CHICAGO — The state of barrel-aged stout in Chicago is strong. That much is obvious, as brewers increasingly push their ink-black wares past the strength of wine toward bracing, boozier quaffs.
But in the three decades since Goose Island Beer Co. pioneered a style that attracts lines of beer enthusiasts for bottle releases, this burly beverage can still surprise. Take upstart Pilsen brewery Monochrome winning gold at last month’s Festival of Wood and Barrel-Aged Beer. Or Revolution Brewing’s veteran barrel master exploring new methods to test the possibilities of how much flavor can be wrung from the barrels stacked high in his towering Avondale brewery.
Devotees of Goose Island’s Bourbon County Brand Stout still packed the brewery’s Fulton Street Taproom and Salt Shed brewpub for this year’s November release parties while beer fans sought out Black Friday drops in Chicago and around the country.
Those beers now share shelf space and appear on taproom menus alongside an expanse of releases from Chicago brewers who continue to architect the dimensions of this still-nascent style.
“We talk a lot about it, but it’s only 30 years old, isn’t it?” said Marty Scott, barrel manager for Revolution Brewing, 3340 N. Kedzie Ave. “So who’s really figured it out? Who’s made the best example of it? I might argue that it doesn’t f—king matter who’s made the best example of it to date, because it’s only been 30 years. What have we really learned?”
Revolution’s Deth’s Tar — a rich, 14.8-percent ABV imperial oatmeal stout aged in oak barrels that previously held bourbon — had its yearly release in September and is fresh off a bronze medal at this year’s World Beer Cup. Old Irving Brewing, 4419 W. Montrose Ave., just dropped its wintertime answer to the question of what the depraved Krampus would receive in lieu of milk and cookies. And Bowmanville’s Half Acre Beer Co., 2050 W. Balmoral Ave., continues to explore the depths of how much coconut and coffee can be packed into its mighty Benthic series.
Taken together, it’s as good a time as any for Block Club Chicago to survey the landscape of barrel-aged stout as the shorter days and colder temperatures necessitate a turn to the dark side.
Future batches of Half Acre Beer Co.’s annual Benthic stout rest in barrels inside the Bowmanville brewery, 2050 W. Balmoral Ave., on Dec. 4, 2025. The barrels pictured here have been aging the stout for more two years. Credit: Stephen Montemayor/Block Club Chicago
Picking Barrels That Still Have A Story To Tell
The finest barrel-aged stouts are the sum of time-consuming, backbreaking parts.
At Revolution, Scott engages in a year-round quest to nail the balance between oak, alcohol and sugar intensity when deciding the right blend of barrels for releases such as the brewery’s venerable Deth’s Tar.
Scott targets barrels that contained bourbon for at most four years, the earliest many brands will dump their stock into bottles. But even by then, Scott said, 90 percent of the barrel’s qualities have been given over to the spirit.
“It is probably the biggest misconception in brewing, especially within talking about barrel-aged beers, is that an old barrel that has seen some s—t is somehow better than your basic four-year-old brick s—thouse bourbon barrel that still has something compelling to share with whatever it ages,” said Scott, whose program now produces almost 20 new can releases throughout the year, with additional draft-only variants peeking out at the taproom.
To recapture the character that his oak barrels sacrificed, Scott adds oak rods, called “bung inserts,” to the barrels, putting fresher wood in contact with the beer inside. The inserts are sometimes toasted to infuse oak-derived notes of coconut, fresh vanilla and crême brulée.
“All of a sudden, we can get really specific and we can tinker and turn the age of that barrel back to square one,” he said. “We can put more oak in that barrel than that barrel’s ever seen before.”
Those additions delivered this year’s Vanilla Deth (13.5 percent ABV) variant’s dominant impressions. Scott said Revolution later added hand-split vanilla beans as more of a “top note” or “garnish” to the stout’s already velvety embrace.
Revolution also released a Cocoa-Vanilla Deth in 19.2-ounce cans in addition to its stalwart Cafe Deth, which takes the original Deth’s Tar and steeps it in a batch of Dark Matter coffee beans settled on after a two-day trial of stout and coffee tastings by the respective staffs at Revolution and Dark Matter.
Six beers make up Goose Island’s annual Bourbon County Brand Stout release, including a Chicago-exclusive baklava-inspired stout. Credit: Provided
A Goose Still Worth The Chase
Goose Island brewmaster Daryl Hoedtke, in a news release, billed this year’s Bourbon County lineup as highlighting the components that can emerge through the Original Stout’s aging process.
Hoedtke suggested that each bottle this year underlines signatures of the Original Stout, whose 14.8-percent 2025 version is a melody of beer aged in freshly emptied barrels from Buffalo Trace, Heaven Hill, Four Roses and Wild Turkey.
Regarded as the industry’s first bourbon barrel-aged stout, Bourbon County Brand Original Stout is available in four-packs of 10-ounce bottles for the first time in its history, whereas the rest of this year’s offerings come in the standard 16.9-ounce bottle. One would do well to start here if sharing multiple variants with friends or contemplating a sample flight.
This year’s Chicago-exclusive Proprietors release (13.9 percent ABV) uses walnuts, pistachios, cassia bark and honey for a baklava-inspired stout that, through mad alchemy, imparts the feeling of sticking one’s face into a Middle Eastern bakery cabinet.
Two more releases also seek to prey upon sweet teeth: Cherries Jubilee Stout (14.5 percent ABV) takes a bourbon barrel-aged base stout and finishes it with a rest in cognac barrels dosed with Montmorency cherries, citrus and panela. Chocolate Praline Stout (14.6 percent ABV) yields a richer, chewier take on the original by adding cocoa nibs, hazelnuts, almonds, cashews and dates.
Scenes from Goose Island’s 2025 Bourbon County release day. Credit: Instagram/Goose Island
This year’s premium variants, about $39.99 per bottle, are again encased in packaging befitting a top-shelf bourbon.
The Double Barrel Stout (17.4 percent ABV) is twice-aged in seven-year Heaven Hill bottled-in-bond bourbon barrels and fast presents alcohol heat on the nose before an encroachment of tobacco, leather and faint smoke. While sipping, first impressions of bitter dark chocolate evolve into vanilla and spirit upon warming.
This year’s Reserve, aged in Parker’s Heritage Collection Rye Whiskey barrels (15.2 percent ABV), provides a luxurious sipping experience tempered by the barrel’s rye spice. This one is mint chocolate chip meets char and is as drinkable as it is substantial.
Finding Art In The Decadent And Indulgent
When Trevor Rose-Hamblin, head brewer and co-founder of Old Irving Brewing, prepared for the first run of his Barrel-Aged Krampus Cookies stout, he laughed when a co-worker asked where he planned to stage the line for customers on release day.
But “there’s been a line every year as Krampus has gotten bigger and badder,” Rose-Hamblin said.
While barrel masters like Scott apply fresh and time-worn efforts to win memorable expressions mostly from wood alone, breweries like Old Irving and Bowmanville’s Half Acre add a distinct culinary flair to their big releases.
Old Irving released five variants of its Barrel-Aged Krampus Cookies this year, including the original, a 15-percent ABV blend of stouts aged in Buffalo Trace and 13-year Willett bourbon barrels dosed with a house-blended vanilla puree and Ghanian cocoa nibs. An additional variant doubles the vanilla and cocoa, and another release folds in coconut and pecan to deliver a German chocolate cake experience.
Champurrado Coffee Krampus won bronze in the specialty strong porter and stout category at FoBAB, the second year in a row that the Mexican-inspired stout medaled at the industry’s foremost competition devoted to barrel-aged beer. This year’s version adds Hexe coffee to a recipe that also includes Saigon cinnamon and chilies sourced from nearby Mexican markets.
Finally, the Melange variant leaves the bakery aisle ingredients shelved in lieu of a blend of barrel-aged imperial stout, rye barrel-aged ryewine and bourbon barrel-aged barleywine that revisited collaborations with Moor’s Brewing and Goose Island, respectively.
Krampus Cookies has grown heftier through its relatively short life, with an increasingly thicker body designed to pull out more barrel character — a far cry from its origins as a 7-percent ABV sweet stout.
“It’s Krampus — I want it to be big and in your face,” Rose-Hamblin said. “If we’re going to charge a premium for these things, they should definitely pack a punch.”
For about a decade, Half Acre has pursued similarly excessive arts with its signature stout release. Its Benthic barrel-aged stout is saturated with coffee and house-toasted coconut. This November’s drop was its most indulgent: six massive stouts tucked into a 12-pack of cans decked out in ornate, deep sea imagery evoking the beer’s near-impenetrable nature. Each variant was still on tap at the brewery as of Friday, and about four of its 12-packs were spotted in the gift shop’s cooler at $199 apiece.
“It’s the biggest thing we pull off as a brewery and what we’re always working on,” said Gabriel Magliaro, co-founder of Half Acre.
This year’s Benthics span from the original’s 13.9-percent ABV to a 17.8-percent triple barrel-aged concoction, a first for the series. The latter comes from three rounds of slumbers in barrels including Elijah Craig, Four Roses, Willet, Buffalo Trace, Sazerac Rye and Russell’s Reserve.
“These are not everyday beers that come from everyday processes,” Magliaro said. “These results are dramatic and are really something special.”
The 2 X 4 Benthic is the same alcohol strength as the original but ups the coffee by a factor of two and the toasted coconut by four, which leaps out of the glass on the nose. Immortal Benthic (14.1-percent ABV) is a blend of stouts aged between 10-35 months and resting in 19-year-old Old Fitzgerald, 8-year Wild Turkey, 10-year Russell Reserve and apple brandy barrels. The extended aging dials in the body of an originally uncompromising base into what the brewery describes as a “distiller’s showcase of woody, bourbon, apple snifter surprise.”
“When you’re thinking barrel-aged stout in the year 2025, almost 2026, you have to exist either by using the main core ingredients, core raw materials and being so absolutely good at that,” Magliaro said. “Or you have to go so far out to accomplish these wild flavors in order to get people really thinking and really talking by constantly trying to push these boundaries.”
Half Acre pressed that boundary further with Marabi Benthic (16.8-percent ABV), rested on toasted coconut and Marquesas Islands vanilla and aged in Jamaican rum barrels and Amburana barrels, a Brazilian wood that Scott has recently been using at Revolution — including for a forthcoming January release of Deth’s Tar. Marabi drinks like a monstrous, rum-heavy tiki drink with cherry, lime, coconut and almond muscling their way forward.
Luis Flores (left) and Enrique Rivera (right) in front of a window that reads “Venados.” The window is an ode to Venados Run Club, a group of neighbors who meet at Monochrome Brewing every Wednesday to run together. Credit: Jacqueline Cardenas/Block Club Chicago
A New Chapter
Some of the city’s newest brewers, like Luis Flores at Monochrome Brewing, 2101 S. Carpenter St. in Pilsen, acknowledge the unescapable influence of a heavyweight like Goose Island. But they also recognize the advantage of being in Chicago.
“You got the cold, you got the humidity, you got dry weather,” Flores said. “We get a little bit of everything, and that’s really important for barrel aging, because the temperature fluctuations allows the beer to soak into the barrels.”
Monochrome, in its short existence, has tried to meld expressive beer styles with an artist’s touch in one of the city’s biggest Mexican-American neighborhoods. Its YR:1NE (15-percent ABV) stout celebrates the brewery’s one-year anniversary since taking over the former Lo Rez Brewery and Taproom at 2101 S. Carpenter St. last year.
There’s about a keg or two left before the brewery plans a limited bottle release of its Eigengrau 14.5-percent imperial stout aged in Four Roses, Willett Family Estate and vanilla bourbon barrels, Flores said. Flores made the beer in collaboration with his brother, Eric Flores, who runs Neuronova Brewing and previously worked in Goose Island’s barrelhouse.
Luis Flores’ brewing journey started with a homebrewing kit in 2016 and included professional stints at Arclight Brewing Company in Watervliet, Michigan, and Brothership Brewing in Mokena, Illinois. Last year, he took the leap to run his own brewhouse.
A plaque draped in a medal is now displayed prominently behind the young brewery’s bar, recognizing Eigengrau’s recent gold medal victory at last month’s prestigious FoBAB event.
“It was something that I’ve been trying to chase for f—king years,” said Luis Flores. “This is great. We needed this.”
Barrel-Aged Stouts In Chicago Right Now
- Begyle Brewing, 1800 W. Cuyler Ave.: Has a draft line dedicated to barrel-aged stouts through February or March. Snooze Button, a 13.7-percent ABV stout aged in 19-year-old Elijah Craig barrels is on now.
- Cruz Blanca, 904 W. Randolph St.: Double Barrel Rey Gordo (14 percent ABV) on tap, about 11 vintages and other specialty stouts in bottles and cans available to go or on site.
- Goose Island, 1800 W. Fulton St.: Bourbon County Brand Stout and variants (13.9-17.2 percent ABV). On tap and in bottles to go at the brewery and at bottle shops citywide.
- Half Acre Beer Co., 2050 W. Balmoral Ave.: Benthic and variants (13.9-17.8 percent) available on tap and a very limited amount of remaining 12-packs to go.
- Haymarket Brewery, 737 W. Randolph St.: Indignant Stout with raspberry or espresso and chai tea, both 12 percent ABV and on tap.
- Monochrome Brewing, 2101 S. Carpenter St.: YR:1NE, a 15-percent ABV anniversary barrel-aged stout on tap. Eigengrau, this year’s FoBAB gold medal winner, in bottles later this month.
- Off Color Brewing, 1460 N. Kingsbury St: 2019 Barrel-Aged Dino S’mores (10.5 percent ABV) and Port Barrel-Aged Dino S’Mores (11 percent ABV), both available on site in bottles and the port barrel-aged version is available to go.
- Old Irving Brewing, 4419 W. Montrose Ave.: Barrel-Aged Krampus Cookies and variants (all 15 percent ABV), available on tap and in cans to go.
- Revolution Brewing, 3340 N. Kedzie Ave.: Deth’s Tar in cans on site and to go, as well as variants: Cafe Deth, Deth By Bramble, Vanilla Deth and Cocoa Vanilla Deth (13-14.8 percent ABV).
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