We’re leaning heavily into bourbon flavors with our latest barrel-aged blend. This might seem sort of silly to mention, since bourbon notes abound in our stouts. Fair enough; however, when we sat down to select casks for Carl Con Carne, we really focused on preserving the bourbon’s expression in the blend. That’s not to say that the underlying base beer artifacts, wood influence, and oxidation aren’t present. They are. We just went out of our way to let the bourbon shine in this beer. And why? Well, the bourbon in question is Willett Pot Still Reserve, and 70% of the beer in this blend came from Willett casks.

Those casks all had strong notes of caramel, birthday cake frosting, cereal grains, sweet citrus, Red Hots, and brown sugar. It’s a classic, high-tone whiskey profile with a richness that we don’t always get from the spirit itself. We found a cohort of 9 beers aged in Willett casks all aged between 7 and 16 months that made for a great centerpiece in this blend. To round out the beer, we brought in 4 casks of long-aged beer– all barrels that had sat in cellar between 2 and 5 years. These included several casks of aged barleywine that helped amplify the caramel, milk chocolate, and toffee notes of the beer, and we pulled from both ex-wine and -brandy casks to add a dimension of overripe fruit that complemented the bourbon aromas.

Carl Con Carne is a rich beer that marries the foundational compositional elements that have made our barrel-aged stouts so well beloved with a focus on this unique whiskey profile. Cheers!