If your calendars weren’t already marked for this year’s Black Friday, set an alarm for November 29th.
This morning, Goose Island authorized the release of details about this year’s lineup of Bourbon County, and if you like a lot of liquor in your stout, you’re in luck. The brewery has dialed back on the adjuncts in favor of barrel — consider this a bit of an un-pastry year. Five of the eight beers are adjunct-free, keeping the Bourbon County 2019 focus on just beer, booze and wood.
Which is not to say that there’s no fruits and sweets here. The Mon Cheri variant sounds basically like a cherry pie — per their description it’s got two kinds of cherries, plus granola and oats, and some brown sugar to round out the pie crust taste. I can see this one working quite well, and given how well received Cherry Rye has been received in the past I’m guessing anticipation will be decently high for this one.
I was initially a little surprised to see a year without any sort of straightforward coffee variant. Even though they switched things up last year with a coffee barleywine (that I didn’t love) this at first appeared to be the first year without a coffee beer in a decade — until I got to the Cafe de Olla listing, which includes Intelligentsia Coffee beans, cold brew, cassia bark, orange peel, and panela sugar. This one should be interesting. We’ll see.
The full lineup of this year’s variants are:
- Bourbon County Brand Stout
- Bourbon County Double Barrel Stout
- 2-year Reserve Bourbon County Stout
- Reserve Rye Bourbon County Stout
- Proprietor’s Bourbon County Stout
- Bourbon County Wheatwine Ale
- Bourbon County Café de Olla Stout
- Bourbon County Mon Chéri Stout
That’s not all, though. Apparently Goose had enough 2017-2018 hanging around to package into a Vertical Collection, so if you want to compare three years of consecutive stout development, it’s never been easier.
(FWIW, our aging experiments with BCBS throughout the years include a two-year vertical of Coffee Stout, a 5-year vertical of 2006-2010 and most recently, a ten-year-old pour of BCBS.)
This means that anyone excited for Goose Island Bourbon County Oyster Stout or Goose Island Dry Hopped Stout are outta luck. Those were bullshit, same as the Hazy Milkshake, Horchata and Tarte Tatin stout labels that Goose submitted to the TTB last year.
Hopefully we’ll be able to bring you a preview of the Bourbon County 2019 variants as we have in years past. Until then, enjoy knowing what you’ll be lining up for on a cold November morning instead of spending time with family and friends.