Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Barley Wine

Beer:  Bourbon County Brand Barley Wine (BCW) 

Brewery:  Goose Island

Date: February 17th, 2014

Style:  Barley Wine

ABV: 12.1%

Similar To:  Founders Backwoods Bastard, Young's Old Nick

Description:
There are times when I head out the door with a destination in mind and a beer as my goal.  Then there are times when beer expectations are strictly on the back burner and I luck into something outstanding.  My experience with BCW definitely qualifies as the latter.

The venue for this evening was the restaurant in a high-end hotel in the Loop, where I was meeting a former manager for dinner on the occasion of his leaving the company.  Conversation that night was enjoyable and certainly wasn't hurt by the presence of 3(!) of Goose Island's Bourbon County line on the menu:  Bourbon County Stout, the subject of this post, and Proprietor's BCS, only the first two of which were available.  

First Impression:
Dark brown/black with a slight reddish tint and no head.

Smell:
Not surprisingly a strong aroma of bourbon, as well as brown sugar, vanilla, and plums/cherries.  Smells sweeter than I remember from Bourbon County Stout.

Taste:
As expected, massive bourbon and very sweet malt, though not cloying.  Lots of brown sugar, caramel, vanilla, and the dark fruits I mentioned previously.  Surprisingly well hidden alcohol taste, due, no doubt to the sweetness.  I could have probably put away another 3 or 4 of these, even if I would have been sorry for it later.

On the Palate:
Luxuriously rich and thick with a warming finish.  Low carbonation.  Very smooth going down, despite the high ABV.

Why You'll like It:
What's not to like?  Seriously though, a top-notch barleywine whose complexity

...and why You won't:

Sweet and strong is what BCW delivers, and does so in almost epic proportions.  Buyer beware.

In Closing...:
Coworkers can be strange animals.  Having congenial people to work with can make a terrible job easier and having awful ones can suck the life out of the most rewarding employment.  Naturally, the moral of this platitude is that really good beer trumps a really bad job, at least for a few hours.   

As a side note, I've had great luck finding hard-to-locate beers in places where people wouldn't usually go to find them, such as hotel bars, wine bars, and good restaurants where the beer is a generally a secondary consideration.

Rating: 4 1/2 Stars (out of 5)