It all started innocently enough. There I was in Total Wine, browsing through the new beer arrivals as I am wont to do, when I spied a bottle of Port Brewing Older Viscosity, a barrel aged beer. Hey, I thought, I like Port Brewing! I like barrel aged beers! Then I looked closer and saw the price-and didn’t like that at all. A whopping $14.99 for a 12-ounce bottle? Were they on drugs? That’s almost $90 a six-pack!

Taking a picture with my phone, I uploaded it to that most excellent of internet beer hangouts, Honest Craft Beer Reviews. I proceeded to bemoan the price, and some agreed with me-it was outrageous. Others took the contrarian view that no, the price was not so bad when one considered how long the beer had been aged.

That got me to thinking, didn’t I have some barrel aged beers at home? Of course I did. One of them I knew was Full Sail Imperial Stout, Bourbon Barrel Aged. So, I decided to pop that just to prove a point, said point to be revealed shortly. My bottle of Full Sail Imperial Stout, Bourbon Barrel Aged is part of the 2014 Brewers Reserve series, and I bought it in March of this year. Here is what Full Sail says about the 2013 release on their website:

According to Full Sail Brewmaster Jamie Emmerson, this beer was brewed in December of 2011 and has since aged in Kentucky Bourbon casks from Maker's Mark, Four Roses, Jim Beam. This extended aging presents hints of vanilla and allows the Stout to pick up the flavors of the wood, bourbon and oak. The aging combined with the robust character of the Imperial Stout make for an extraordinary and wonderful taste experience.

On the label of my 2014 bottle:

Brewed in December of 2012, this stout was aged for 12 months in bourbon casks from Kentucky.

My bottle of the 2014 release is stamped with the number 035 and has an alcohol content listed of 9.84% by volume. No IBUs are given, but Full Sail reports the 2013 had 40 of them. Now for that point I promised you: I picked up a 22-ounce bomber bottle for just $5.99.

Full Sail Imperial Stout, Bourbon Barrel Aged Stout pours to a jet black color with a moderate head of creamy tan foam and an outright sinful nose of chocolate, raisin, and boozy bourbon. Taking a sip, it’s the bourbon that hits me first and foremost-big and boozy and oaky and only grudgingly does it allow the dark chocolate malt to come through. Raisin and prune are very evident here and light vanilla, and in the finish layers of licorice, caramel and roasted malt with boozy alcohol warmth show up. What a complex beer, and a very well done one, and all for $5.99?

As my old pal Irving Gordon used to say, what a buy, what a bargain shoppers. Some of the reasons folks gave to justify the high price of the Port Brewing beer were distribution costs, retail markups, transportation costs, and the aging of the beer. But think about it. Full Sail in Oregon is probably a little further from Atlanta than Port Brewing in California. They go through the same Georgia distribution setup. They were bought from the same store. They were both aged in bourbon barrels. Yet Full Sail can give you a wonderful, deliciously complex beer, almost twice as much in fact for a little over a third of the price?

Cheers to you, Full Sail, for another quality brew at a fair price.

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