96 Rating – Avery Brewing Co. – Vanilla Bean Stout

Who came up with this beer's recipe?
Three years ago our Special Projects department was playing around with a couple of beers and ended up creating a flavor combination we knew we had to bottle. For the sake of experimentation, we filled a few fresh Bourbon barrels with Czar Imperial Stout and a few more with Out of Bounds Stout.

While each project was decent, neither was great... the less astringent malt bill of The Czar left some lingering heat, while the roasted malt in Out of Bounds accentuated the charred oak. We began a series of blind tasting sessions to see if we could come up with a blending ratio that improved both beers. After a few blind panels, it looked like a blend of 2/3 Czar and 1/3 Out of Bounds Stout. 

Everyone loved the blend, but the Bourbon barrels still imparted a bit too much charred oak flavor and astringency. Thoma Ledder, our Barrel Romancer, had the idea to balance those harsh flavors with vanilla beans. In the next blind panel, it was unanimous that the blend with vanilla helped the Bourbon and charred oak notes shine without allowing them to overpower the beer. As we do with our smaller experiments, we tapped this beer in the Avery Tap Room to gather feedback from employees and customers. The night it went on tap, Adam Avery drank four pints of it and then ran up to our brewers and said, "We have to bottle this." Eventually we moved into our new beer palace and had the capacity to work on our dream projects, so we blended the malt bills from Czar and OBS, acquired an absurd amount of Bourbon barrels, and went to town. 

What’s your favorite aspect of this beer (flavor, aroma, etc.)? 
We’re proud of the fact that we didn't just buy the first vanilla beans or extract we could find and throw them in the beer. Instead we tried eleven different kinds of vanilla beans, split them by hand, infused them into kegs of Czar, and had them repeatedly blind-tasted through our sensory panel until we had a handful of runaway winners. So when we were ready to go big and fill the first 300 Bourbon barrels of this beer, we felt completely confident that this combination of flavors would be great.

Where does this beer’s name come from? 
There was definitely some debate on this name, as some of us wanted to come up with something more exotic. But we're also trying to make this beer year-round to introduce more people to the wonderful world of barrel-aging. The one-off beers in our Barrel-Aged Series have unpronounceable Latin names because those beers are the most experimental beers produced in our experimental brewery, and because it's entertaining to watch people try to pronounce them. But the beers in our Botanicals & Barrels Series are the product of our decade of experience in barrel-aging, and we're finally to the point where we feel we can make consistent barrel-aged beers. And sometimes you're at a bar and don't want to jump through flaming hoops to figure out what you're going to order next. You can look at the menu, close one eye to solidify things, and know that you're about to buy a barrel-aged stout with vanilla beans. As it says on the labels, "Simply Named ~ Complex Creation."

Is this your "desert island beer?"
When I drink a bomber of Vanilla Bean Stout, my chest hair instantly turns into a shag carpet. Is that good for a desert island? I would think so.

Can you describe this beer in 10 words or less?
Vanillatastic. Beany. Stouty. Smooth. Boom.

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Photo Credit: Avery Brewing Co