2012 CBS

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Oops, didn't see that. Anyways, check untappd for the most recent reviews on 2011. I can't tell you if the 11 is good or bad, but I can definitely speak to having 15 fresh a few times, then again with a year on it and when it was fresh it was amazing....a year in had clearly fallen off a bit.

 

CBS was only bottled in 2012. Any bottle you find will be approaching five years old, period. Personally after trying some at New Year's I wouldn't trade a shelf turd IPA for a bottle, much less $80 worth of anything.

 

There were bottles of the 15 batch - Santa's sleigh is on those labels I believe. It was a run for employees Christmas gifts and was super limited but there are some out there. As for the 12 - if you haven't tried it and want to, pull the trigger, just know it's changed since fresh.

 

The reviews on UNTAPPD paint a different picture. Everyone who's had one seems to love it, and they're checking in bottles of '11 so I don't think it was only bottled in 2012.

 

It only saw distro in 2012, and I've never heard of '11 bottles in market, but there is a chance it was a brewery only release then. I will point out though that Untappd, while being a huge database, isn't always accurate. The beers are based on who actually adds them and it only takes one drunk to put a beer in wrong. Point of fact, New Belgium's Peach Porch Lounger (9.4%), was listed as 4.9% for well over a year before a correction was made. In fact they didn't have a correction option for a very long time, so there's still plenty of bad info on there. Someone could have easily typed 2011 in error and plenty of people not knowing any better checked into it.

You also have a slew of new beer drinkers jumping on Untappd, some of them whale hunters, some completely ignorant to beer in general, all of whom never had the beer fresh and have no comparison other than 'it's rare, so it has to be incredible'. It's still a good beer, but from my experience it's just a shelf of it's former glory now. Take it with a grain of salt though, everyone's mileage varies with anything that's been cellared. You might love it.

 

People in the comments mention how well the '11 is drinking. Something tells me all of them aren't wrong about the date. Maybe the taste, but not the date.

http://foundersbrewing.com/backstage-series/cbs-2011/

 

CBS was actually bottled and released in 2011, not 2012. That has been the only public bottling so far.

 

This thread reminds me why I should never take any fact I read on here too seriously

 

As pointed out already, this information is incorrect. The only public bottling was in 2011, there was no 2012 vintage.

Sourced from the creator themselves:

http://foundersbrewing.com/latest-n...n-founders-brewing-companys-backstage-series/

http://foundersbrewing.com/backstage-series/cbs-2011/

CBS 2011

Canadian Breakfast Stout (CBS) is the epitome of why we launched the Backstage Series: to bring some of our most sought-after beers, which have been available primarily at the taproom or at a few select events, to a much larger audience.

Canadian Breakfast Stout is an Imperial Stout brewed with a blend of coffees and imported chocolates, then aged in spent bourbon barrels that have most recently been aging pure Michigan maple syrup. The final product has had stellar reviews and is usually among the top 5 highest rated beers in the world on BeerAdvocate.

This is also in incorrect. The second, draft only batch was of the 2014 vintage. Founders sent out '14 kegs very late that year. Tappings that occurred in 2015 and even 2016 (Founders Cellar Raid) were the 2014 batch.

 

I talked to a Founder's rep this past spring who told me that when the latest batch of CBS was in the cave, the barrels were labeled 'secret sauce' and no one knew what they were until bottling except for the very innermost circle. Not really contributing anything to the discussion here, just a 'fun fact' to add to the mystique of this rare beast...