Aging BCBS

I can only speak of drinking the 2012 batch. And it is awesome now. I have read variations between bottle dates , but can not comment on that with no experience. What is it that you hope to improve change about it?

I would drink a fresh one now and then pop one every six months and see what has changed improved. Good luck. Cheers !

 

Have you had it before? If not, drink a bottle now and see how you like it. I like my BCBS with some age on it, and I think this year's batch could definitely benefit from some time. Personally, I think there is a huge disparity between this year's, compared to the previous years' quality.

 

Of course the first big BCBS batch after the AB-InBev takeover had a huge dropoff in quality. No surprises there.

As for how well it ages, that all depends on what you like about it. Pop a fresh one and think about how aging mght affect the beer.

 

I think this beer is awesome fresh and awesome with age. I've had up to 5y/o bcbs and loved every one, though they have been drastically different. I'd follow No1Smitty's advice, except I'd open one a year instead of one every six months.

 

In my opinion it peaks after about 2 years. This latest batch is the biggest yet so who knows.

 

You'd be surprised. '08 is sublime, and '09 is definitely beginning its peak. There's a threshold for age for BCBS, but generally they do well with age.

 

2010, 2011, and 2012 are all drinking very well right now. You can't go wrong with enjoying some now and saving some for another day.

 

Check the batch date. There were at least six bottlings in 2012: 8/23/2012, 9/6/2012, 9/17/2012, 9/20/2012, 9/26/2012, and 11/8/2012. There may have been a seventh 8/11/2012 batch as well. I've only had one that I know of, but people who've had them all insist some are wildly smoother or harsher than others (the 9/6/2012 almost has a cult following around here). For what it's worth, the 9/26/2012 batch was a bit hot for me but still recognizable as a barrel-aged beer rather than watered-down whiskey. Not overpowering, in other words.

The consensus seems to be that most BCBS fans prefer two to five years, but that group seems to base this off the 2008 batch (allegedly the best....more or less the metric everyone judges BCBS by). People forget that the 2008 batch was pre-Laffler (worse blending) and smaller scale (more susceptible to bad barrels). The newer ones are smoother out of the gate and likely won't improve as much.....people have forgotten how unbelievably harsh Bourbon County used to be fresh.

I second eatabagofbooger's advice on drinking it in yearly increments.



see this thread for info on batch variation: http://beeradvocate.com/community/threads/bourbon-county-12-bottle-date-variation.66091/#post-913648

 

Wut?

 

That was a sarcastic response riffing off of the poster before me.

 

11/7 huh? That's a new one. Well, that would be mighty expensive if you wanted to do an aging experiment with all the batches. One four-pack seems like enough. I would hold off on drinking it until November now though, no point tasting it at 8 months then 12.

 

Also, I left out in my first post that the pre-2009 batches of Bourbon County were aged in the barrel for a shorter period of time, another reason they were harsher fresh and had more room for improvement.

 

i had '10, '11, and '12 side by side and blind. '11 was unanimously voted the best though the group was split on '12 vs '10. but all were great.

 

Of those 3, I agree on 11, but some bottlings of 12 come close (and may even surpass in the future, who knows...). 10 is the black sheep for some reason, not sure what happened there. 09 is still my current favorite, more vanilla than BCBVS (dead serious here).

 

Says who? I think the 2012 batch may have been the most drinkable fresh of any batch since 2009. It was ridiculously good and smooth despite the higher ABV than last year.

 

I keep forgetting that sarcasm is hard to convey across the interwebs. My apologies.

 

I thought it was an open secret that the recipe hasn't changed at all and the higher listing is just an attempt to appease state and federal label police?