If the intent from the start was to make an “umbrella drink” style beer, they succeeded in that. The nose is actually kind of slight; first I caught some coconut, and then a smell of banana. Luckily the banana nose is not powerful. The taste brings in some more of the tropical fruit. Jason Kraswoski was there to mention blackstrap rum as an ingredient in the jungle bird, and I caught some of that. It is more of a cocktail than a bourbon beer. The bourbon is still there, but the main impression I get of that is coconut.

I don’t mind admitting that even though a set of sampling glasses was laid out next to my space for a guest who didn’t show up, I found myself unable to sneak any of them. Just the seven 4 oz. samples in front of me were quite enough. But then we were led back to the barroom for a surprise:

In the long barback, between several bottles of vintage beers, you can see three full-sized barrels hung by winches. Our hosts announced they were going to crack open the barrels and use a “beer thief” so we could sample Bourbon County Stout that had been in the barrel just one week, then four months, then eight months.

• The One Week BCS was the odd one out. Even though it was a fully fermented stout, I could only get a smell of a plastic-bottled water. The initial taste is basically an unfermented beer wort. I get some stout flavor a little further down, but perhaps this is an indication that Goose island does not go for a highly roasted malt in its BCS.
• The Four Month BCS, aged in a Four Roses barrel shows a more obvious and rough bourbon barrel edge. It’s a less educated version of the Original BCS, but it will benefit from more schooling in the barrel.
• Eight Month BCS: I see that this one is almost ready to serve. At this time, it’s more like a mellow but strong porter. I mentioned the lack of roastiness with the younger beers, but here there seems to be some room for it to be aged out, or maybe to grow. Still the mouthfeel is thinner than on the matured Original BCS.

We got the expected goodie bags, which included a thick black card with a copy of an early brewing log for BCS (this one from 1996 in gold ink), plus an “Image-3D” viewer, based on the “ViewMaster” toy, with scenes from the production of BCS, and a bag of the Intelligentsia Turihamwe coffee. We also topped the evening by popping open the old Fitzgerald decanter that was set out for discussing the 30th Anniversary BCS. That was indeed an eye-opening experience.