Beer for Dessert
I can’t remember the last time I waited in line for a beer. I don’t know if it’s just Portland, but for the most part, beers I want to try end up somewhere I can find them eventually.
On Black Friday this year, which happens to mark the annual release of Goose Island’s Bourbon County Brand Stout and it’s many variations, I was in my local bottle shop. It was about noon and they were already sold out of the fancy stuff. It’s not like I was looking for a hundred dollar bottle of “Rare,” but I thought something with a lottle coffee would be nice. Oh well, I got other things.
Weeks passed, and there on the shelf, in the grocery store no less, was a bottle of Bourbon County Brand Barleywine. I’m a big fan of barley wine. I’m a big fan of barrel aging. It was a kismet. I brought it home and stashed it in the closet for a special occasion. Then the storm came. Well, I said to myself, this is a good a time as any.
I split the bottle with my beloved wife, at the time it felt generous. I thought five hundred milliliters would surely not be enough. Turns out it was too much.
One of the secrets to Bourbon County Brand is that each beer is filled with ton of residual sugar. Like, diabetic coma levels of sugar. That’s what makes the beer taste more like ice cream than liquor. But it also makes the beer so dense that a little bit goes a long way.
Bourbon County Barleywine pours almost as black as it’s imperial cousins with virtually no head. It’s flat and syrupy. But oh what syrup it is. It’s chocolaty in places, carmely in others. Big gobs of raisins soaked in rum, bourbon salted caramel poured over the whole mess. Each sip warms you up like hot cocoa on a cold day.
I liked it, who wouldn’t, but I was glad it was over in the end. Half a bottle is just enough. Any more and I’d be bitching about how many calories are in it. My God! Don’t even tell me.
