Blend:
70% American Imperial Stout aged 24 months in Bourbon Barrels
20% American Imperial Stout aged 24 months in Rye Whiskey Barrels
10% American Imperial Stout aged 24 months in Oregon Whiskey Barrels

Our final barrel-aged release for 2023 is Doug!

Doug is an unusual beer for us in two different ways. First, we rarely use non-traditional adjuncts in these barrel-aged stout blends. Generally speaking, we find the diversity of flavors and aromas that wood, base beer, time, and blending to be so great and wide-ranging that we don't find adding "extra" ingredients—even delicious ones—to be necessary or even beneficial. But in tasting the barrels that we blended for this project, we thought there was a really lovely floral, vanilla-like note that would sing from being turned up. We turned to some very honey-like and floral vanilla from the Cook Islands.
Doug is also unusual in that it is all blended from a single batch of American Imperial Stout. Most of the blends in our barrel-aged stout program consist of beer from 3 or 4 different batches. This was the first time that we finished a blending session feeling that the cohort of barrels from the "centerpiece" beer didn't benefit from additions of other beers. We had used casks from this batch previously, blending a good portion into Sweet Creature of Bombast in 2022 and Finders Keepers earlier in 2023, when the batch was closer to 11 and 15 months old. But now, after 24 months, this base batch stands beautifully on its own: classic Bourbon, light-but-persistent florality, big residual roast, and medium-high char are in great balance.

Enjoy this final barrel-aged expression from us for the year. It brings all of the depth and range that we seek to bring into our blends with some uncommon twists along the way.