Barrel-aged beers are a double-aged sword. Sometimes they’re the result of meticulous care and tremendous effort to make a good beer richer. Others they’re a cover-up for an unimpressive batch in hopes a higher ABV and some oaky, vanilla notes can wash away a brewery’s failure and turn it into something better.
Goose Island’s Bourbon County stouts fall firmly in the former category. The Chicago-based brewer, now owned by AB InBev, began brewing these special celebration beers more than 30 years ago. That’s a long time to perfect a process — and to add new wrinkles along the way.
This year’s media tasting, fronted virtually by senior innovation officer Mike Siegel and senior brewmaster Daryl Hoedtke, among others, took us through the arduous process of creating each year’s lineup. Employees submit their own variants on the longstanding stout in hopes of making the cut. Pilot batches are produced. The end result is an impressive array of flavor that goes above and beyond the basic, dense taste endemic to many quick-fix barrel-aged beers.
I was fortunate to get my hands on all six of this year’s Bourbon County beers right as the weather began to turn cold here in Wisconsin. I’ll tell you right now, they’re all pretty damn good. Here’s what I thought of each of Goose Island’s 2023 special brews.
Original Bourbon County Stout: A
You get a whiff of stone fruit and raisin along with that bourbon right off the top of a thick, but not impenetrable pour. Hoedtke stresses the barrel’s importance — getting one that held a four to six year old malt, filled fewer than two weeks after being emptied of its whiskey — to impart flavor on the beer. It sticks around for eight to 16 months (13 months is the average for 2023) and gets bottled.
While it pours with very little in the way of head, it’s got a steady undercurrent of bubbles that helps cut through that heaviness and makes a beer that clocks in at 14 percent ABV feel lighter — not, like, regular lager light, of course. Instead it’s something that feels, at least on your tongue, more like an imperial IPA boozeload.
The taste itself leans into those stone fruits with a hint of tropical, almost coconutty? currents. Cherry and chocolate fade in and out and, if you’re willing to dig in, you could probably pick out about 20 different flavors. The booziness helps lend to a crisper, dryer finish, which makes it more sippable and drinkable than a half-liter bottle of beer with more alcohol by volume than wine should be.
It changes a bit as it warms, owing to a complexity that keeps it interesting despite the booziness. It’s a great, heavy beer to sip through a football game or just a snowy night.
2-year Reserve Stout: A
The beer itself is made solely for aging; you won’t find it in bottles or on tap anywhere until it’s spent time in brewing purgatory, phasing in and out of barrel fibers before being freed and dropped into, and I gotta point it out, an absolutely gorgeous package. This is made for bourbon dorks and I [expletive] love it.
The dried fruit is once again heavy in this stout. What begins up front with a little fig/raisin sweetness gives way to more complex flavor as it leaves your lips. There’s a little salty caramel taste that provides some “dessert beer” cover if you’re trying to explain it to a friend.
There’s so much to dig into here, and the whiskey lingers just long enough to bring another layer to the table. You can probably pick out something different every sip you take. And make no mistake, this is a sipper — but a worthwhile one.
Cask Finish Stout: B
It pours with a little less head than the standard, but the carbonation remains … well, if not prominent, at least existent. You get that stone fruit right off the top and a little of the wine this one is soaked in after a year in that port cask.
The first sip brings fruit and, yep, a little fortified wine. This drinks a little heavier than the standard Bourbon County, with a boozier payload and thicker mouth feel. It leaves you with a cross between a heavy stout and a light, fruited brandy, a complex blend of flavors that hits hard.
This clocks in at 15.5 percent and you can feel that extra boozy bite. It’s not a turn off, but it’s more like what you’d expect from a beer that’s about as strong as a bottle of Malibu. It’s a great beer, and it’s heavy on that fruit sweetness and tannins the port barrel leaves behind. But in the terms of Bourbon County variants, it’s not my favorite.
Backyard Stout: B
This is mulberry, boysenberry and marionberries in order to really give us something new — even though it’s a call back to a recipe from a decade ago. It smells like sweet and sour berries off the top and chocolate/vanilla of the beer itself are complimentary to that. Fruit juice brings the beer’s ABV down and leaves the head with a distinct reddish-tint.
That fruit is the first thing you taste, even with the bourbon barrel aging hovering over everything. It’s sweet with a lingering acidity. The difficult to place berry flavor — seriously, I couldn’t tell you what any of these are without looking at the label — is front and center. The outcome is a very different experience than the rest of the Bourbon County lineup.
This acidity makes it easier to come back to than the others, even if the taste isn’t exactly what I’m looking for. It recreates some of the crispness the low carbonation leaves behind. It lures you back in with a beer that finishes better than it started. I’m not sure if I love it, but I do want another one.
Bananas Foster Stout: B+
The barrel aging typically gives the banana clove taste in some beers time to age out. Here, Goose Island has brought it back in for a dessert beer. It’s not a flavor bomb up front, but the banana is apparent and balanced in time with the chocolate and stone fruit of the traditional Bourbon County. Those truckloads of almonds? They’re also very apparent, giving the whole thing a little bit of a … custard flavor? Huh.
You get that roasted flavor off the virtually fizz-less pour. Dig down deep and you get a whiff of banana, but from smell alone this is very much a Bourbon County stout and not a specific variant.
The first sip layers sweetness over big, boozy flavor. This is a 13.9 percent ABV stout and tastes that way. While the bananas aren’t a major factor there’s a definite dessert-y tint to it. The sweet finish is absolutely different than the dryness that follows the typical BC formula.
The bourbon barrel influence remains vital to the experience, mixing with the clove-adjacent banana flavor that remains for a … well, it’s a little bit of a motor oil hefeweizen experience? I mean that as a good thing. It’s unique and sweet and a little like a boozy pudding. Again, a good thing! This beer is entirely unique and memorable.
Proprietor's Stout: A
It’s a beer inspired by rice pudding. Unsurprisingly, it pours heavy with just a little bit of head. Despite its dessert undertones, the smell off the top just reminds you of Bourbon County. This is a boozy, barrel-aged monster and you’re not gonna mistake it for anything else.
The taste, however, gives way to something sweeter. A biscuity bread pudding, with plenty of sugar but nothing so powerful to be cloying. The tail end is cinnamon and… maybe a little allspice? Clove? Either way, it finishes warm and inviting, fulfilling the promise of the ingredients listed on the label.
It’s a lot, all at once, leaving you with a lot to unpack. It’s also not nearly as potent as you’d expect at 14 percent ABV, which makes it a little more dangerous than the rest of the BC cohort. That sweet spiced finish sets it apart, combining with the heavy stout to create a warm, comforting winter brew.
Would I drink it instead of a Hamm's?
This a pass/fail mechanism where I compare whatever I’m drinking to my baseline cheap beer. That’s the standby from the land of sky-blue waters, Hamm’s. So the question to answer is: on a typical day, would I drink Goose Island’s Bourbon County Stouts over a cold can of Hamm’s?
Oh, yes. But with a caveat, since one of these is gonna put me in a pretty delightful headspace and two will tuck me into bed. It’s not a beer I want all the time, but it’s a luscious, dense experience with a brew that absolutely lives up to the hype. Buy a bunch and keep them in your fridge to warm you up during the NFL playoffs, March Madness, etc. These stouts are gorgeous.
