Binny's x Goose Island: A Collaborative Cuvée
Binny’s Beer Collab - Goose Island Stout Cordage Cuvée
An exceptionally crafted cuvée results in a blend that is more than a mere summation of its parts. Goose Island proved this with the release of their 35th Anniversary, Kaleidoscope, and Night Cap Cuvées. For the creation of Stout Cordage, a select group of Binny’s employees visited the Goose Island Barrel Warehouse to taste through various samples of barrel aged beer, ultimately voting on and selecting the final blend - a complex comingling of various barleywines and imperial stouts aged in a mixture of oak barrels once home to bourbon, rye, and rhum.
This collaborative cuvee ties together the time-honored English ale traditions of barleywine and imperial stout with the spirited bourbon barrel aging practices pioneered by Goose Island.
From Goose Island’s expansive cellar of barrel aged beers, various small batched blends, were sampled and tasted blind. After note taking, discussion, and voting, the final blend was built from
- 42% - Barleywine aged in bourbon whiskey barrels
- 22% - Imperial Stout aged in a mixture of American rum and Caribbean rhum barrels
- 17% - Double Barrel Aged Imperial Stout aged in a mixture of King of Kentucky, Old Forrester 1910 and Birthday Bourbon barrels
- 15% - Imperial Stout aged in rye whiskey barrels
- 4% - Barleywine aged in bourbon whiskey barrels and finished in cherry wood casks
For the name and design of this cuvée, we chose to depict a substantial rope, the type of stout cordage needed to tether a ship to its anchor. The depiction of cordage (heavy rope braided from many different strands) is not only a nod to the comingling of stout and barleywine, but also an homage to the longstanding English tradition of blending beers, including beer aged in barrels. This includes the purported “three-threads” publican mixture which some say gave birth to the Porter beer style. Porters that were “stouter” (stronger in character) became known as Stout Porter, a moniker was eventually simplified to Stout, which in turn lead to the even stronger variety known as Imperial Stout, an English export beloved by the imperial court of Catherine II of Russia.
The depiction of an anchor pays homage to the long defunct Anchor Brewery of London, the originators of the imperial stout style, as well as the more recently defunct Anchor Brewing Company of San Francisco who revived interest in the barleywine style when they introduced Anchor Old Foghorn in 1975.
A big thank you to our friends at Goose Island, the stunning depth of character showcased in Stout Cordage stands as a testament to the prowess of Goose Island’s veteran brewers and their incomparable cellar of barrel aged beers.
Pouring a dark shade of mocha with garnet-colored highlights, the nose here delivers aromas of dark cherry, bourbon soaked oak, and vanilla bean. Luxuriously soft and creamy across the tongue, it blankets the palate with the richness of chocolate ganache, accented by hints of apricot, almond, and prune. The spirited finish is complex and contemplative, beginning with a bright streak of cherry cola, followed by flavors of raisin, date and fig, that are accented by lingering hints of allspice, sassafras, and candied orange peel.
Check out Roger's chat with Goose Island's Mike Siegel at the Barrel Warehouse
