Oh I keed. Mostly.
I did get up at that crazy hour after hitting the sack at an early hour under the influence of multiple sleep aids. And I did line up outside of a store. In this case, it was at a Chicago chain grocery store that would be selling all eight 2018 versions of Goose Island's Bourbon County Stout at 7am. Plus, the first 48 people in line were also promised a piece of branded glassware and a very handome hard cover book entitled Grit & Grain about said beer.
I rolled up at the store at 3am, plunked my camp chair down near a buddy's propane heater and began to while the hours away. I was tenth in line so I felt confident that I'd get a bottle of each. (There are a dozen bottles to a case, though stores have been known to sell less than a full case to the general public by putting aside bottles for employees and/or top customers who have good relationships with the beer department [which often means spending a ridiculous amount of money each month on booze].)
The time passed surprisingly quickly. Lotsa jokes cracked along with the occasional rumination about just what we've become thanks to beer. We ditched our chairs when we were allowed entrance into the store when it opened at 6 but reminded that sales would begin at 7 so we huddled up in the frozen food aisle, appropriately enough. We received our free glass and book while waiting. It turned out that among the handful of people ahead of my group in line were someone I'd been in line near at Half Acre and Revolution the previous Friday (those five-and-a-half hours in line were like dress rehearsal for Black Friday) and the brother of another beer bud. (Said bud struck gold at the store he went to, which literally had dozens of cases of most of the Bourbon County variants and ultimately sold them by the case just to get them out of there.)
Anyway, the buys were made and off we went to a liquor store that was opening at 9am. I laughed as we each got into our own car, like the way the boys went out on the town in the film Swingers.
As an example of how word gets out about places, in 2017 I arrived at this particular liquor store after going to a 7am grocery store and ended up being among the top 10 in line. (Amusing moment from last year: when I arrived at this store someone ahead of me told me he was holding spots for two guys who had gone out for food. I was cool about that; beer line etiquette permits the occasional biological break. However, when these two guys arrived and handed the guy ahead of me a bottle of Bourbon County Stout I decreed that you don't get to have a spot held in a beer line so you can go buy beer elsewhere and the crowd concurred with me.) This year, though, we were around 40th. We knew we'd miss out on Prop (the store had mentioned on social media that only 19 bottles would be available) and the "vintage" bottles but felt good about our chance of getting everything else. Things went smoothly enough and my crew was done there around 930, though my right leg felt dead by the time I limped back to my car to head out for breakfast.
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| Am I in this line? I AM IN THIS LINE! |
And so we went from buyers to drinkers with our arrival at an area Tex-Mex/BBQ place that had several Bourbon County variants on draft. I enjoyed an 11-ounce pour of both the Vanilla and Midnight Orange versions, cuveeing the final few ounces of each to make a creamsicle. (Between these two versions of the beer and the super-chocolate-heavy Prop variant people have been mixing these brews in all sorts of ways.) I also bought a pour of the regular and drank about half of it in order to get a "free" Bourbon County glass that was different from the one the grocery store gave out and had a sip of a bud's Coffee Barleywine. All of this went well with the breakfast grilled cheese, which featured a fried egg and bacon.
And on that note I headed home around 11am and took a nap with a belly full of booze and a pair of dogs. I needed the rest, as I was due in the city by 5pm at the Goose Island Clybourn Brewhouse for a tasting of all eight 2018 Bourbon County brews. My beer bestie and I made it there by 4, when they were tapping Prop so we had to have a pour each of that and split a pour of Reserve with some cheese curds.
The scheduled tasting was decidedly enjoyable. I'd done it once before, in 2015 (the year most of the beer was recalled due to an infection issue), and this was theoretically a better value as we received 8 pours in addition to four small accompanying food items (two savory, two sweet). Tasting them all at the same time and at close to room temperature let the flavors in each of the beers pop. Goose Island brewers talked us through each beer, which was nice, and took questions from we attendees.
As a bonus, someone who was supposed to be seated two chairs from me didn't make it so we bogarted those pours. The sole negative was that even though the sessions were spaced two hours apart we only got one hour in the room, making for a somewhat rushed experience. And a nice bonus was that all attendees received a Speilgau branded BCBS 2018 glass and a bottle of Prop, accounting for nearly half of the ticket price. (People like to complain about the price of this event. I appreciate the opportunity to sample them all in a chill atmosphere.)
FWIW, my personal rankings of the 2018 BCBS offerings is as follows:
- Vanilla
- Proprietor's Reserve
- Knob Creek Reserve
- Midnight Orange
- Regular
- Coffee Barleywine
- Wheatwine
- Bramble Rye
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| This is my "Yuck, Bramble!" face. |
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| My 2018 Bourbon County "kill shot," pending additional trades for Prop and Vanilla |
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