Tasting Notes: Experts Try Goose Island 2014 Bourbon County Stout Lineup

The Experts

Christopher Kolodziej is one of the craft beer experts on the Lakeshore Beverage sales team. He has an epic beard, a deep knowledge of Midwestern Punk Rock and, of course, beer.

Pat Brophy is the specialty spirits and beer buyer at Binny’s Beverage Depot and has an incredibly extensive knowledge of beer and spirits. If you’d like an interesting afternoon, ask Pat to talk you through what goes into building a bourbon barrel, and what that process does to effect the whisky inside. Then clear out the next like, six hours.

Kim Leshinski is the founder of Hail To The Ale and Chicago Beer Gals. She’s a graphic designer, beer judge, homebrewer, event planner, beer blogger and one of those people who makes us say, “how does she do all of that and still find time to sit and talk beer with us?”

Collin Moody is store manager at Intelligentsia’s new Wicker Park coffee bar and a thoroughly nerdy coffee nerd. He knows more about coffee than you know about Game of Thrones or 80’s films or whatever it is you know a lot about.

The Beer:

Bourbon County Brand Stout

The original Bourbon County Brand Stout is a liquid as dark and dense as a black hole with thick foam the color of a bourbon barrel. The nose is an intense mix of charred oak, chocolate, vanilla, caramel and smoke. One sip has more flavor than your average case of beer.

Jesse Valenciana (Goose Island): A few thoughts before we start, this year’s Bourbon County is more mellow than in years past because of the crazy weather we had last year. It was the first time ever that we had to turn heaters on in the barrel warehouse because of those -40 degree days. As a result, the barrels weren’t contracting as much as in past years and we ended up with almost a full percentage point lower in ABV than we had in 2013’s release.

Matt Tanaka: Okay everyone, let’s get started. What are you initial thoughts?

Collin Moody: This is great. It’s a lot more berry-forward this year. A lot more fruity.

Pat Brophy: Very ripe. I think the berry thing is spot on. Definitely some of that berry character. I think it’s not as much of that oak-y vanilla, as in year’s past. There’s a hint of it there but in years past it’s beer slapping you with that bourbon barrel character. It’s not as roasty as I thought it would be this young. I hate using the word “smooth” to describe a beer but this is a smooth beer, man. I mean, this is impressive.

Kim Leshinksi: Definitely some dark dried fruit. Not a bright sweetness but a nice fig, raisin, dried cranberry. I’m getting molasses, some nice rich, dark molasses flavor. I agree with earlier comments on the astringency, the roastiness holds up but it just finishes so nice and rounded and sweet. It’s a little bit different from what I expected.

Chris Kolodziej: It’s much more muted in flavor than years past. It also kind of has like a malted milk ball quality, like a malt ice cream which I really like. It has the quality of a malt ball.

Collin: I’m surprised by the body this year, it’s not as thick and viscous as in years past. It’s been almost oppressive in the past, you feel like you’re chewing your beer. This year it’s graceful and light.

Pat: This is the 1% milk to last year’s whole milk.

Matt: Can you give us the history of Bourbon County Stout – what is a barrel aged beer?

Chris: It’s a beer that’s aged in some sort of barrel, in this case bourbon barrels. They’re first use, charred oak with a corn spirit which is sweeter than other spirits. Because of that you get a bit of sweetness from that bourbon coming into the beer. It also picks up some of that char from the bourbon barrel. Bourbon barrel aging imparts that strong oak, vanilla sweetness.

Matt: What does first-use mean?

Pat: Bourbon by law must be aged in a new barrel every time, so that’s what we call a “first-use barrel.’ There’s a federal law that sets standards for distilled spirits that dictates what you have to do to a whisky to call it a bourbon. One of those things is age it in a new, charred, white oak barrel every time. So the rest of your aged spirits worldwide are mostly aged in used bourbon barrels. The last part of the process, they’re pushing hoops down on the staves, there’s a huge open flame that’s charring the inside of the barrels. The important thing about charring is that when you char oak, the oak saps up and is trying to heal itself. When it sucks all the sap and all the sticky compounds out of the oak and into the char, into the gaps and cracks that caused it to char, it’s healing itself and that’s extracting a ton of flavor – vanilla, some toasted coconut flavors, toasted oak flavors. If you didn’t char it would taste like sucking on a 2×4.

Matt: Given that, what did that first-use charred barrel do to this beer?

Pat: That barrel gave this beer some vanilla and some kind of caramel flavor, you also get the caramel flavors from the dark malts that were used to make the base beer.

Collin: It reminds me of a gastrique, where you have caramelized sugar and you’re finishing with a sherry vinegar. You get some of that burnt sugar but also that pop of acid and that oxidation that you get in a sherry. These are beers that are really great for food for that reason because they have that component from the fruit to the roast.

Matt: Let’s talk about food. What would you pair Bourbon County with?

Collin: I think you can do heavily sauced food and things like that because it’s going to stand up a lot more.

Pat: Yeah, it’s not a subtle beer and it’s not full of subtle flavor. You can’t expect a delicate food to pair well with a beer that’s this… for lack of a better term, this masculine. I think a big rule with beer and food pairing is that if you want to pair something sweet with it, it has to be sweeter than the beer or the food is just going to taste bitter. I would say, a flourless chocolate cake with a raspberry glaze.

Kim: I’d play up the berry notes and go with a fruit pie, or perhaps something creamy like cheesecake or pumpkin pie with a dollop of whipped cream on top. Richer desserts could be a nice compliment to the complexity of the fruit and bourbon notes.

Matt: Is there a wrong way to pair beer with food?

Kim: I think it’s personal preference, trial and error. Some things are complimentary pairings, and some are contrasting pairings.

Pat: The wrong way to pair food is to try and pair it with a food you don’t enjoy. The whole point is to enjoy yourself.

Collin: It’s more about having good food and good beer.

Vanilla Rye Bourbon County Brand Stout

First brewed for 2009’s Festival of Barrel Aged Beer in Chicago, beer fans enjoyed this Bourbon County Variant so much Goose Island bottled it the next year. After a 4 year absence, they brought the beer back with a slight variation — this year’s version is aged in Rye Whiskey Barrels with a mix of Mexican and Madagascar vanilla beans.

Pat: Holy cow. That’s a lot of vanilla.

Collin: It’s intense.

Pat: But you still get a distinct rye barrel character behind it as opposed to a bourbon barrel character.

Matt: What’s the difference?

Pat: You know what rye bread tastes like as oppose to wheat bread. It’s got this grainy spiciness to it. Rye whisky — to use pretentious wine terms — is more pointed and focused, where bourbon is more… all over the place.

Collin: It’s almost like potpourri in a sense. It’s very intense. I mean that in a positive way.

Kim: If you’ve smelled a really good vanilla bean, that’s what it smells like. It doesn’t have any artificial character.

Pat: It’s not extract. You can tell this is real, fresh ingredients. There’s real vanilla in this beer. It doesn’t taste artificial or saccharin.

Collin: It’s not a Yankee Candle.

Chris: That could be a good collaboration for the future – Bourbon County Candle Stout?

Collin: Yankee Candle County Stout.

Pat: This is definitely vanilla but it’s not one dimensional.

Collin: I think that finish of the rye with some of that alcohol heat balances that vanilla and makes you want to come back for another sip. It works.

Matt: Let’s talk about food. What would you pair this beer?

Kim: I could see a carrot cake, something with a nice spice to it.

Pat: Yeah, something with those typical baking spices – clove, cinnamon – a Mexican chocolate cake, something with more of that baking spice character. Carrot cake is spot on, I think that cream cheese would work nicely with it.

Collin: I think that would cool the beer off a bit.

Chris: I was actually thinking my Busia’s pineapple bunt cake would be great for this.

Matt: What’s a Busia?

Chris: A grandmother.

Matt: We need your Busia’s recipe for pineapple bundt cake now.

Pat: Everyone in the car, we’re headed to Chris’ Busia’s!

Intelligentsia Single Origin Rwandan Coffee

At this point, Collin Moody treats us to some Intelligentsia coffee so he can give us some of the backstory of the Rwandan beans used in this year’s Bourbon County Stout Coffee.

Collin: This is the Rwanda Ruvumbu. It’s not the same coffee that is in the beer, that one hasn’t landed yet, but this is really indicative of the flavor profile that’s going to be in the coffee that’s in the beer – and you’re going to see a lot of similar flavors. A Rwandan coffee will taste similar to another Rwandan coffee because of the similarities within a specific region. It’s similar to the way wine is affected by its region. This is fresh-crop coffee. It was harvested in June of this year and then you have periods of washing and drying and then it rests for a bit and is shipped halfway across the world. It just landed to us on Friday.

Matt: What do you guys taste in this coffee?

Pat: I’m totally out of my element.

Matt: I think this is the first time you’ve been speechless today.

Pat: Yeah, I need to give coffee more respect.

Collin: It’s the same way that people treat beer. Beer, like coffee is a reason for people to get together, it fuels conversation. But it can also be approached in the same way we’ve been talking about these beers all day long. It can be both things and there’s a time and place for each.

Pat: It’s got some earthy, spicy qualities to it.

Chris: It’s got some blood orange to it.

Collin: Rwandan coffee is really interesting. Rwanda is really new to the specialty scene and they get better every year. One of the things about East African coffees, and Rwanda in particular is you do get a lot of those citrus notes. At the end of the day, it’s the seed of a fruit, so you’re going to see a fruit character. That just happens when you buy really fresh coffee and roast it really well. I get blackberry in this. Once it cools off you’ll get that more.

Pat: I can definitely taste lemon as well.

Collin: There’s a ton of fruit character in here. The reason that this coffee was chosen has a lot to do with some of those blackberry and fruit qualities that are very heavily present in this year’s beer.

Bourbon County Brand Coffee Stout

Bourbon County Brand Coffee Stout is made each year with a different coffee from Goose Island’s Chicago West Town neighbors, Intelligentsia. This year’s release features Zirikana coffee beans from Rwanda.

Matt: Why does Goose Island work with Intelligentsia?

Jesse (Goose Island): Honestly, our brewers are really big fans of their coffee. And we’re both based in Chicago – we actually share a wall. They just have such a great passion for coffee and our brewers have such a great passion for beer, that plays into the story. It’s cool telling that story on the road, I love telling people that we share a wall with Intelligentsia.

Collin: Intelligentsia was started almost 20 years ago. While we’re certainly not as old as Goose Island, we have a lot of shared history as far as what each of us did for our respective industries.

Matt: Take us back 20 years, how did Intelligentsia help change the landscape of coffee in Chicago?

Collin: It’s similar to what Goose Island has done with beer. There’s a tendency for coffee to not be prized as the product of a particular place or a particular skill, but as something created just for the experience of drinking it. It’s a commodity product. Intelligentsia pioneered Direct Trade to change that conversation, to shift the focus towards what is happening on the producing side of the industry. Coffee deserves to be treated as a culinary product, which is abundantly clear once you understand all the work and people it takes to make these coffees truly great. It’s what Goose Island has done with moving the focus from American adjunct lagers to things like Bourbon County.

Jesse: When Bourbon County was first entered in the Great American Beer Festival it was disqualified because they didn’t know what the hell it was. There wasn’t a category for it. And now, everybody has some kind of barrel aging program. We set this bar really high, I’m proud to say that, and there’s a lot of really good barrel aged beer out there but we still set the standard for that.

Matt: Let’s get into the beer. What are your initial thoughts on Bourbon County Stout Coffee?

Collin: It’s very much a matchup of flavor. When you combine coffee and beer it’s not really an addition thing where you just look to add a “coffee flavor” – it’s really something that’s more than the sum of its parts. Every year Bourbon County is really different, so the coffee we use is very different. Rwandan coffee is going to be a lot more delicate than the coffee used in last year’s beer which was more roasty and chocolatey.

Pat: You can definitely taste the difference versus last year’s which had that kind of harsh, cocoa, roastiness that the non-coffee aficionado thinks of as “coffee.” This is different, there’s coffee and a hint of citrus and a dusting of cocoa and a really drinkable body to it. It’s very different but it’s good. It’s very obvious that a coffee of the flavor profile we tasted earlier was used to make this beer. Its got a fresh vibrancy to it. It shows there’s room to innovate in the style.

Kim: If I was just handed this, I don’t think that my initial thought would be that it’s a coffee beer. It doesn’t have those expected roasted coffee flavors. But after tasting the coffee, I’m definitely dissecting those flavors and picking them up in a very layered manor in the beer. It’s very unexpected. A lot of that citrus characteristic is really coming through as well as some of the cocoa qualities. But there’s not that coffee astringency that you get with a lot of coffee beers.

Collin: I agree. I think this is awesome. The Bourbon County Coffee expresses the flavors of the coffee really well. I get it a ton on the nose in this beer. It goes back to this year’s Bourbon County – there’s a lot more fruit here than in years past. You get that blackberry and fruit notes and it’s amplified a bit more. Feels like you’re turning up the volume on a particular aspect of the flavors.

Chris: I like that it’s really reserved coffee wise. Drinking the coffee first has maybe tempered my taste buds, I’m getting the coffee aroma but I’m not tasting it as much. If I were to wake up tomorrow and taste this I would probably taste more coffee. Either way, the coffee flavor is super well integrated.

Pat: I thought last year’s bourbon county coffee is the best coffee beer I’ve ever had. And this is just… maybe the most different coffee beer I’ve ever had. It shows there’s room to innovate in the style. To have a brand that you brew with a consistently high quality year in and year out and still come up with something so uniquely different I think is really cool. It really speaks to the skill of the brewers and careful thought that went into the collaboration between coffee and beer.

Bourbon County Brand Barleywine

Aged in second-use barrels that were once home to Kentucky bourbon, Bourbon County Brand Barleywine is a traditional English-style barleywine, packed with oak, charcoal, hints of tobacco and vanilla, and that signature bourbon heat.

Matt: First of all, what is a barleywine?

Pat: Beer is, at its soul, a balancing act between sweet and bitter. Your malts are providing your sweet and your hops, your bitter. A barleywine is the brewers showcase of sweet and strong malt complexity. It’s as strong as a wine but made from barley, hence the name.

Matt: Let’s get into the beer, what are your thoughts?

Collin: I think it’s awesome. The thing I like about this beer is that you get the Bourbon County flavors. That second-use barrel is a brilliant thing, there’s a real depth here. When you add some of that roasted character to the sweetness of the beer, you get something so special. You still get that character of the beer is very clearly barleywine but you get that aroma of the bourbon county. It’s like making a Bourbon County syrup and adding it to the barleywine.

Pat: Yeah, you still get these complex, fruity malt flavors but there just scaled back a bit by a little bit of roast. And not quite as much barrel character.

Chris: It’s a pretty light body, the viscosity is pretty low for a barleywine. It’s pretty roasty at the end.

Collin: You get toffee, but you also get this fudge thing. It’s almost like a toffee-fudge sandwich. You get both of those characters, but the fudge thing is totally unique to this beer.

Pat: I can totally see the fudge thing. I mean, talk about a good pairing.

Kim: I love this. I’m a huge barleywine fan so this is right up my alley. To me there’s a lot of complexity to the layers of flavors that you get that makes it very versatile to what you can pair it with. There’s barrel character, and a dry finish but you’re also getting toffee and caramelized sugar and vanilla and the malt characteristics coming through. You just want to let it sit on your tongue and savor all of the flavors.

Proprietor’s Bourbon County Brand Stout

Proprietor’s Bourbon County Brand Stout is brewed by Goose Island each year to show gratitude to the brewery’s neighbors in Chicago – the loyal and adventurous fans whose support helped bring Bourbon County Brand Stout to towering new heights. Each year’s release will differ from the previous year, this year’s variant was aged in Rye barrels with Cassia Bark, Cocoa Nibs, Panela and Coconut Water.

Collin: This is way more complex than last year’s Proprietor’s. Last year’s was great but the flavors are really seamless. It’s cool.

Kim: It’s like if Mexican Hot Chocolate went on a beach vacation. I mean, it’s hard to find words. It’s amazing. Very layered.

Chris: It’s really sweet at first but then it just dissipates. At the end it’s actually very dry.

Pat: That’s the rye. The coconut is there but to me, that bark is just really present. It’s not a subtle flavor.

Collin: It’s a bit more savory. Spicier.

Matt: Let’s talk about non-traditional pairings. I’d like to hear what record, movie, or experience you might pair with this year’s Proprietor’s.

Collin: Chocolat.

Matt: You just wanted to work Johnny Depp into this.

Collin: True.

Kim: That’s a hard one.

Pat: For me this is like Final Fantasy III on the Super Nintendo. No, no, I’m serious. There’s just layers of character, man. You go through that game and you get like 18 different playable characters. There’s a little black mage and little knight thrown in. I’m definitely going to enjoy this with a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I don’t know if that counts as non-traditional or what.

Kim: French Toast with some bacon.

Collin: Apple pie, for sure. That rich spice and the crust character. This has that milky coconut thing, which would work really well with a spicier dessert. Or a dark mole.

Chris: I’d probably just pair it with the vanilla BCS. Or a mid-nineties Los Crudos record.

Conclusions:

Matt: Give me your overall thoughts. What is your impression of this year’s Bourbon County Stout lineup as a whole.

Pat: I think it’s a more interesting and diverse lineup then we’ve had thus far. The coffee is in a bit of a different direction. Proprietor’s is fantastic. The barleywine I personally liked better than last years. This is almost like a fan-service lineup – with Vanilla and this Mexican Hot Chocolate-type of Proprietor’s thing – I think people are going to be really excited about it.

Kim: I’m a huge fan of the fruit variants and I was a little heart broken when I found out there weren’t going to be any this year… but I think the lineup totally delivers on that front. We were talking about that dried fruit characteristic in Bourbon County and the citrus in the coffee variant definitely delivers on the harmony that’s created with the sweeter flavors and acidic flavors.

Chris: The slightly lower alcohol content than previous years and the slightly lighter body makes these more subtle beers, which I really appreciate. The flavors are not overpowering and a very well integrated. Especially with the coffee, taking a more subtle approach and making everything a bit more food friendly.

Collin: I’m into it. I think the lineup is great this year. Bourbon County is super drinkable. Bourbon County Coffee is so bright and really fresh and fruity. I’ve never tried the original vanilla so getting to try that was really cool. I think overall, more so than in years past, all these beers are so balanced. You finish a sip and you really want to keep coming back. This year everything feels very mature and balanced. It’s awesome.