Two things are immediately striking about Goose Island’s 2021 Bourbon County lineup, and neither has to do with beer.
Price and packaging.
Goose Island is all in on conveying its family of whiskey barrel-aged beers, which will be released Friday, as not just drinking experiences, but full-on cultural and marketing experiences. That’s clearer than ever, thanks to a leap this year in both price and packaging.
Things have been trending this way for awhile. The Bourbon County beers have been home to increasingly elaborate presentation, dating back to Rare Bourbon County Stout being sold in 2015 in a wood box.
The brewery ratchets things up with this year’s crop. Four of the eight beers are sold in elaborate packaging: the customary light-blue cardboard box for Proprietor’s Bourbon County Stout; cylinders evoking how whiskey is sold for Bourbon County Double Barrel Toasted Barrel Stout and Bourbon County Reserve 150 Stout; and a hexagon-shaped box for Bourbon County Reserve Blanton’s Stout plus an embroidered brown felt bag and a mini version of the Blanton’s bourbon bottle stopper hanging from its neck.
Bourbon County is officially a full-on show.
It’s also full-on expensive.
Bourbon County prices have crept up for years, and 2021 sees a leap that has probably been inevitable: at Jewel-Osco supermarkets, usually home to some of the lowest Bourbon County prices, the eight bottles (each 16.9 ounces) range from $13.99 to $54.99; half cost $29.99 or more. Of the seven beers released last year, the two most expensive were $29.99.
The price creep (or in some cases, spike) for Bourbon County beers is so glaring it’s impossible to evaluate them without considering it. Some are exquisite beers, and arguably well worth the cost. Others fall short.
In Bourbon County tradition, here’s a ranking of this year’s beers solely on the beers themselves, with the added context of whether they’re worth the price (and keep in mind, these are probably low-end prices).
1. Bourbon County Stout (14%-14.4% alcohol, depending on the bottle)
Believe it: The most ubiquitous and cheapest beer on this list is the best beer on this list.
I drank the flagship of the series side by side with each of the four other beers that don’t have any additional ingredients or adjuncts — just beer aged in barrels — and this was the most balanced, with the most interesting depth of flavor. It doesn’t have the most flavor, but the idea of “most” is often a trap for beer drinkers. More isn’t always more; it’s often in fact less.
Goose Island tries to stretch the Bourbon County family in all sorts of directions — see the rest of this list — but the classic, dating to the mid-1990s (probably), aged eight to 14 months in a mix of bourbon barrels from distilleries that include Heaven Hill, Wild Turkey and Buffalo Trace, is classic for a reason. Some years this beer is better than others, and some years Goose Island eclipses it, as it did last year with Birthday Bourbon County Stout, which boasted a fascinating web of berry fruitiness crossed with notes of spicy oak, vanilla, toffee and leather.
This year’s Bourbon County Stout doesn’t reach those heights — but neither do any of the 2021 offerings.
If anything, this year’s Bourbon County Stout is one of its strongest showings in years: a boozy-chocolaty-dried fruit aroma laced notes of vanilla at the edges and a long bittersweet chocolaty middle on the palate tinged with deep char and light oak in the finish. Goose Island dialed down the alcohol on this beer by about one percentage point, and to excellent effect. Taking away a little of the oomph and burn only makes it more approachable.
This beer is taken for granted by fans of barrel-aged beer because it’s so easy to get compared to some of the others here — but it shouldn’t be.
Worth the price ($13.99)? Absolutely. In fact, buy two.
2. Bourbon County Double Barrel Toasted Barrel Stout (16%)
We vault from the cheapest, most ubiquitous beer on the list to the most expensive.
The double barrel aging on display here — aged one year in Elijah Craig’s Small Batch Bourbon barrels, then another year in Elijah Craig Toasted Bourbon barrels — results in a burlier beer than Bourbon County Stout. There’s more tobacco, leather and molasses character with a berry note running through it toward a more astringent finish. It’s bold and interesting beer ideal for sharing on a warm night. It’s an occasion unto itself.
But I prefer Bourbon County Stout for its deeper and more nuanced finish.
Worth the price ($54.99)? It’s a splurge, but a well-executed one.
3. Bourbon County Reserve Blanton’s Stout (15.4%)
It comes in a box! In an embroidered bag! With a miniature Blanton’s stopper!
But here we run into the intersection where price and marketing begin to eclipse the beer itself.
I did enjoy this beer, though, which is aged 18 months in Blanton’s Single Barrel Bourbon barrels. A massive brownie batter note is the star, with a big boozy char note in the finish. To my palate, it’s the biggest and sweetest Bourbon County beer without adjuncts. The flavors are clean and well-tuned, but that brownie batter note gets a bit heavy after a few sips. Overall, it could use a little more restraint.
Worth the price ($39.99)? If you like massive stouts skewing sweet and chocolaty, sure. If not, splurge on Double Barrel or buy a couple bottles of the original.
4. Bourbon County Fourteen Stout (13.2%)
This dip into the wayback machine re-creates the Proprietor’s Bourbon County Stout of 2014, a fan favorite made with cassia bark, cocoa nibs, panela sugar syrup and coconut water, and aged in rye whiskey barrels.
Of the original version, I wrote at the time it “bursts with cinnamon to balance the sweet, then releases into a wonderfully long, spicy chocolate finish. It’s an admirable balance of sweet (syrup), spicy (cocoa nibs) and savory (cinnamon).”
Reading that, I suspect this version isn’t quite as balanced — it’s a big, sweet, tasty and ridiculous beer. I don’t need much of it, but it is my favorite of the flavored Bourbon County beers this year, laced with a sweet chocolate-coconut middle that does most of the heavy lifting.
Worth the price ($24.99)? For fans of heavily adjuncted stouts, this is a winner. For everyone else, no.
5. Bourbon County Cherry Wood Stout (14.2%)
Aging Bourbon County Stout on toasted cherry wood chips was an interesting experiment … that doesn’t need to be repeated.
The brewery has said it was seeking “maximum flavor extraction” and promised “complex characteristics like red fruit, ripe cherry, and light toffee, which are not found in the original oak barrel itself.”
I mostly get more astringency and, yes, a woodier beer, but one that loses soft depth and subtlety. It becomes two dimensional compared to Bourbon County Stout’s three dimensions. It’s not bad, just less multifaceted and interesting.
Worth the price ($18.99)? At this price, and to try for the sake of curiosity, sure — though I wouldn’t pay a penny more. And I’d favor the one that’s $5 cheaper every time.
6. Bourbon County Classic Cola Stout (14%)
I was intrigued by this beer, having tried a few barrel-aged stouts inspired by cola that worked in a dazzling and counterintuitive way.
This one is a minor disappointment, though, pulling its punches when it needs to go bold. The aroma offers the fruity-acidic-baking spice sensation the beer needs, but with a strangely perfume-like accent.
The ingredients — lime and orange juice and zest, coriander, cassia bark, nutmeg, brown sugar and vanilla — don’t amount to the intended goal, coming across with a cinnamon churro vibe as much as a cola note. It’s too sweet when it needs to break brightly acidic and fruity and amounts mostly to a shrug.
Worth the price ($24.99)? No — for that price, there are better flavored barrel-aged stouts.
7. Proprietor’s Bourbon County Stout (12.8%)
This beer, made with strawberries, vanilla and coconut, is meant to mimic a strawberry ice cream bar, and the sooner we can be done with this kind of thing, the better.
I did enjoy a few sips more than I thought possible, with a dry chocolate note up front that segues into a strawberry rush that’s more restrained than the intense aroma might indicate, hugged by coconut in the finish.
Despite a passable few sips, it grows tiresome quickly. The fruit flavor stars to linger heavily on the palate with a fatiguing and inauthentic heaviness.
Worth the price ($29.99)? No.
8. Bourbon County Reserve 150 Stout (15.6%)
What an odd beer.
Housed in one of those circular whiskey-like boxes, Reserve 150 Stout, aged in Old Forester’s 150th anniversary Bourbon barrels, is meant to be one of the stars of the Bourbon County family — and it’s priced like it.
But the beer just stumbles all over itself, with few redeeming qualities: Astringent and boozy without much nuance, and a lightly vegetal note crashing into an unpleasantly ashy and bitter walk-off.
Sometimes price and packaging indicates a premium product. Not this time.
Worth the price ($39.99)? Absolutely not.
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