Black Barn No. 49, the next installment of our brewery-exclusive pilot program, is a Belgian Inspired Stout coming in at 8.2%ABV, developed by Paul.

Here are his words on the recipe and the inspiration behind it,

"If you know me at all, then you know I like dark beer. My first recipe that made it to actual production was an American Porter. Someone gave it a terrible review on Untappd. I think that was the day I truly felt I had become a brewer. Someone was shitting on my beer on the internet.

Fast forward eight years later to Black Barn Program No. 49, my “Belgian Inspired Stout.” What’s with the inspired, you ask? Depending on who you talk to, a Belgian stout is or is not an actual beer style. My inspiration for this recipe started when I noticed Wyeast Laboratories carried a yeast strain called “Belgian Stout.” Confused yet? It’s ok, we’ll get through this one way or another. I was intrigued by this yeast, which touted low phenolic and spicy characteristics such as clove, which is common in many Belgian-style beers. I started working on a recipe featuring mostly European malt and Belgian dark candi sugar, with Czech Saaz as the sole hop variety. I wanted a high ABV stout with lots of body, but much less coffee / roasty notes than a typical American imperial stout. To do this, I had to convince myself that it was not sacrilege to omit roasted barley from the malt bill of a stout. By doing so, more notes of chocolate, cherry, and wood were able to shine through.

If you’ve read this far, thank you for humoring me as I ramble about the greatness of the wonderful world that is dark beer." - Paul

Black Barn No. 49 will be released in bottles and on draft exclusively in our Freeport tasting room on Wednesday, November 20th.