Every month, we’re tasting a huge amount of beer, whiskey and other beverages. In some cases, we’re taste-testing the industry’s best new products, and in others, we’re coming across hidden gems in the wild. Our favorites from the last four weeks are gathered here, in the best things we drank this month.
To learn more about our testing methodology and how we evaluate products, head here.
Goose Island Bourbon County Stout 2023
John ZientekGoose Island’s annual release of its Bourbon County Stout offerings is something to get excited about. The brand bottled the first bourbon barrel-aged imperial stout in 1992 and has refined and explored the category in each passing decade. The 2023 release — available on Black Friday — is the most exciting to date. I had the chance to sip through the six offerings earlier this month and was impressed by the nuance and range offered.
This year’s Original Stout set the stage: After spending 14 – 16 months in bourbon barrels, it was bottled between 14.1 and 14.6% ABV and had notes of cherry, blackberry, almond and chocolate. From there, I tried the Eagle Rare 2-Year Reserve Stout — a complex bottling with notes of cocoa, coconut, caramel, fig, cherry and salt. The time spent in Eagle Rare’s 10-year barrels made a sizable shift in the final product. But the most interesting offering was the Angel’s Envy 2-Year Cask Finish Stout. This 15.5% ABV sipper was aged for a year in Angel’s Envy casks, then 60 percent of it was aged for another year in ruby port casks from Portugal. This gave the resulting beer a tannic structure with big dried fruit notes accompanied by baking spices and cocoa.
For those looking to explore the sweeter end of the spectrum, there’s the Backyard Stout, which is blended with mulberries, boysenberries and marionberries; the Banana’s Foster Stout, which is infused with bananas, almond and cassia bark; and the Proprietor’s Stout, an homage to rice pudding with cassia bark, brown sugar, raisins and toasted rice. — John Zientek, Managing Editor
Glenmorangie A Tale of Tokyo
Johnny BraysonPerhaps the hottest trend in whisky/ey over the past couple of years is Mizunara oak aging, which requires distilleries to acquire very rare and expensive Mizunara oak casks from Japan. The oak has some unique properties, namely the distinct aromas and flavors it imparts into whiskey and its heightened porousness that creates a more flavorful dram. The latest big name to hop aboard the Mizunara train is Highland Scotch distillery Glenmorangie, with its A Tale of Tokyo bottle.
This limited-edition single malt is the brainchild of Dr. Bill Lumsden, Glenmorangie’s head of whisky creation, who created it out of a twin desire to experiment with Mizunara and pay tribute to the city of Tokyo after many pleasant visits. The whisky matured partly in Mizunara oak casks, along with bourbon and sherry casks, resulting in a complex and very tasty Scotch. At first it tastes like your classic Glenmorangie 10, as it’s light, bright and citrusy, but then there’s this mysterious element from the Mizunara that clearly makes itself known, bringing in some incense and soft wood notes and almost tasting how oud wood smells (if that makes sense). It’s a rich and luxurious Scotch that, at $110 SRP, tastes a lot more expensive than it is … especially when you consider that its box and bottle are literal works of art custom designed by Japanese artist Yamaguchi Akira. — Johnny Brayson, Associate Editor
