Goose Island Bourbon County 2017

Cool, thanks for elaborating =). Always like to see other's views.

How does the Bourbon forwardness compare for you? For me, I love that Bourbon punch in the face of BCBS, and I did not get them from CW's beers.

 

The CW was still kinda hot which I love, I love bourbon as well. Bcbs can be a bit bourbon heavy which is a plus, but I have a bit of trouble working around the sweetness, it kinda drags it down a bit. Don't get me wrong I like Bcbs quite a bit, but there are equal or betters out there. Some beers age better than others, Bcbs ages great into 4-5 years, I've never aged CW that long because I can't easily get them. Maybe the CW medium body doesn't maintain the bourbon over time, don't know. The regular CW Stout is a far cry IMO from the 16 Reserve though. Apples to apples.

 

It is massive compared to prior years there. Outside of Chicago you’re not getting Prop unless you travel, trade or overpay for it via 3rd party

 

I hear we are getting 0 per person. I was lucky that I could get one last year out of 120 bottles in the state, and two the year before.

 

Maybe there would be more of this stuff to go around if GI didnt give so much of it away to be shoved into pies and hot sauce.

 

Minnesota got shorted too especially the variants. Got a single bottle and ended up buying most of my stock online since New York and California were overflowing in BCBS.

Most liquor stores sell out in minutes on Black Friday here. Waited at one place was told they didn't have it yet. Went back 30 minutes later and it had sold out. Delivered minutes after we were there. Sounded like most places got 1-2 cases total so even with limit 1 they are gone as soon as people know about it. Hoping with the increase in other good barrel aged stouts available that less people will be chasing this year.

 

How much do you think goes into making a pie or the hot sauce? Judging by your post, I feel like you think they gave away a huge #of bottles of each. It's hard for me to imagine a pie using more than like...3-4oz, since that liquid has to be replacing other liquid. And with the hotsauce....like maybe 0.5oz per bottle?

 

According to GI's social media post
.. "a whole heck of a lot" of the Northwoods for the sauce collab. And Prop was used for the pie and the drizzle on the pie as well. Of course actual numbers werent released. This wouldnt be so much of an issue for me if it were regular BCS being sacrificed.

 

I actually thought this was a joke until I went back to the first post and looked closely at the labels.

 

We get it - you live in a rural, low population state.

You think GI should send the same amount to every state?

 

I'm not trying to start anything but clearly GI's distribution sucks. NY has cases of BCBS that sit on shelves for months, cant some of those go to MD?

 

I'd say BA Ten Fidy was perhaps the best BA Stout I've had to
Date.

 

The Sioux Falls "metroplex" has a population of 250,000, roughly 11% of the Pittsburgh metro population of 2.3 million. While South Dakota got 10 cases, Sioux falls probably got 5 cases max. Did Pittsburgh only get 46 cases? Doubtful - probably several hundred - perhaps 300, and if so then "proportional" would mean 33 cases, or over 6x what we actually got. We get no variants.

It irks me to see folks posting about each customer being allocated 14 bottles, when most stores here get 0, and a few stores got as many as 6 bottles. And then I hear about distribution areas with cases sitting stacked up weeks or months later. If they don't sell in a month, pull them and send more here - we'll buy them!

 

I have no idea how many cases of BCBS usually get shipped to Pennsylvania. But I don't think there is a conspiracy against South Dakota. Like a few others have stated, it's likely based on how much GI beer is sold during the rest of the year.

So it's not going to be directly proportional to population if the population in question doesn't drink a lot of Goose Island beer. Here in the Philly area there are so many (better) local options for craft beer drinkers rather than GI. Therefore we probably get less than some lower population areas. But no one complains.

Also - GI is from Chicago, so of course they sell more beer there.

 

NYC gets a ton of Bourbon County because the area sells a crap ton of other GI products throughout the year. Same with Founders, we get a ton of KBS because the other stuff sells by the truckload.

 

I've heard from a couple of store owners that BCBS distribution (at least here) is based solely on Sophie sales. I've noted over the past several months that some stores are overstocked with Sophie in an apparent effort to get more BCBS, but not sure it's selling. I suppose the Sophie deal could just be our distributor, but thought I'd read that this happens elsewhere.

I know that distribution will never be fair and even, but they've got some issues if some markets are getting little to none, while other markets are swimming in it for weeks or months.

 

I've not yet had a BA stout that I thought was worse than the regular.