(Courtesy Goose Island Beer)

In August the Chicago-based brewery renowned for championing America’s first barrel-aged stout, announced that it releasing a total of seven different variations of the barrel-aged brand along with its classic in 2021…

And while all of this year’s variations, which debuted nationally on Black Friday sounded interesting, Goose Island’s Bourbon County Classic Cola Stout particularly caught our attention so we tracked it down.

And maybe because we were a bit skeptical and weren’t crazy about the idea to begin with, we expected to be less than impressed…but amazingly the Goose Island crew has pulled this cola-themed variation off.

Here’s how the brewery describes this 14.1 % ABV barrel-aged Imperial Stout variation…

“Pushing the boundaries of barrel-aged stouts is in our DNA, and with that we brought to life our first-ever cola-inspired variant. Brewers Paul Cade and Jason Krasowski bonded over their love for a classic cola while creating the Classic Cola Stout.”

“Combining the refreshing nature of classic cola and picking up the flavor profile from a whisky cola, we added lime and orange juice and zest, plus coriander, cassia bark, nutmeg, brown sugar, and vanilla to bring out the complex characters of the classic drink.”

And as much as we were ready to pan it, Bourbon County Classic Cola Stout was an eye-opening departure from what we’ve come to expect from these annual releases.

It’s brewed with way more adjuncts than any other Bourbon County variant ever, a wild  combination of lime, orange juice and orange zest, coriander, cassia bark, nutmeg, brown sugar and vanilla. That’s a lot of additives to juggle but amazingly all this adds up to a surprisingly accurate cola taste.

But the thing that we appreciated most about 2021’s Bourbon County Classic Cola Stout was that in spite its successful mimicking of a cola’s flavor it never forget it’s an Imperial Stout, a rich and robust Imperial Stout.

One of the benefits of Goose Island’s alignment with Anheuser-Busch InBev is distribution which ensures that its yearly Goose Island Bourbon County Stout variations are now widely available with the exception of the Bourbon County’s special Chicagoland-only Bourbon County Proprietors release.

So Goose Island’s Bourbon County’s Classic Cola Stout variation is out there.

See what you think…

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(All image credits: Goose Island Beer)