The Lie That Goose Island Loves To Tell

Goose Island has spent years crafting the legend of Bourbon County Stout, pitching it as a 1992 breakthrough. Executives often recount how brewmaster Greg Hall supposedly created the first bourbon barrel aged stout to celebrate the Clybourn Avenue brewpub’s thousandth batch. The tale has been polished and retold for decades, becoming a central piece of the brewery’s crafted identity in American beer.

The trouble is that the tale almost certainly is not true.

And the brewery probably knows that.

It is a needless fib, a bit of borrowed bravado grafted onto a beer that never required mythmaking to establish its importance.

Bourbon County Stout’s Hazy History

Back in early 2016, All About Beer Magazine raised the first public doubts about the history of Bourbon County Stout in a piece by Jeff Alworth. He walked through the beer’s foggy backstory, which traces to an historic and now debated beer, bourbon, and cigar dinner at the LaSalle Grill in South Bend, Indiana. Alworth set the scene:

The still-small Goose Island brewpub, one of the co-hosts, came with growlers of beer (the brewers weren’t bottling yet). “And then representing bourbon,” Goose Island’s Greg Hall recalls, “was Booker Noe himself, the master distiller from Jim Beam.” Noe was Jim Beam’s grandson and a legend in the business. According to accounts from both Hall and Seth Gross, another Goose Island brewer who was in attendance, Noe was incredibly engaging and charming. Gross (now with Bull City Burger and Brewery in Durham, North Carolina) remembers one story in particular, when, after emptying a barrel, “they would fill it with a couple gallons of spring water and roll it around in the yard, drain that, and put it in a tall iced-tea glass with a bunch of ice. They drank it like iced tea at the end of the day.” By the end of evening, the first seed of the idea of aging a beer in one of Noe’s barrels had been planted.

By the time Alworth wrote his piece for the January 2016 issue of All About Beer Magazine, Goose Island was already promoting itself as the first brewery to produce a bourbon-barrel aged stout, while admittedly fudging the dates a bit.  

There’s one more wrinkle to the story of this seminal beer. Goose Island dates the original batch to 1992, but Hall admits that was always a guesstimate; the original brewing log has been lost. Hall arrived at 1992 by triangulating between a few events. “It wasn’t ’91 and it wasn’t ’95, so it had to be ’92, ’93 or ’94.” Seth Gross can improve on this window, though. He was at that original beer dinner, but “I started at the end of 1993, maybe ’94.” That means it was almost certainly 1994, not ’92. Regardless of the year, one thing no one disputes is how influential this beer was. Even adjusting the date to 1994, it was the original bourbon-barrel-aged beer and set the course for all those that would come later.

A few months later, then-Chicago Tribune reporter Josh Noel dug deeper into the subject in a series of pieces for the newspaper and eventually in his excellent book, Barrel Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, and How Craft Beer Became Big Business, released in 2018. In his Tribune story, Bourbon County Stout is a legend, but probably not as old as we think, Noel noted that Goose Island publicly claimed a 1992 first release at the Clybourn Avenue brewpub, and early bottles carried the phrase “Since 1992.” 

But by late 2016, after extended reporting, Noel reached the same conclusion as Alworth: the 1992 invention date had to be wrong. “But on the eve of this year’s release, I’ve concluded that there’s almost no chance that Bourbon County Stout came into this world in 1992,” he wrote. “Dozens of interviews and hours of research point to the first keg of Bourbon County Stout being tapped in 1995.”

Noel backed this up with details. He interviewed the owner of the LaSalle Grill, who confirmed the beer and bourbon dinner took place on October 5, 1994. A beer aged in Noe’s barrels would not have been ready until 1995. Noel also interviewed Hall’s assistant brewer, Percy Young, who said he was “100 percent sure” that BCS was first tapped at the brewpub in late 1995. “As he recalled, the barrels arrived late that summer during an intense heat wave, and were filled with a Russian imperial stout that he and Greg made.”

When asked why the brewery continues to repeat the 1992 claim, Goose Island has always pointed to Hall’s memory. Hall, however, has never expressed confidence. He told Alworth that 1992 was a “guesstimate” and said the same to Noel. In Noel’s story, Hall explained:

“My best estimate whenever I’m asked of when Bourbon County Stout started is 1992, so that’s what the brewery has based the Bourbon County Stout origin date on for years,” Hall said in the statement. “That’s based on our average of 200 brews a year beginning in 1988 at the Clybourn Brewpub, and we brewed the first batch of Bourbon County Stout to celebrate our 1,000th brew.”

Drinking Six Boozy Stouts With Strangers

Todd Ahsmann has witnessed most of Goose Island’s evolution in his nearly 40 years with the company. He started as a bartender at Goose’s Clybourn Avenue brewpub and worked his way to become president of the brewery in late 2017. A childhood friend of Greg Hall, Ahsmann now plays a central role in telling the modern Bourbon County story.

Black Friday approaches, the annual release day for the Bourbon County lineup. In years past, beer lovers would line up in the early morning hours not to fight over discounted televisions but to celebrate Chicago’s pre-eminent barrel aged stouts. In support of the upcoming release, the company, which was purchased by Anheuser-Busch InBev in 2011, reaches out to writers, podcasters, influencers, and other content creators to help promote the anticipated beers. In the past two years, I’ve been invited to the media tasting, a guided tasting conducted over Zoom by Goose Island’s team, which takes place several weeks before the official November 28 release date. A few days before the meetup, a heavy box arrives at my office. Inside is a slick, glossy black box, substantial in weight, with Goose Island Bourbon County emblazoned in big gold lettering. The box opens like the scissor doors of a jet black Lamborghini, revealing a trove of Bourbon County treats. The loot includes a Glencairn glass and a rocks glass all etched in gold lettering with the Goose Island brand logos. The individual beers, including Proprietor’s Stout, Double Barrel Heaven Hill Bottled-in-Bond Stout, and the Parker’s Heritage Reserve Stout all come in fancy, colorful packaging that ups the pageantry surrounding the brand and its release. Underneath are several additional Bourbon County beers, including the Original Stout, Cherries Jubilee Stout, and Chocolate Praline Stout.

As the Zoom tasting begins, writers and influencers sit at attention, ready to dig into the selection of Bourbon County beers, guided by several members of Goose Island’s team, including Ahsmann, Senior Brand Manager John Zadlo, Senior Manager of Innovation Michael Siegel, and others. As he introduces the brand, Ahsmann begins to tell the history of Bourbon County and one of the first things out of his mouth is a definitive and emphatic statement that the beer was first released in 1992. He says he remembers pouring it at Goose Island’s brewpub. It’s clear that Ahsmann understands the import of this declaration. It’s unclear whether anyone of the call, which includes dozens of local influencers and other content creators outside the beer space, knows the back story.

The tasting runs for more than an hour. Attendees praise the beers and keep saying as much. Goose Island’s team is clearly passionate about this release they prepare so hard for all year long. They believe barrels are ingredients. They work with brokers who source their barrels, often from Four Roses or Heaven Hill, and want a minimum of four years age on the barrels.

“We want these beers to have a flavor profile that is very robust over many years,” Siegel says. “We want them to last for ten years.” 

Goose Island has produced more than 70 different expressions of BCS, including coffee, vanilla, and cherry versions, among many others. 

“We like the word adjunct, it’s a good thing,” Ahsmann says with a laugh.

The Original that I sip on during the event goes down easy, with balanced notes of chocolate, vanilla, barrel character, and booze. It has always been a great beer and continues to be my favorite. 

“They should express simply, we’re not looking to challenge with flavor profiles,” says Siegel. The brewers want to connect with drinkers and trigger their flavor associations, he says. “We’re taking the familiar and bringing in new elements.”

So Why Maintain The Lie?

As the formal tasting winds down, influencers now buzzing with alcohol and sugar start to drop off the Zoom call, leaving only a handful of folks. The Goose Island team to their credit is not rushing anyone, they’re available to answer any and every question. After a few minutes, I ask Goose Island’s president about the 1992 date controversy.

Ahsmann straightens slightly and pauses before answering. “It’s based on memory,” he admits. Ahsmann points to the “ridiculous memory” that former brewer Greg Hall has, but even he admits the 1992 date was a guess, a departure from the definitiveness of his earlier remarks. I thank Ahsmann for his willingness to engage on the subject but don’t want to monopolize time on such a pedantic issue. 

I still had questions about the timeline and whether the brewery had any surviving documents such as brewing logs to support the 1992 claim. During the Zoom call, Ahsmann had noted with enthusiasm that Goose had located the brewing logs for its first batch of Honker’s Ale, long the brewery’s flagship brand. 

A few days later, I emailed Ahsmann with follow up questions, including one about the brewing logs. He replied, repeating the brewery’s rationale.

“[L]ike I shared on our tasting last week, we have always maintained that it was created in 1992,” he wrote in an email. “This makes sense for our production schedule as Greg was producing about 200 batches per year, so as we were founded in 1988, he would have brewed the 1000th batch in 1992, which was Bourbon County Stout. Three years later in 1995 is when we submitted it to GABF for the first time, which was when it was infamously disqualified as there was no barrel-aged category at that time, so was given an honorable mention. Hope this helps to clarify your question.”

The 200 batches mathematics was consistent with what Greg Hall told Noel in a statement back in 2016 but that still struck me as off. In a follow-up email to Ahsmann, I noted an issue. Goose Island’s first brewmaster was Victor Ecimovic, who held the job from when the brewery opened in 1988 until Greg took over in 1991. The Clybourn Pub famously still served Miller Lite for years after it opened and so 200 batches a year from the start seems like it would’ve been a lot. The fuzzy math seemed a shaky foundation on which to build the First Bourbon Barrel Aged Beer title claim. 

Noting that Ahsmann’s response didn’t address the brewing logs question, I raised it again.

Ahsmann again graciously responded, acknowledging the uncertainty. “I just have to trust John and Greg’s memory on this one,” he wrote. “Everything was handwritten in a notebook back then and very little remains in our possession. I know we lost a lot when the pub was rehabbed a while ago but even before that we didn’t have the records from that time…I know that doesn’t give you any concrete evidence, we’ll just have to live with the legend at this point.

Not The First, But The Most Famous

Goose Island did not brew the first bourbon barrel aged beer. That fact appears well established, especially since Boston Beer Company’s whiskey-barrel aged Triple Bock (first released in 1994) served as its inspiration, according to Greg Hall. 

So who cares? Besides Goose Island, probably almost no one. “[I]t’s just trivia,” Noel concluded in the Tribune. Alworth reached a similar view, writing that Bourbon County Stout is a classic whose legacy is the now great American tradition of barrel aging beers. 

And I agree, it’s a seemingly pointless and unnecessary fib. Bourbon County Stout is a giant that shaped American and global craft beer. It is enjoyed worldwide and remains a much anticipated holiday treat for thousands of beer lovers. Even if its peak scarcity and cultural weight have faded since the early days of the line culture, it is still, as Goose Island describes it, a pioneering imperial stout that helped define an entire style of beer.

As Alworth concluded in a recent review of the brand’s historical tangles, “[i]n the thirty years that followed Goose Island’s first batch, their corporate spin and myth-making machine has interceded in an effort to enhance the legend of Bourbon County, somewhat to its detriment. It’s a shame because the legacy of the beer is actually bigger in some ways than Goose Island takes credit for—even while one of its key claims is hogwash.”

Goose Island has to retire the 1992 fiction. This pioneering brand deserves to stand on its own merits and does not need a false marketing halo draped in questionable historical claims.

All About Beer receives support from underwriters who understand and appreciate the importance of independent journalism in the beer space. Please subscribe now and keep the content flowing and fresh.