Bourbon County Stout Black Friday

Well it's that time of year again. Time to be with family, feast, drink, watch football, and give thanks for the bounty of goodness in your life. Either that, or it's time to go trample over other people on Thursday afternoon so you can get that killer deal on a cell phone or ink cartridges or some such shit. Call me old fashioned, but I really think black Friday is the embodiment of a lot of what's wrong with America.

However, there is ONE black Friday event that I can get behind. This is basically because it involves one of the essential ingredients of the holidays--beer. And not just any beer. I'm talking Bourbon County Stout. Goose Island is releasing their Bourbon County Brand beers again this year on black Friday all over the country.


Goose Island has brewed five Bourbon County Brand variants this year. I don't want to bum you out too much, so I won't even go into the variants that we're not getting (they all sound pretty amazing). It looks like we'll only be getting BCS in KS and BCS plus a tiny amount of the Bourbon County Barleywine in MO. I have heard that we're getting a few more BCS 4-packs this year than in the past though, so hopefully it won't be quite as hard to get your hands on.

The 2014 batch is, as usual, fantastic. At 14.4% abv it packs a serious punch of flavor and alcohol. The aroma is huge and complex and covers the whole dark beer spectrum with chocolate, coffee, cherry, prune, vanilla, banana, coconut, bourbon, smoke and oak aromas. What I like most about the aroma is that it evolves in your glass as you're drinking. At first, I get all coffee and chocolate, then it gets that Queen Anne chocolate covered cherry thing going, and after that it starts being more reminiscent of straight bourbon and oak.

It's got a flavor to match too with lots of caramel, chocolate, prune and raisin flavors. The bitterness is pretty high and it's relatively dry too, which really helps to balance out the beer. There's cloying aftertaste, no astringency, and no bitter or solvent-like alcohol character. The finish of the beer goes on forever, and minutes later it still feels like you just bit off a big piece of bittersweet chocolate. If I had one gripe about the beer it would be the carbonation. If they had managed to get the carbonation up a little bit more, I think all those amazing aromatics could be even stronger.

All of the retail stores in the metro getting the beer should have their 4-packs on sale on Friday, and there will be several bars tapping around the metro that day too. Here's a list of all the places that the distributors I've talked to have confirmed will be tapping BCS on Friday:

Kansas:

Barley's Brewhaus (Midland Dr) - 12p
2013 Bourbon County Stout
2014 Bourbon County Stout

Grinders Stonewall - 4p
2014 Bourbon County Stout

The Peanut on Sante Fe (Downtown OP) - 6p
2014 Bourbon County Stout

Rock N Brews - 2p
2014 Bourbon County Stout

Missouri: 

All Star Pizza & Pub
2014 Bourbon County Stout

Bier Station - 11a
Bourbon County Stout
Bourbon County Barleywine
Boulevard Imperial Stout
Prairie Christmas BOMB!

Brass Rail
2014 Bourbon County Stout

Rock and Run Brewery
2014 Bourbon County Stout

Screenland Armour
2014 Bourbon County Stout