Bourbon County 2018

Seems like something the High End would run a Super Bowl ad making fun of before buying a company that made exactly this...

 

Depends, how much Goose IPA and 312 did you purchase this year?

 

If your beer is light enough to tell whether it's hazy or not, it's probably not a Bourbon County anyway.

 

A Hazy Stout. If that isn't one hell of an oxymoron.

Too bad this label wasn't released a few weeks ago. GI would have been falling out of their chairs reading pages of debate over nonsense in this thread.

 

Maybe it'll be nitro so you get that Guinness cascade effect

 

Mmm...the cascade.

 

https://www.porchdrinking.com/articles/2018/09/18/first-taste-2018-bourbon-county-stout/

 

I’m not seeing anything that excites me...Bramble looks like it’ll be great, as does Reserve, but my reasonable expectations suggest a need for A+ across the eight releases

 

Agreed. “Approachable” is not what I want in my BCBS. Was looking for “super bourbon-forward”. Also, needed to see “vanilla bomb” for the Nilla.

Does sound like Bramble and Reserve will be great though.

 

I was at the same thing Porch Drinking was at. AMA

 

Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

 

Cool. You probably shouldn't buy any then so your fellow KS BA's that are excited get what they want.

Any surprise stand outs that you didn't expect?

 

The Wheat Wine is astounding. Tastes like caramel covered grilled pineapple and it is a very warm 15.4% ABV.

 

That is great to hear. I know many are not enthused about the WW, but I am. Anything that was a let down?

 

If you're looking for barrel character in the "flavor forward" variants you are going to be let down. But holy shit that 'nilla. I mean all pancake batter on the nose and there's something to the vanilla they used because it was almost floral on the swallow.

 

I unfortunately never had it.

 

I found the regular to be very chocolate forward. Like a bakers chocolate. And I didn't think it "unfolded" across my palate like 2017 did. I thought it was a bit one note. But the high ABV really does give this illusion that you're drinking a spirit. And eventually I started to get the leather and oak. These were maybe 4oz pours so it was hard to get a full opinion. I will say however that all the pours were room temp.

They did this weird thing where they lead us through the barrel warehouse and we stopped at "stations" where a brewer explained each variant. And it appeared that the bottles and pours had been sitting out for quite a while. So its not like cold was a factor. But again I really was only able to pull a couple flavors out of the regular.