Tag: Barrel Aged Imperial Stout
Founders Brewing Co. KBS Vintage Comparison: 2009 & 2010
Of late, my fascination with barrel-aged beers appears to be waning. I don’t know when it happened exactly (although I have a guess*), but I can pinpoint when I became aware of it. It was last week when we had a couple of friends over for dinner, one of whom really appreciates good beer. So I pulled out a couple of bourbon barrel-aged imperial stouts for us to sample, one that I had brewed and the other a Goose Island Bourbon County Stout. I enjoyed them both, but I wasn’t swept off of my feet by them.
I used to think these beers were the bee’s knees, and here I was drinking them while at the same time some part of me longed for an eminently drinkable, sessionable beer. Very surprising, but not altogether unwelcome. Barrel-aged beers are great, full of powerful, unique flavors. But they’re also big and uncompromising, and as a result they’re beers that you really need to be in the mood for.
Yet, all this aside, these can be pretty remarkable and exciting beers, and the Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout remains my favorite example of the style. I first landed a few bottles of this in 2009, and had saved some with the plan of doing a comparison tasting with the 2010 when it came out. One thing led to another, and I didn’t get around to doing the comparison until recently. But it was well worth the wait!
Founders’ Kentucky Breakfast Stout is an imperial stout brewed with coffee and chocolate to an alcohol percentage of 11.2%, alongside 70 IBUs. The beer is entirely aged in bourbon barrels (as opposed to only partially, as was the case with Deschutes’ Abyss). It is released in (very) limited quantities annually on the Ides of March.
Tasting Notes
2009 Vintage
KBS pours thick and oily, pitch black with a thin layer of mocha-colored head. The nose has notes of vanilla, caramel custard, whiskey, crushed coffee beans, and dark chocolate – think flourless chocolate cake with bourbon-caramel sauce drizzled over it. The palate is velvet textured, with flavors of bourbon-soaked vanilla cake, vanilla beans, chocolate sauce, cocoa dust, anise, carob, and espresso. Amidst this rich backdrop of flavors, the whiskey plays a subtle role, noticeable but not overwhelming. The finish has lingering notes of whiskey, caramel, and espresso and is very long.
2010 Vintage
This vintage of KBS exhibits a flavor spectrum that is wholly similar to the 2009, but not quite as expressive. All in all coming across as more restrained.
The appearance is identical to the 2009, thick and oily, and pitch black with mocha-colored head. The nose is not quite as rich as the 2009, displaying more coffee and chocolate, and less whiskey. The palate has a supple texture and brighter carbonation than the 2009 (note that the 2009 was bottled with a screw top). The whiskey notes here are a shade more astringent than the 2009, with the overall palate being not quite as rich, more french roast coffee than coffee-infused chocolate ganache, more burnt caramel than salted caramel. Age clearly gave the 2009 the extra time needed to soften its edges and meld the flavors more fully than the 2010.
I have to admit that I had expected the opposite of what this tasting demonstrated. I had imagined that the flavors of the 2009 would have begun to tail off and lose potency, whereas the 2010 would be much richer by comparison. Instead, the 2009 has clearly had time for the flavors to marry and develop, and as a result is more harmonious and resonant than the 2010. The 2010 is a fantastic beer, but that extra year has given the 2009 a leg up!
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*Note: I think that my beer tastes have really begun to shift as a result of our having moved to Portland. Imperial stouts in general, and barrel-aged ones in particular, are pretty uncommon here, both on taps and in bottles. This is (as most of you know) a town where IPAs rule the roost, and have little competition for favorite beer style.
That being said, I find that I’m less interested than ever in IPAs that display that mouth-coating, tastebud-stripping bitterness that so many IPAs here have. Instead, I’m thoroughly enjoying many of the beers that exhibit a more restrained, and yet pronounced, hop character. Floral, hoppy notes on the nose, pine and citrus hop flavors, all without the bitterness. Cascade makes an excellent Pale Ale in this vein, but my overall favorite is thus far Deschutes’ Red Chair.
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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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Hoppin’ Frog Brewing Co. Barrel-Aged B.O.R.I.S.
B.O.R.I.S. is Hoppin’ Frog’s catchy acronym for their russian imperial stout that is brewed using a healthy portion of oats. The resulting hybrid of an American-style imperial stout, with notable hoppiness and high-alcohol percentage, and a classic oatmeal stout with its roasty flavors and smooth texture and body, has earned the brewery a good amount of national acclaim during the last few years, now that their beers are more widely available than they had been previously.
This Spring the brewery released the first batch of Barrel-Aged B.O.R.I.S, their regular B.O.R.I.S. aged in whiskey barrels for about 3 months. It was a small batch and sold out quickly despite most of the bottles only being sold at the brewery. Riding the great response to that first batch, Hoppin’ Frog released a second batch late this past June.
Despite lots of anticipation the beer rather quietly made its way into Massachusetts, and I was kind of lucky to stumble upon a bottle of it. While talking to the beer buyer at a local shop he let on that they’d received a small shipment, and that the bottles were available on as as-knows basis. So now that I knew, I was able to land a bottle. Lucky indeed!
Given my predilection for both whiskey and imperial stouts, and the rave reviews I’d seen of this beer, I was quite excited to try it, despite a relatively steep price tag. It rolls in at 9.4% and 60 IBUs.
B.A. B.O.R.I.S. pours viscous and near pitch black with dark amber highlights around the rim and a dark tan, crema-colored head that forms an inch-thick, slowly dropping to just a thin layer of foam. The nose is intoxicating with flavors of bourbon, vanilla, caramel, chocolate and espresso. As the beer warms the caramel and bourbon flavors become more prominent, subduing the coffee and chocolate flavors. The palate is velvety and unctuous, with enough carbonation to heighten the flavors without impeding the smooth mouthfeel. Layers of flavor gradually open up, highlighted by cocoa, bourbon, vanilla, and toffee, along with a hint of dark anise. A slight note of oaky tannins draws away from the flavors a bit by introducing a very slight note of astringency. The finish is very mellow and calm, with flavors of malted milk balls, vanilla, and cocoa. The bourbon is much less prominent on the finish.
This is a very good barrel-aged imperial stout. It reminded me quite a bit of the Weyerbacher Heresy barrel-aged imperial stout that I wrote about a while back. Both had a great balance of chocolate, coffee, and whiskey flavors, atop a smooth, velvety body. In both cases the body was a shade thinner than the best renditions of this style (such as Founders’ Kentucky Breakfast Stout or the Goose Island Bourbon County Stout), but still an ample vehicle for carrying the great flavors. So, given the price-tag of the two the B.A. B.O.R.I.S. shines a light on just how great a job Weyerbacher is able to do at creating incredible beer at a great price point ($9 for Heresy vs. $19 for B.O.R.I.S.).
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Schlafly Reserve Barrel-Aged Imperial Stout 2007
I wonder how long it is before nearly every brewery has one or more barrel-aged beers as part of their portfolio. The trend seems to be heading in that direction, and certainly the craft-beer drinking public don’t hesitate to laud attention on these beers. Most times that a new barrel-aged imperial stout hits the market, it is preceded by announcements that generate plenty of hype and excitement. Before you know it, the beers are sold out before they hit the shelves.
For some reason, the Schlafly Barrel-Aged Imperial Stout didn’t follow this pattern at all. In fact, I don’t remember there being much, if any, advance notice of its impending release. Instead, this beer and it’s Barrel-Aged Barleywine compatriot quietly showed up on store shelves. Even now, a month or so after I picked up a bottle I’ve seen this at other shops around town.
I suppose that part of this can be attributed to St. Louis-based Schlafly’s name-recognition in the area. I cannot recall having seen any of their beers here before, which makes it all the more surprising that this bottling made it out this way. And so it’s reasonable to think that these beers sort of flew in under the radar.
But let’s be clear about one thing: if you enjoy bourbon-barrel-aged imperial stouts, and you have a chance to try this beer, don’t hesitate. Yes, I’ve seen this on shelves at a couple of places recently, but it is still a one-off release, and so will disappear eventually. And it’s a very good, very decadent beer.
This imperial stout was brewed to an original gravity of 1.099 and finished with a final gravity of 1.020, rolling in at 10.5%, along with 75 IBUs. After fermentation it was aged in Jim Beam bourbon barrels for just over one month prior to bottling. 60 barrels, about 600 cases, were produced overall.
The beer pours medium thick with a creamy tan head that leaves a fair amount of lacing all the way down the glass. The color is deep, opaque black, that reddens slightly at the edges. The nose has layers of dessert-like smells, with prominent, rich whiskey, vanilla, and caramel flavors all intertwined, underscored by a hint of red fruit. The palate has big flavors of oak, whiskey, and cocoa, backed up by the bite of bittersweet chocolate. The texture is soft and gentle, but not as velvety as some other good examples of this style. The carbonation is present, but not too strong, and serves to really highlight the flavors. The finish is a perfect compliment to the nose and palate, with delicious flavors of caramel wrapped in milk chocolate. The finish is a bit short-lived, but very rich and warming while it’s there.
I thoroughly enjoyed this beer. The flavors were so rich, and they melded together very well. The texture was not a perfect a compliment to the flavors, but as the beer warmed this element improved noticeably. The beer only comes in 750ml bottles, so I’d recommend partnering up with someone to drink it. Of course, this is so good that you may end up eyeing whatever’s left in their glass if you finish yours too soon.
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Weyerbacher Brewing Co. Heresy
Weyerbacher was founded in 1994 by the husband and wife team of Dan and Sue Weirback, during the height of the craft beer “revolution” of the 1990′s. Since then, they’ve evolved into – in my opinion – one of the country’s most reliable brewers of great beer. In the current beer scene, amidst the fanfare surrounding the release of new beers that all too often don’t live up to the hype, Weyerbacher goes about the business of relatively quietly producing reliably solid, very good beers.
And yet, I don’t drink Weyerbacher beers all that often. I can get as carried away as the next person by one beer release or another, and I often overlook Weyerbacher. But during my recent spate of barrel-aged imperial stouts I learned about Heresy, and was lucky to find a bottle of this difficult to find beer. In doing so, I was reminded of some of the other great beers that I’ve had from them in the past, such as their XIII Anniversary Ale, Merry Monks, Riserva, and Quad. All have been top notch, both on draft and in bottle. This gave me some high hopes for Heresy.
Heresy is their Old Heathen Imperial Stout aged in bourbon barrels. Aside from this one piece of info, I haven’t been able to find much out. So it’s unknown (to me) where the barrels come from or how long the beer spends in them. But the real story is in the finished product anyhow, right?
Nonetheless, it’d be interesting to know this info. Especially when you consider the variability of the different barrel-aged stouts that I’ve tried recently. These are beers that have run the gamut from cloyingly sweet and very, very boozy (Goose Island Bourbon County Stout) to relatively restrained with well-integrated vanilla, oak, and stout flavors (Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout), with a range of personalities in between. It would be so interesting to know how each individual brewery approached the creation of these beers, and to get a sense of the answers to questions such as: what is the impact of a beer spending more or less time in a bourbon barrel?; what effect does the beer’s alcohol content have on the finished beer’s flavors?; what bourbon distillery’s barrels have more or less pronounced contributions to the beer’s flavors?
So many interesting questions could be asked. It would be so cool to see a brewery produce two (or more) unique versions of a barrel-aged imperial stout, one aged in barrels from one brewery, a second in barrels from another. And how about rye barrels? Such possibilities…
But to concentrate on the beer at hand, we don’t know too much about how this beer was produced. But we know that Old Heathen is a very good imperial stout, and so there’s a lot of promise implied by that.
Heresy weighs in at roughly 8%, on the low end of the spectrum for this style. It was first brewed in 2004, and has been released seasonally every year since then.
The beer pours jet black, and medium thick and viscous, with a big, creamy tan head that leaves a thin film and a fair amount of lacing all the way down the side of the glass. The nose has very strong flavors of whiskey, accompanied by roasted barley and a hint of bittersweet chocolate. The palate is nicely balanced, with well-integrated flavors of roasted and sweet malt, chocolate, vanilla, a touch of smoky caramel, and whiskey. The texture is creamy and full-bodied, sweet without being overwhelming, and the alcohol is scarily well hidden. As the beer warms up the creamy oak, vanilla, and whiskey combination really opens up, yet remains perfectly integrated with the other flavors. The finish returns to the limited spectrum of flavors that the nose displayed, with whiskey again is dominant, accompanied by sweet caramel and vanilla.
This is right up there with the Kentucky Breakfast Stout as one of my favorite barrel-aged imperial stouts that I’ve tried thus far. All of the flavors were so well put-together, and in particular while the whiskey flavors were very prominent, they never overwhelmed the beer’s other flavors. Instead, while you couldn’t ignore the whiskey, it worked incredibly well with the chocolate and malt flavors that it was paired up with. I wonder to what extent the lower alcohol helped to produce such a finely tuned finished product.
Whether it did or not, this is yet another very good beer from Weyerbacher. And while it is not easy to find, it is not impossible either, and I’d highly recommend grabbing a couple of bottles to have around for a rainy day.
I’ve been toying with the idea of other types of beer aged in bourbon barrels, in preparation for perhaps doing some homebrewing experiments. Thankfully, Weyerbacher ages a handful of their beers in bourbon barrels, including Insanity (Bilthering Idiot Barleywine), Blasphemy (Quad), and Prophecy (Merry Monks Belgian-style Tripel). It would be pretty fun to taste the way through these different beers, just to see how each pans out. Because I think it’s safe to assume that Weyerbacher has probably produced textbook examples of how each such beer could be produced.
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