Chicago’s Goose Island has announced that its rare and multi-award-winning Bourbon County Brand Stout (14.7% ABV) will return to UK shores on Black Friday (November 23).
If past years are anything to go by, craft beer fans will need to be quick if they want to nab a bottle of the highly sought-after beer, with round-the-block queues expected.
When launched in 2016, the limited run of 100 bottles sold out in under an hour, and in 2017 the beer sold out online in under four minutes!
Traditionally launched in the US on Black Friday — the day after Thanksgiving — the eagerly-anticipated, bourbon barrel-aged imperial stout will be available for £20 (16.9oz bottle) in limited quantities at Kill the Cat in Shoreditch, Ghost Whale in Brixton, from 11am, and onBeerhawk.co.uk, while stocks last, from 1pm.
Notes of leather and tobacco
Aged in more than four-year-od Heaven Hill Bourbon barrels, Bourbon County Brand Stout packs a wallop, with flavours of cocoa, vanilla, caramel, almond and cherry. Additional notes of leather and tobacco permeate this complex beer that deepens with each sip.
More than 20 years ago, Greg Hall — the son of Goose Island founder John Hall — brewed a unique beer for Goose Island’s original Chicagoan Clybourn Brewpub’s 1,000th batch.
This year, for the first time, the world-renowned brew will be served at the craft brewery’s first European Brewpub, at an exclusive Bourbon County Brand Stout 2018 barrel tapping at the newly-opened Goose Island Shoreditch Brewpub this Black Friday, November 23.
Goose Island principal brewmaster, Jared Jankoski, said: “This is the third year we’ve brought this very special brew across the Atlantic, and we’re stoked that Bourbon County Stout gets beer lovers in the UK as excited as those here in the US!
“Our original Bourbon County Stout is as good as when we first made it over two decades ago — you know, if it ain’t broke why try and fix it — and we can’t wait for British beer lovers to get a taste this Black Friday!”
