Every Black Friday, Goose Island releases a new family of Bourbon County stouts, and the 2026 lineup runs six beers deep across seven barrel types.
It’s one of the most anticipated releases on the craft beer calendar. The Chicago brewery effectively invented the style back in 1992, and their annual lineup has been a benchmark for barrel-aged beer ever since.
This year’s theme is the barrel itself, and the six 2026 expressions are as follows: the Original Stout, the Tiramisu Cask Finish Stout, the Apple Crisp Stout, the Toasted Barrel Rye Stout, the Triple Oak Barleywine, and the Proprietor’s Stout.
A few stand out on paper. The Tiramisu Cask Finish is finished in a rum barrel, while the Apple Crisp plays up cinnamon and clove against the barrel’s toasted character. The Toasted Barrel Rye draws its flavor directly from charred, toasted rye barrels, and the Triple Oak Barleywine steps outside stout territory entirely, aging a barleywine across three different oak expressions.
The Proprietor’s Stout, historically the Chicago-favorite of the bunch, rounds out the family.
Why Goose Island gets a whole season
The lore of how Bourbon County came to be goes back to 1992: Goose Island’s then-brewmaster Greg Hall met then-master-distiller Booker Noe (grandson of Jim Beam) at a dinner. Noe passed along some used bourbon barrels, Hall aged a stout in them, and boom! The entire category of bourbon-barrel-aged beer was born.
At the time it was a novel enough development that their beer was reportedly disqualified from the Great American Beer Festival because no category for barrel-aged imperial stouts existed yet. Today it’s a cornerstone style, and Bourbon County is still the name most associated with it.
These are big, spirit-adjacent beers — often north of 14% ABV — that drink hefty, and don’t mess around. A light lager at the beach, it ain’t.
Goose Island has been owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev since 2011, a sale that definitely ruffled some feathers in the world of craft beer at the time. Fifteen years later, the Bourbon County program has helped kept its craft credential intact.
Where to Buy It
The 2026 Bourbon County Brand Stout lineup lands on Black Friday, November 27, 2026 nationwide. If you want the harder-to-find bottles in the family, plan on moving quickly that morning — these have a devoted following, and the limited expressions tend to disappear the day they drop.
