Jesse James
Author: Mike Smith, Goose Island Educator
Goose Island’s Bourbon County Stout. The beer developed by former brewmaster Greg Hall from the desire to brew something special for the brewery’s 1000th batch back in the early 90’s. One that quickly became a legend, with a history and story as rich and layered as the beer itself. Before Bourbon County Stout became a recipe in a brewer’s log, it was a merging of personalities, stories and drinks at a beer, bourbon and cigar dinner where Greg Hall first met Booker Noe, the former master distiller of Jim Beam. Today, it’s easy to see the relationship between the flavors of bourbon and beer, however back then, no one had thought to blur these lines.
Little did they know they were making history.
Bourbon County Stout, now one of the most sought-after beers in the world, is a big, bold Russian imperial stout aged for months in used bourbon barrels. This robust beer pulls the vanilla, coconut, smoke, leather, tobacco, oak, and other whiskey flavor nuances out of these charred, wooden vessels. Released only once a year on Black Friday, Bourbon County Stout has beer fans camping out overnight at liquor stores around the country in hopes of getting some bottles before they’re gone.
Making its original debut, Bourbon County Stout was submitted to The Great American Beer Festival in 1995, however the judges couldn’t find the right category for it. It was unlike any beers some had ever tasted. They didn’t know if it was beer or possibly even whiskey because it offered a flavor and intensity unlike anything panelists and fans had ever seen, ultimately disqualifying it from the fest. Still, the beer was awarded a “Best in Show” and Goose Island and Greg Hall continued to make more, perfecting the process along the way.
Their work resulted in a beer that launched the popular barrel-aged beer category and would become an inspiration for the beer industry at large.
The process of brewing Bourbon County Stout is one Greg Hall invented over 20 years ago and one Goose Island continues to honor each year. We get barrels from a few distilleries, with the majority of them from Heaven Hill. The barrels, which are at least four years old, are emptied at the distillery and then sent to us within a two week window to ensure the barrel doesn’t dry out. Once the barrel arrives at our brewery, we have Bourbon County Stout ready to fill them up so we can take advantage of the characteristics the distillery left in that oak vessel. 100% of the base beer for our barrel-aged varieties is made at our Fulton Street Brewery in Chicago, just down the street from the barrel-aging warehouse.
After the barrels are filled, they are stored in a non-temperature controlled part of our barrel warehouse where it’s aged for the better part of a year.
The science at play inside a Kentucky rickhouse continues to affect the liquid inside the barrels as they sit in our warehouse: the heat of summer builds pressure inside the barrel and pushes the beer through the char level of the staves and into the caramelized wood, all the way past the line where the bourbon once reached. Evaporation happens as well, causing water to leave the barrel and, in turn, raising the alcohol content. The beer goes in at 11-12% ABV and comes out at 14-16% ABV. The cold during the winter has the reverse effect of the heat from the summer months: the beer will contract, bringing all the new flavors from the charred oak barrel with it. Finally, after months of carrying this behemoth of a beer, the barrels are emptied, then blended together and the beer is then packaged and finally distributed. The emptying of the barrels and packaging of the beer typically signals the end of our relationship with that particular set of barrels. All of the complex flavors have been thoroughly depleted from the wood, and the soul of the bourbon it once held began a new life in the black liquid gold that is Goose Island’s Bourbon County Stout. The used barrels eventually make their way back to brokers, who may have them re-coopered and re-charred, and then, most often, sent to Scotland or Ireland to be used for their whiskeys. So in the end, the barrels live on…
Taking Bourbon County a step further, in 2010, Bourbon County was expanded to include variants, which are small batches of the original Bourbon County Stout made with different adjuncts, ingredients or extra special barrels. Coffee, chocolate, vanilla, and different fruits are a few of the additions we’ve experimented with. The most recent addition to the Bourbon County Stout variant family is “Bourbon County Reserve,” a variant that allows us to work with an individual distillery to obtain special barrels for aging Bourbon County Stout. Unlike Original Bourbon County Stout, the Reserve variant is not blended with any other barrels, so that we can highlight the whiskey flavors that once resided in them. Bourbon County Stout is our pride and joy. It’s not an easy beer to make by any standard and takes a good amount of time to develop in the barrel. A beer rooted in history, brewed with love and attention by our brewers. It’s one we’re honored to make year after year to share with our devoted fans and introduce to new fans along the way. We’re very excited for people to taste this year’s lineup as it is one of the best we’ve ever released. So now, the countdown begins to the best day of the year, Black Friday. Cheers!
Photos via Goose Island
