Goose Island Bourbon County Stout Release A Time-Honored Tradition

CHICAGO — Beer, in many ways, is Daryl Hoedtke’s life. But when it comes to helping to produce a Goose Island offering that comes out once a year, Bourbon County Stout has taken on a life of its own.

No one knows that better than Hoedtke, the senior brewmaster at Goose Island, which will release this year’s collection of six Bourbon County Stout varieties on Black Friday or —as those who look expectedly to the yearly public unveiling more commonly refer to the occasion — Prop Day. For Hoedtke and the team of brewers and others at the Chicago-based brewery owned by Anheuser Busch, Prop Day represents an array of emotions — namely relief — but it also marks a reason for celebration from a production standpoint.

This year marks the 31st year that Goose Island has released Bourbon County Stout, which will again offer six variations of a beer that is aged in bourbon barrels for anywhere between eight and 16 months in a non-temperature controlled environment that makes the most of Chicago's weather rollercoaster that features both extreme summer humidity and sometimes frigid winters. While each BCS season presents its own set of unique circumstances, the 2023 release represents the first time in at least a decade that each of the six variants pays homage to the original Bourbon County Stout.

In addition to the Bourbon County Stout Original, this year’s Goose Island 6-pack of offerings includes a Bourbon County Eagle Rare 2-Year Reserve Stout, an Angel’s Envy 2-Year Cask Finish Stout, a Bananas Foster Stout, a Backyard Stout and the Proprietor’s Stout. As a whole, each beer is designed to stand on its own, but — for the first time in recent memory — each is a spinoff of the original, as opposed to years past when Goose Island offered either a wheat wine, barley wine variety, rye of oatmeal variation.

Although Goose Island rises to the challenge of coming up with variants of the original to present to beer lovers each November, the care with which Bourbon County Stout is prepared places it into its own category. Between the fact that Goose Island won’t use a barrel less than four years old to age Bourbon County Stout to the average of one year during which the beer is aged, the beverage that ends up appealing to beer lovers and bourbon connoisseurs alike makes Goose Island’s preparation for the Black Friday release a brewing process unlike any other.

“It’s really a full-time gig that we’re working on this beer,” Hoedtke told Patch on Thursday.

“If you think about it, you’ve got brewers making the wort, you’ve got brewers who are in the cellar who working with the yeast, working with fermenters working on the beer to get it ready for packaging. We really do have an entire team dedicated to being caretakers of Bourbon County Stout. So yeah, I would say it is its own special thing for us and without a doubt, gets the most attention of any of the beers we’re doing.”

Although this year’s offering is a love letter to Original Bourbon County Stout, the originality of each individual beer in the collection is unmistakable. The Angel’s Envy 2-Year Reserve is the heaviest hitter in the group, weighing in with a 15.5 percent alcohol by volume reading.

The beer has tasting notes of cherry, spice, and cocoa and is Goose Island’s first-ever cask finish variety that is aged in barrels provided by Angel’s Envy Kentucky Straight Bourbon. After being aged in a bourbon barrel for a year, the beer is then transferred into a second set of ruby port wine barrels, where it is aged for another year, adding a cherry finish blended with the tannins that come from the bourbon barrel that places the offering easily among Hoedtke’s 2023 favorites.

The Bananas Foster variant (13.9 percent ABV) is a comeback of Goose Island’s 2017 Proprietor’s Stout when the taste profile made its debut to Chicago drinkers only. The brainchild of Goose Island innovation brewer Quinn Fuechsl, this year’s take on a Southern staple includes banana puree and toasted almonds and also includes taste profiles of cinnamon and brown sugar in a dessert-driven beer that will likely be a favorite of customers looking for something that blends the stout with a burst of sweetness.

The Backyard Stout (12.9 percent ABV) provides a fruitier take on the Original Bourbon County Stout, using mulberries, boysenberries, and marionberries as the base while also giving off flavor profiles of chocolate and vanilla. The beer is a tribute to the 2013 Backyard Rye variation that was released and is inspired by Goose Island innovation manager Mike Siegel's memories of picking fruit from the trees found in the backyard of his boyhood home. For this variant, the mulberries are sourced locally from a tree located not far from Goose Island's barrel room.

This year’s Proprietor’s Stout (14.3 percent ABV) also has a unique sweet finish with tastes of toasted rice, vanilla custard, and raisins that end up as a blend of trail mix and a rice pudding and adds another chapter to the book that pays tribute to the Original Bourbon County Stout, which comes in at anywhere between 14.1 percent and 14.6 percent ABV depending on how long it has been aged)The offering marks the first time that brewers used rice as an ingredient in producing a BCS variant that will provide a comforting feeling on a Chicago winter’s night.

In coming up with this year’s collection, Goose Island again opened up ideas for variations to company employees — continuing a tradition of adding the perspective of beer-lovers beyond the brewers themselves. Flavor options are open to employees, who submit flavor profiles and pairings they'd like to see the brewers explore. While Goose Island has vowed never to go down certain paths — such as a s'mores variation or anything involving hot peppers — the variety of ingredients and flavor bursts offered this year (all without straying too far from the original) promises to provide something for everyone.

Hoedtke said that much of the fun of releasing Bourbon County Stout is showcasing the creativity that goes into producing each year’s group of six beers that make up that year’s collection. But the challenge never changes: Putting out something fresh and unique from previous years that doesn’t lose the quality that Bourbon County Stout lovers have come to expect from the brewer.

“I think that hearkens back to the fact that we’ve been doing it as long as we have,” Hoedtke told Patch. “Thirty-one years is a long time and with the experience we’ve got now, we’re able to pull those little levers now. We know many of the levers we’ll pull and the results we’ll get, and then there’s the experimentation part that we’re always looking to push a little bit.

“It’s fun and we’ve got a lot of experience under our belt, and so we know with relatively good confidence that what we’re doing is going to turn out well.”

With the 2024 variety of Goose Island Bourbon County Stout already well into production, all that remains is the countdown for local consumers for this year’s offering to be released. Although Goose Island's release of perhaps its most popular beer has been an annual occurrence for more than three decades now, Hoedtke says that the buildup to Black Friday never gets old.

Despite the 31 years the beer has been in production, each year’s offerings come with their own set of expectations and appeal — not only for consumers but for the team of brewers that spend a full year producing the product. As is the case every year, the limited amount of Bourbon County Stout makes obtaining it a bit of an adventure, with fans of the beer waiting in long lines outside of stores before it is released or going on what can often be a wild goose chase in search of different varieties.

But for those whose business it is to come up with the sought-after brewed beverage, Prop Day comes with a temporary emotional release before the focus returns to going back to work on next year's offerings.

“It’s a little bit of a relief,” Hoedtke told Patch. “But we’re out there and it’s fun to see people’s response, and it’s exciting to see people lining up outside of stores to get their hands on it. We’ll get out there and talk to people and it’s fun to feed off of their excitement. It’s an exciting time, but like I said, it’s not a short window that we’re preparing for this. It’s really the entire year.

“But it’s really fun to see how excited people are, especially after all of the work that we put into it.”