Tag: Barrel Aged Imperial Stout
Founders Brewing Co. Kentucky Breakfast Stout 2009 Release
I don’t remember when I first learned about Founders Brewing Company’s Kentucky Breakfast Stout, but I suspect it was shortly after I first tried their Breakfast Stout. I do know that it was well after last year’s release, and so I had no opportunity to taste it until I attended last February’s Extreme Beer Fest, and I’ll never forget the enthusiasm (both mine and others’) that surrounded the moment when the keg of KBS was tapped.
Founders had posted a schedule of when certain beers were going to be tapped during the session, and the KBS was on the schedule for 4:00pm, just before the first session was scheduled to end at 4:30. We found this out when we hustled over to the Founders table as our first stop of the day right at 1:00pm, and had the chance to taste the first special beer they were tapping that day, the Canadian Breakfast Stout, a maple-syrup/bourbon-barrel aged version of the Breakfast Stout. And so we had a few hours to pass until the KBS hit the taps.
Around 3:30 we began checking out watches, and by 3:45 we were over by the Founders table. I picked up a sample of their Imperial Stout (another awesome beer from them) while we waited, and at about 3:50 the crowd began to noticeably swell. We sidled up close to the Founders table and watched as the crowd grew…and grew. At a certain point it seemed that nearly the whole crowd of attendees at the afternoon session was centered around the Founders table.
In the moments leading up to 4:00pm we watched in anticipation as the Founders staff began switching out the kegs and putting the KBS on tap. Then, precisely at 4:00pm they switched the handles on the taps, took the first pour of KBS, and a big cheer swelled up from the crowd. The euphoria and pandemonium that swept through the swarming crowd at that moment was really palpable!
We worked out way to the front to get our samples, and what really amazed me the most was that the Founders staff weren’t even asking what people wanted – each glass just received a 2-oz. sample of the Kentucky Breakfast Stout. That, I thought, was the ultimate statement on just how excited people were to both serve and taste this beer.
True to expectations, the beer was excellent, and easily one of the best that I tasted that day. And so when it was released a couple of months later I worked hard to track down a couple of bottles so that I could try it again in a more relaxed environment where I could really get a chance to taste what this beer is all about. I was lucky to get my hands on any! Distribution of the beer is extremely limited, and the rumor was that only about 40 cases were sent to the whole state. Most shops I talked to received 1 case, if any.
But in the end I did manage to get my hands on a couple, and I’m sure glad that I did. This is without a doubt, a beer that lives up to the hype surrounding it. As I mentioned before, this is a bigger, bolder variation of their Breakfast Stout that is aged in bourbon barrels. It weighs in a 11.2% with 70 IBUs.
The beer pours thick and viscous, and a jet, opaque black. A dark brown one-finger head forms and quickly dissipates leaving significant lacing on the glass. The nose has rich notes of coffee, oak, chocolate beans, cocoa powder, and bourbon. A trace of smoke weaves amidst these flavors, while the bourbon notes become richer and more evident as the beer warms. The palate is thickly textured with warm, mouth-coating flavors and soft carbonation. The palate is rich with flavors of coffee, bittersweet chocolate, carob, bourbon – this flavor really begins to open up as the beer warms -, and caramel. All of the flavors are incredibly well integrated, with no one flavor predominating. As with the nose the bourbon flavors become more prominent as the beer warms, but still not becoming overwhelming at any point. The finish is long-lasting and has flavors of ground coffee, cocoa, and rich, warming bourbon.
This is one of the best beers that I’ve had the pleasure to drink. What really amazes me is just how many flavors the beer exhibits, and how well integrated they all are. Particularly notable was the way in which the impact of the bourbon flavors changed as the beer warmed: when it was colder the bourbon flavors were subtle, serving as an accompaniment to the coffee and bittersweet chocolate flavors, and as the beer warmed the bourbon flavors grew in stature, shedding light on the caramel and cocoa flavors. And at no point did the bourbon overwhelm any of these flavors.
All in all a very dynamic and delicious beer that is without a doubt one of the highlights of the year’s special-releases. Yet again, Founder hits a home-run with one of the rare, hard-to-find beers.
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Goose Island Brewing Co. Bourbon County Stout
Once I’d tasted Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout and Canadian Breakfast Stout, my perceptions of (bourbon) barrel-aged beers changed precipitously. Prior to that I had only tasted a couple, and generally found them wanting for lack of balance. Either the beer couldn’t stand up to the barrel-aging, or the barrel-aging was left to go on for too long, overwhelming what was a great beer to begin with.
Yet I continued to believe that barrel-aged beers could be really great if done right. And so at this year’s Extreme Beer Fest I made a point of trying most of the bourbon barrel-aged beers on offer. And let’s face it, I was stunned by how good some of them were. The best of them, namely the above two from Founders, Older Viscosity from Port Brewing, and Bell’s Bourbon-Barrel Aged Expedition/Double-Cream blend were spellbinding. The bourbon barrels added a dynamic flavor element to these beers that was extremely well-integrated with the array of other flavors. The end result was not a better beer, but an equally good beer, albeit in a very different expression.
Since then I’ve slowly become more aware of other bourbon barrel-aged beers being released by breweries across the country. There are quite a few, and the number is growing, which only make sense. There is a big demand for these beers and they receive near-unanimous accolades from beer drinkers. At the same time, bourbon producers have thousands of barrels every year that they need to dispose of. So the barrels are there for the taking.
But it is clear that this is not as simple an equation for a brewer as taking a beer, dumping it into a 55-gallon barrel, waiting a month or two, and…voila, barrel-aged beer! The number of barrel-aged beers that I’ve had the chance to taste has made it clear that to successfully make a great barrel-aged beer requires an understanding of what kind of beer will best marry with the flavors that will come from the barrel.
There are a few barrel-aged beers that consistently get mentioned as barometers, setting the bar for others to live up to. Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout is one and Goose Island’s Bourbon County Stout is another. Often the two are mentioned relative to one another. Unfortunately, Goose Island is not distributed in this state, and so I did not expect to get to taste it anytime soon. That is, until I stumbled upon a four-pack while in a shop in New York. I snapped it up, excited at the chance to taste another of the hallmark barrel-aged beers.
Goose Island first brewed this beer back in 1994, to celebrate their 1000th brew. It’s amazing to think of them brewing this back then, in the midst of the first micro-brew revolution, and long before barrel-aging was common practice. Since then, it’s annual release has become an event, as it has for many other beers of this sort.
The Bourbon County Stout is a seriously imperial stout, weighing in at 13%. The statement on the bottle says,
I [Greg Hall, Brewmaster] wanted to do something special for our 1000th batch…we brewed a beer. A really big batch of stout – so big, the malt was coming out of the top of the mash tun. After fermentation we brought in some bourbon barrels that aged the stout. One hundred days later, Bourbon County Stout was born…One sip has more flavor than your average case of beer.
This bottle is from the 2008 batch. The Goose Island website indicates that it has 60 IBUs, and was brewed using Willamette hops, and a number of malts including 2-Row, Munich, Chocolate, Caramel, Roast Barley, and Debittered Black malt.
The beer is pitch black with no highlights at all. It pours thick and viscous, and a vigorous pour brings a thin, tan head that quickly dissipates, leaving little head on top of the beer and not much lacing. The nose has huge flavors of chocolate and bourbon that leap out of the glass, accompanied by more subtle flavors of black cherries, mince pie, blackstrap molasses, and a dusting of cocoa. The palate is creamy and unctuous. The bourbon flavor grows in strength throughout the palate, from mild at first to very strong by the end. This is no easy sipper, the 13% alcohol is not hidden whatsoever, and a couple of sips into it you can really begin to notice the warming alcohol, and this is slightly more noticeable as the beer warms up. The bourbon flavor really dominates the palate, accompanied by hints of rum, port, sweet caramel, and vanilla. But again, like the nose, these flavors are much more subtle relative to the bourbon flavor. The finish brings a welcome note of roasted coffee, that quickly gives way to smooth bourbon flavor, and a very sweet finish.
This beer is BIG. I almost wish they sold it in 6oz. bottles, as a full 12oz is tough to drink. The beer is quite good for what it is: an imperial stout built to showcase the extreme end of bourbon-barrel aging. Unlike some other barrel-aged stouts that I’ve tasted and really enjoyed, this beer fully gives the spotlight over to the bourbon element, and much like many double IPAs that are totally unbalanced and massively hoppy, the Bourbon County Stout is totally unbalanced and massively bourbon-y.
Coming back to the theme from earlier, about the trickiness of barrel-aging, this beer demonstrates that even when taken to extremes, if the base beer is strong enough on its own, then even the extreme flavors from long-term bourbon barrel-aging can be accommodated. Again, it ends up coming down to the beer that goes into the barrel.
It almost makes you want to try the Goose Island Imperial Stout, before it goes into barrels (but I don’t think they release the beer on its own…).
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Berkshire Brewing Co. Bourbon Barrel Imperial Stout
I remember when Berkshire Brewing really got going, in the mid 1990′s while I was a college student out in the Pioneer Valley. At the time small brewers such as them were a rarity in that part of Massachusetts, just as the craft brewing movement was catching steam. They soon came out with a couple of beers that you could find pretty frequently in local shops or taps, the Steel Rail Extra Pale Ale and the Drayman’s Porter.
But ever since first tasting their beers I’ve found them to be a somewhat nondescript brewery. All of the beers they brew are ok, certainly enjoyable, but none of them overwhelming. A restaurant here where we live always has one BBC beer on tap, most recently their Holidale 2008. While most of their offerings that we’ve tried here have been good enough, this was actually the first beer I’ve had from BBC that really caught my attention in its own right. It’s their annual barleywine that succeeds in carrying a fair amount of flavor in a deceptively light and easy drinking body, making for a dangerously good beer.
And so when I heard about the recent release of their Bourbon Barrel Imperial Stout, my ears pricked up and I took some notice. I’m consistently attracted to the notion of bourbon-barrel aged beers, despite having tried a few and been unimpressed. That is, with the exception of a couple of amazing bourbon-barrel aged Belgian-style beers from Allagash that I tasted this past Fall. I suppose that it’s on account of the fact that I enjoy whiskey to the extent that I do that I keep turning my attention to bourbon-barrel aged beers. I think that I want them to be better than I’ve found most of them to actually be.
Yet, I genuinely enjoy a good imperial stout, and think this type of beer has the best chance of marrying well with a bourbon barrel. Theoretically I’m convinced that the flavors of a good bourbon whiskey are best suited to melding with those of a deep, dark imperial stout. In much the same way that coffee or chocolate flavors and big stouts match together so well, the vanilla, caramel, and smoky flavors of bourbon and the thick, roasted viscosity of an imperial stout seem a match made in heaven. (Fortunately, this coming weekend at the 4th Extreme Beer Festival I’ll have the chance to put this theory to the test, as there will be several bourbon-barrel aged stouts on offer.)
So the BBC Bourbon Barrel Imperial Stout, given the strong reception it’s received, seemed a good opportunity to put this theory to the test, and since it is also proving to be somewhat hard to find, I picked up a bottle when I ran across it recently.
The beer pours a deep, dark brown with distinct ruby highlights. A thin head of tan foam forms and quickly dissipates leaving little lacing. The nose has strong notes of whiskey, accompanied by vanilla, faint red berries, and a hint of oak. The palate has sweet caramel, vanilla, bittersweet chocolate, a dry, tannic oakiness, and a hint of roasted malt. The texture is initially slightly creamy, but this quickly gives way to a thin body lacking in depth. The finish has hints of vanilla and bittersweet chocolate, while being somewhat astringent with whiskey and oak.
On the whole what this beer proved to me is that there is a lot of potential in the marriage of whiskey barrels and imperial stouts. Yet, I do think this beer missed the mark. My impression is that the strong, powerful flavors from the bourbon-barrel need a stout with more of its own backbone. The BBC Imperial Stout weighs in normally at 8.5%, so you can probably assume that this beer is about the same, perhaps a shade higher. But more than anything, I don’t think this is about throwing a bigger, higher-ABV beer at the barrel. Instead, the bourbon barrel needs to be matched with a beer that has a more assertive and bold malt character and body, which this BBC stout does not have. Nonetheless, the unique flavors in this beer went nicely with a smoky creme brulee, illuminating some of the intriguing flavor combinations that a bourbon-barrel aged beer can bring to the table.
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