Thirty-Four. That's a lot of years; a lot of laps our Earth has run around the sun since I showed up.
In an effort to feel younger, I decided to spend time with something that is only five. That's how many laps around the sun this beer has run while in my possession.
When this was brewed in Chicago (early 2007), I lived in Ohio, but it sat in bourbon barrels for about a hundred days.
Then, it was shipped to the back of a beer store in South Dakota, where I found it in a walk-in cooler a couple months later when I moved to that state.
I drove it and a few other beers in an ice-filled cooler another three-hour drive to middla-nowhere-Winner where I lived. It was in a 4-pack. I drank 2 of them a couple weeks later, nearly having an orgasm with every sip. The other two bottles sat in the back-bottom of my refrigerator, waiting, not knowing it would have so much more of a story to tell.
A couple years later, I moved to Iowa. The beer moved moved with me in a newer cooler in a car atop a tow dolly behind a U-Haul truck and found a new home about a 5-hour drive East in the back-bottom of a new refrigerator I got when I settled in.
A couple years later yet, I moved here to West Virginia. Another cooler for moving; this time in a trailer towed behind my pickup truck driven by Renee (I was driving a giant truck with a different trailer). That was another 2-day-trip. Then came another back-bottom of a fridge for more aging.
Finally, today comes. No family around except my wife, who luckily has helped me clean the house up quite a bit today. This job/location makes me feel isolated when I'm not at work, especially on my birthday. But, to make me feel better, my wife suggested I open one of the bottles I've been carrying around all these years.
It is recommended that these age no longer than 5 years, and I am indeed at 5 years with these, so here goes.
The rear bottle label calls for a wide-mouth glass, like a
chalice. I don't have any chalice-style glasses, so I used what you see above (not sure what they're for), which have half-a-beer in each.
Here's the spam links:
Vender (Goose Island's Bourbon County Brand Stout page),
Beeradvocate (highest "world class" rating),
Ratebeer (perfect 100 score).
The beer is exquisite. I don't even know really what that word truly means, but I think it means pretty damn good. It's everything a barrel-aged imperial stout should be, except it goes down so easily. No hardcore bitterness or carnivore's ruthless bite. The mouthfeel is silky, almost oily smooth, and the taste is pretty much all and more of the heavy, tasty, complex imperial stout without much of the assertiveness. They left some yeast in there so that it can age well. I've just now finished the first half while cooking some boneless eye of roast beef (potatos, onions, carrots, spices, Worcestershire, bourbon, spices, even threw some of that home made salsa on top for experimentation sake, etc). The beer is nothing short of delicious. The other half will be consumed when it can be paired with dinner.
The ABV was 13% at the time of bottling; would this have changed while aging?