[Top Hops NYC – Michael N. Todaro/Getty Images for Goose Island]
(Chicago, IL) – Goose Island Beer Co. held its annual Black Friday beer release event, once again featuring Bourbon County Brand Stout and its variants.
The company expanded the official event to three new cities this year in addition to Chicago: Top Hops in New York City, Whole Foods HQ in Austin and City Beer Store in San Francisco. At the official event at Binny’s in Chicago, approximately 600 people showed up before 9am. All four releases included: BCBS original (4-packs), BCBS Coffee (4-packs), BCBS Barleywine (4-packs) and BCBS Backyard Rye (22 oz.). Chicago exclusively included BCBS Proprietor’s (22 oz.).
Unofficial releases were held nationally where beer drinkers still lined up by the dozens. In some markets, the beer is still yet to be released.
Goose Island Spokesperson, Ana Serafin, told BeerPulse that “most major markets would receive all of our BCBS beers.” Some states including Georgia, Ohio and Utah have strict ABV laws that prevent the beers’ release in those markets.
CNBC reported earlier in the week that the company had secured 2,500 bourbon barrels to put together this year’s batch of beer, “probably about twice as much” as the prior year.
Had it today on draft. Outstanding
This story is not completely truthful because in Austin at Whole Foods, they had a very limited selection of last years Cherry and Coffee and the regular BCBS. The flavors were not released in Texas because they didn’t get label approval, so we didn’t get any at the current time being. The people that were lucky enough to get last years coffee and cherry were a very limited amount and were limited to 1 four pack of regular and 1 flavored 22 oz. bomber per person. I missed out because they ran out of flavors three people ahead of me.
Sorry, was going by what Goose Island told me prior to the event. Their spokesperson was probably unaware that a couple beers weren’t going to be approved in time in Texas. Just to confirm, you are saying they had to sell “last years Cherry and Coffee” because Backyard Rye BCBS and Barleywine weren’t approved in time, right?
This barrel aged beer was paid for by Bud Light, Please Enjoy Responsibly.