Goose Island's Bourbon County Stouts for 2017

As far as top non coffee BB stouts that aren't uber whales to trade above $4$ go. In my opinion:

BCBS > BB dark apparition > parabola > ba 1050

Deths tar, and bb siberian night could be included as well.

Bcbs still reigns king as far as somewhat attainable bb stouts imo.

 

Gonna have to stock up on ammo to trade for that Proprietors! Or plan a trip to Chi town....

 

Re BCBS, I've only had it on draft with other colleagues. Have never chased bottles... the price point is awful to me.

I ALMOST bought KBS this year. It seems KBS has got to the point where you don't have to chase it in my area anymore. TW had a pallet of the stuff and was giving away a 4pack per person, and it lasted the better part of a week. But again... the price.

My decision probably had something to do with having High Westified and Sunday Morning Stout earlier in the year. Those prices I could deal with.

 

not sure what the 4-packs of kbs were going for this year (didn't chase them), but it sounded like the 750s were more expensive per oz than bcbs. bcbs is $9 for a 50cl bottle here.

 

4-packs were in the $20 to $22 ballpark, with some places gouging much higher. I stayed away from KBS bombers simply because I prefer my mega-ABV beers in 12oz doses.

 

I haven't bought bourbon county in a while,2014. If you got plenty of high westified I wouldn't worry about missing Kbs, I personally prefer high westified.

 

It's not due to price, it's because many of those ratings were of infected bottles. If you take infections out of the equation the ratings would be remarkably higher. Plus, unlike Untappd, BA doesn't have listings for different release years, they just have "Bourbon County Brand Stout" as opposed to Bourbon County (2015) and Bourbon County (2016), etc.

No knock in KBS, either, though, I love the stuff

 

Um, I have been, and will continue to, do me.... thanks

 

You should try doing a little research for yourself before making assumptions or giving up on a brand. Besides that, exclusivity is a hot commodity, especially in the beer world, and it is ok for a brand to produce a limited product to keep the demand high. This is not taking into account the fact that the beer is now distributed nationwide and their barrel house hasn't really gotten any bigger.

Over 50% of the batch was dumped last year due to infection resulting from re-use of the infected barrels from the previous year. The beer was put in the barrels before the 2015 infection was discovered. Due to this, the allocations were severely cut in non-legacy states (states that did not carry GI before the AB purchase). You can take this however you want. I assume you will be as negative as possible about it and still not buy the beer. However, they did the right thing in not releasing infected beer, I would say. I hope you can figure out a way to get your panties unbunched. That sounds uncomfortable.

 

Here's the deal bud: two years ago I got 3cs of BCBS (sour, did get refund) and 1cs BCBBW (also infected, did not know there was a cutoff and ate 11x$12.99)... Everything that year I got my hands on was dumped down the drain other than the ~12 I drank in the first 2 months.

Then this year I tried to get some at several locations and literally came across 1 bottle. The year before I got 3+1cs, and could have bought much more, and this year I got 1 bottle. How is that being managed effectively, when people on this site are still "hauling" cases and cases, and the Total Wines and Wegmans I visited inside the Beltway, got literally 1cs regular per store ?

I'm not sure how you're interpreting that as "being as negative as possible." What kind of brand loyalty are they expecting, when I have access to bad beer, and then no access to the brand... thats not even touching on the idiotic 'varients' that they could easily make more of and make somewhat available, yet don't. It's like Diageo with the stupid "Orphan Barrel" series that's a parody of why (for the most part wealthy affluent white males) seek out specific bourbons and beers. Just because you choose to artificially make it scarce and/or distribute it in an idiotic way, doesn't make it "rare" or even "good." It's basically just preying on wealthier people who are not as seasoned/ don't have time to do the research and sniff out the bullshit/trickery that these companies employ.

::Like I said, I'll buy BCBS if I come across it at a fair price, but fuck the GI salespeople who are telling stores to take a bunch of Sofie+Matilda so they /MAYBE/ can get some of this beer that "the phones will be ringing off the hook and you can charge whatever you want for it."::

 

I am actually quite surprised there is this much interest in this beer, given who owns them now, from this community. I won't buy any, just on principle. BCBS is a great stout, but yeah... You know.

 

That purchase was six years ago, though. Clearly, a lot fewer people have a moral objection than outwardly say they do, as consumption and appetite has only seemed to increased.

Despite Ohio's past ABV laws, I never made the trip out of state on Black Friday since GI was purchased by ABInbev. I've only had one opportunity to actually buy BCBS since then, and I took it. I'm not sure I still will going forward, because it was a large quantity and I've still got plenty left, but, who knows whether Ohio will see any, since we never received any after our ABV limit was lifted last year.

I spend so much more money on local and craft beer I tend not to worry about it. I do try to be conscious of who I buy from, but if something is truly stellar, and also has solid trade value, it'd be very difficult to decline.

 

Yes, the best thing to do is ignore what actually happened and still be pissed that you didn't get any. Good call. Everyone that did not happen to live in a legacy state got shafted. Come up with all the conspiracy theories that you want, man. The US planned 9/11 and vaccines cause autism. I hear you.

 

Dude wtf are you talking about? Conspiracies? You're the one spouting off about sending product to "Legacy States" from before AbInbev acquired them... no one knows what you're talking about, you just invented that 'conspiracy' as far as I can tell. Although some of your earlier posts sound liek you work for a Bud distributor, so if accurate, this is new information to people who don't work for them.

Why would they "take care" of the states they were in before they bought them? The year of VR they sent TONS of BCBS and variants including VR to the 'new' states like Florida.

 

Can say it's fact, but word going around to the retailers, presumably through distributors, was that BCBS 2016 had issues and they had to dump up to 60% of it, and some staff. That's why it was more difficult to find in almost all markets - we got a small fraction of usual, and some places got none.

 

Not sure where you live, but Bristol Beverage didn't have any limits last year on BCBS. Adam, the manager there, has told people he just wants it out the sooner the better.

However, I do agree with most of this post because Foam Brewers is about to can and their stouts last Winter were more than legit!

Me, I'm not driving 45 minutes South in late November to get as much as this beer as I want when I can drive less than 15 minutes to Foam Brewers (Sam and Jon have a very worthy product soon to inspire more than enough people).

 

High Westified and SMS are nice beers but not in the same league as BCBS or KBS. Pay a little more and you get a better product in this case.

 

Gonna have to disagree on SMS--quality there is way underrated and definitely a more enjoyable beer than KBS imo.

 

It's just difference of taste and preference.

I also think that KBS is signifcantly better than HW or SMS. To me, much like RKP, KBS is substantially better and worth the additional price. I know many that doe not agree with my sentiments.

If there is one thing I have learned, it is that there are very few people that I will actually take advice from on whether or not something is 'fire!' My tastes are so far from others that I just can't trust most people's tastes to be as close to mine as to expect their advice to be true for me.

 

I'm with you there. It's always a red flag for me when someone declares a beer *fire*