Goose Island Creates Bourbon County Stout

In 1995, Goose Island Beer Company in Chicago created the beer that became Bourbon County Stout. The idea followed an October 1994 beer, bourbon, and cigar dinner attended by Goose Island brewmaster Greg Hall and Jim Beam master distiller Booker Noe. After obtaining freshly emptied bourbon barrels, Goose Island filled them with a strong imperial stout and served the resulting beer later in 1995. Bourbon County Stout became the most influential early commercial example of an American imperial stout aged in used bourbon barrels. Its combination of intense stout flavors with bourbon, vanilla, char, and oak helped establish spirit-barrel aging as a defining practice of modern American craft brewing. Goose Island later developed Bourbon County into an annual family of releases, including variants made with coffee, vanilla, fruit, and other ingredients, while its Black Friday launch became a major event in American beer culture.