Barrel-Aged Stouts 2021– Release #1

Blend Components:
44% Traditional Russian Imperial Stout in Bourbon Barrels 22 months
35% Imperial Milk Stout in Bourbon Barrels 8 months
21% American Imperial Stout in Bourbon Barrels 5 months

Number of Casks in Blend: 9
Average Aging in Barrel: 14 months

Descriptors: rich and intense; chest warming; luscious chocolate, caramel, and Bourbon

Tagline: With Space Music, we unveil our new approach to blending barrel-aged stouts

Stout, Bourbon, oak, and age. Space Music, our first blend, is an unadulterated glimpse into our new wood cellar. No adjuncts, nothing to mask the beautiful interplay between these high gravity base stouts, the barrels, and the contours of time. Making this sort of beer is almost like passing the litmus test: if you want to make a range of great barrel-aged stouts, you have to be able to pull off the classic one. It’s like knowing how to cook a perfect French omelet, or roast a perfect chicken. You have to be able to master technique before you can bend the rules. We sought to check all of the classic boxes of wood-aging here: char, light smoke, oak-flavors of coconut and vanilla, tannin, pleasant oxidation, and, of course, Bourbon. The three base beers work in concert: the aged Russian Imperial Stout is lighter in body which allows the most wood-derived flavors and malt artifacts to come through. Lots of roast, ash, rickhouse, and char. The younger beers are bigger bodied and show less wood-derived character, so they contribute sweetness, bright chocolate, intense syrupy notes, rum raisin, and punchier alcohol notes. They enliven the older beer while also embiggening it.