Going into this week I thought it was going to be difficult choosing a BotW as I had the opportunity to try a lot of different beers. A bottle share along with a 6 location tour of craft brewery taprooms in the Twin Cities area gave me a lot to evaluate. In reality, I knew the minute I tasted it, this was going to be the beer – all others had almost no chance in changing my mind.

The Goose Island Bourbon County Northwoods Stout made it’s appearance at our bi-monthly bottle share. Upon reading the description we were expecting this to be something akin to the Founders Lizard of Koz (another blueberry imperial stout), which was oppressively sweet and obnoxious with the blueberries. Thankfully this was not.

I’ve not thought of, nor heard, of a beer using marzipan before. As with the blueberry comment above, I would have thought it to be incredibly sweet and cloying. Again, we were all very pleasantly surprised it wasn’t. A huge nose of almonds and a little bourbon with very little blueberry in aroma. No alcohol booziness as one would expect from nearly 13% abv.

Flavor was an exceptionally smooth American Double stout with a nicely balanced sweet almond/marzipan flavor I found to be very comforting, reminding me of the holidays without the spices, more cookie like than pie. The blueberry was very much in the background adding just a touch of tang to balance out the sweet almond.

Over and over again, we kept going back to how this reminds us all of the holidays and almond cookies, but in the most pleasant way. Wish we didn’t have to “share” this one. This is one of those beers I would choose over almost all others if I saw this on a menu list at a beer bar along with Prairie Artisan’s Bomb! and Schlenkerla’s Rauchbeir Marzen. I will purchase when ever and where ever I find it.