Goose Island Maple BCS?

Barrels?! What y'all need barrels for? Ya need a spoon, son.

 

Did you like it? I've blended bcbs with a ton of things and sadly maple doesn't work that well.

 

@HugeBulge: My post was just for fun, but yes I did try it a few years ago, honestly hoping for a CBS-like flavor, and while it didn't ruin the beer, the maple gets overpowered by the bourbon, so I would agree it doesn't work. Worth a shot, though

 

ISO: Maple BCBS, FT: Vanilla BCBS.

 

GI makes small batches of unique beer for their Fulton/Wood series and only releases them to hand full of local Chicago bars. I think this is one of them, the batch is too small for a BCS variant.

 

I'm already in line for it.

 

saw this blog feed the other day with the images. laughed out loud literally. is that a random Tom's Foolery barrel i see being filled next to a random Four Roses spent barrel? that potential barrel crunch i was saying was looming on the horizon - no signs of that anywhere in sight. lmfao

 

i don't think GI is using Heaven Hill exclusively any more. a couple of years back i figured there would be a looming supply issue. i distinctly remember being laughed at on this forum about it too.

nothing guaranteed of course but based on the evidence & a bit of commonsense, it would appear GI was securing barrels that mostly had been used to bottle the Elijah Craig line. that's where that "14 years old" average on the barrels was likely established (a cross average of barrels used to bottle Elijah 12 & Elijah 18). when Elijah Craig 18 disappeared from the market, the handwriting was on the wall. plus it's pretty clear Heaven Hill was using shadow distilling to fill a decent chunk of the barrels GI was using.

 

Could be for Fulton/Wood but there are over 100 barrels in the Instagram photo and the photo from Tom's Foolery is of barrel #51. Even if there were only 51 barrels it would still be enough to fill over 13,000 22oz bottles even after some loss.

 

OWWWW!!!! My neck!!!

 

I'll likely never see or try this...but it sounds delightful. I'm a sucker for anything maple and BCBS sounds like a hell of match for it.

 

I hope this dream becomes a reality!

 

I bet you weren't the first person either

 

You're right there @cookiequiz ...Grade B is the bomb!! My friend in VT says Grade A is for tourists and "export"...LOL

 

Just met with Eric Ponce, the Head of the barrel program at GI, for a piece on barrel blending I'm working on. Managed to get a bit more info on this:

• They only have three barrels, all from the same maple syrup company, but all different types of bourbons
• They're unsure how this is going to turn out, this being the first time they've used these barrels, so he didn't commit to there being a BCBS Maple. Said if it didn't meet expectations, they might use it to blend into something else to add complexity
• If they do end up serving it "as is" it will probably just end up in kegs to be served at select events, since 3 barrels is not enough to make up a bottled variant.

Some other pretty exciting projects in the works there as well...

 

One man's innovation is another man's old news. Goose island makes excellent beer. Bring on the syrup!

 

thanks! your post clears up a lot & adds sense/context. i definitely fell for the 100s of barrels they have in line behind those... given the barrels displayed there looked very third hand, gives the impression they are playing with a pile of whatever they scrounged up. where GI appears to be ahead of the game at least thus far is they seem to understand volume/quantity ensures they have plenty to play (blend) with.

 

Thank you sir! Now everybody freaking out can put their speculative beer boners back in their pants

 

"since 3 barrels is not enough to make up a bottled variant."

3 barrels is around 900 bottles. You mean to tell me that they make more than 900 bottles of Prop? I thought it was super rare?

 

What's that?