(Lakewood, CO) – A year-long collaborative effort in the Rockies concludes with a new release.
From the Mile High Wine and Spirits blog:
Last November, Chris, the owner of Mile High Wine and Spirits, rescued our current shop dog, a Weimaraner named Zeke. About the same time that he came into our lives, we got the idea to brew a beer exclusively for Mile High. Now we are celebrating the one year anniversary of Zeke’s adoption with the release of a special beer one year in the making: Zeke’s Belly Up Imperial Stout.
We sell a lot of Bourbon at Mile High and our best seller is Buffalo Trace Bourbon. We sell enough of it that we no longer buy regular bottles like most stores do. Instead, the Buffalo Trace distillery sends us samples from 5 different barrels. We pick the barrel that we like the best, they set it aside for us, bottle the contents, then send all of the bottles exclusively to us. Most Bourbon is blended, several barrels are mixed together to form a consistent product, but not ours, it is a one of a kind, unblended, single barrel Bourbon. But we don’t just get the bottles, they also send us the barrel it was aged in. And that is where our story begins.
We received our first single barrel batch of Buffalo Trace and our first Bourbon barrel last November. As they brought the barrel into the store, Steve, our Wine Buyer, said I should get a brewery to fill it with beer. Genius! Our friend Jeff Griffith, the Brewmaster at Golden City Brewery, quickly agreed to fill it with his Imperial Stout. Unfortunately, Jeff only brews that beer once a year, in February, so we had to wait.
February finally rolled around and Jeff brewed a big batch of his Imperial Stout. He filled up our Bourbon barrel then sold the remaining beer on tap at the brewery. The beer sat in that barrel for 6 months, quietly penetrating deeper and deeper into the barrel, absorbing more and more of the Bourbon, gaining greater and greater complexity. I stopped by the brewery every few months to pull a sample from the barrel and see how things were going. In August, after 6 months of aging, Jeff and I decided it was time. The beer was moved from the barrel to a keg where it stayed until November when we were ready to bottle it. The wait finally over, I got to take home a bottle and give it a try.
Click over to the blog for the full tasting and cellaring notes.