Full Sail Brewing Co. Black Gold Imperial Stout 2009 Release
Full Sail Brewing Company, located in Hood River, Oregon, is one of the breweries that I’ve looked forward to visiting during both of our trips to Portland in recent years. Hood River itself is supposed to be a cool town to visit, and Mount Hood has always been a destination of ours. Yet, despite Mount Hood looming on the horizon from almost anywhere in Portland, beckoning us to come and check it out, we’ve never made it that far east of Portland. Thus, we’ve yet to check out either the mountain or the town, and have not yet visited Full Sail at their home base.
We were fortunate to stop by their Portland tasting room during our last visit. This is definitely not the same as visiting them in Hood River, but it was still pretty cool to see so many of their beers on tap in one place. Several of them were rarities or one-offs, and so we enjoyed spending a couple of hours resting our feet and trying some great beers. Later on during the trip (in Fort Collins, no less), I was amped to stumble upon a stash of bottles of their Black Gold Imperial Stout, a beer I had really been hoping to lay my hands on.
The imperial stout that becomes Black Gold is brewed each winter, and then released the following winter after aging in bourbon barrels for many months. In this case, the beer was brewed in February 2008, and spent 10 months in barrels before being released. The brewery uses roughly 60 barrels, which works out to somewhere between 3200-3600 gallons of Black Gold (based on a bourbon barrel typically holding between 53 and 60 gallons). Not a bad haul, but fairly limited all the same. The beer is bottled at 10.5% with 65 IBUs.
What’s interesting is that they use barrels from a variety of different distilleries. In most cases, this is because they’re buying their barrels from a barrel-distributor, who themselves are collecting barrels from a number of distilleries. In contrast, there are some breweries who only buy barrels from specific distilleries. For instance, when we visited Allagash Brewing recently, all of their bourbon barrels are from Heaven Hill, makers of Jim Beam. At the release event for the most recent version of Black Gold, held this past February, they offered a horizontal tasting featuring pours from various different barrels, including Maker’s Mark and Four Roses bourbon, and Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey. Alongside this was offered a blend of the various barrels (representative of what the finished, blended beer would be like). You can read an interesting report about the event here.
Tasting Notes
Black Gold pours nice and thick, with 2-fingers of tan head that forms after a steady pour and drops slowly. The color is pitch black with ruby highlights at the rim. The nose has rich, alluring notes of bourbon, vanilla, oak, and blackstrap molasses. All in all, the nose is amazing, and the palate fulfills the promise it implies and more. The texture is soft and mouth-coating with a layer of prickly carbonation. Loads of rich dark maltiness form the base on top of which the other flavors play out: resiny oakiness, malted milk chocolate, vanilla, a hint of coffee, and mouthwateringly creamy whiskey flavor. The long, lingering finish is richly flavored with notes of toffee, caramel, and bourbon. Throughout, the whiskey element plays a big role, equal parts sweet caramel and vanilla, and heady whiskey flavors.
Quite simply, this beer is stunning. I’m a complete idiot for only picking up 1 bottle. What was I thinking?!
If you haven’t tasted this beer before, enjoy bourbon barrel-aged imperial stouts, and are in a region Full Sail distributes to, then rush out and find two bottles of this beer. Open one, savor it, enjoy it, and rest comfortable in the knowledge that you’ll be able to experience the amazing-ness that is this beer one more time.
Who knows if I’ll get to taste this beer again in the future, but let’s all cross our fingers and hope so.
Wow.
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