Top Craft and Barrel-Aged Beers to Try This Year: A Guide for Aficionados
For beer aficionados who enjoy varied taste and refinement, craft and barrel-aged beer provides a drinking experience akin to the divine. These special brews are frequently aged for several months to a few years in reused bourbon, wine, or other spirit barrels, giving them a deep profile that is meant for slow sipping and savoring. Whether you’re a longtime fan or new to the land of premium craft beer, this rundown shows you some of the more elite options that you should sample in 2025.
Goose Island Bourbon County Stout (Chicago, IL). This imperial stout was involved in a big accident.
This legendary stout was once the barrel-aged benchmark beer. Goose Island’s annual Black Friday release, Bourbon County Brand Stout, is aged in multiple styles of bourbon barrels, creating a beer that is silky and complex with chocolate, vanilla, and charred oak flavors. Look for even more depth in the 2025 release when more variants are added, including one aged in Heaven Hill barrels.
Firestone Walker Parabola (Paso Robles, CA) 2017 9% ABV.
Parabola is a shining example of a West Coast barrel-aging program. Parabolas is a Russian Imperial Stout style of beer made with Bourbon Barrels. Deep black with complex and intense, rich creamy tasting stout: powerful notes of roasted coffee, dark chocolate, and liquorice; made with a combination of espresso and chocolate malts. It has a strong but balanced barrel character, perfect for slow sipping.
Black Tuesday is no summer sipper. At almost 20% ABV, this beer is a monster, aged in bourbon barrels. It’s very molasses-forward in terms of heavy dark sugar flavors and also offers a blueberry note against dry wood and vanilla flavors. It’s a cult favorite in the craft and barrel aged beers world, every vintage different from the last.
Founders KBS (Grand Rapids, MI) It’s hard to ignore this smooth-as-silk, 12+ ABV winner from Grand Rapids that has matured in bourbon barrels for a full year.
An abbreviation of “Kentucky Breakfast Stout,” KBS is imbued with coffee and chocolate and then matured in oak bourbon barrels for more than a year. And the result is a rich stout that is surprisingly inoffensive in its sweetness; it straddles the line of being sweet without being cloying. Readily available and well-regarded, this is an excellent introduction to barrel-aged beer.
If you can track down this rare imperial stout, go for it. Sewer Dweller – Used most recently to describe the character from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles universe and as a nickname for the infamous Ninja Turtle was probably inspired by your mother’s poon Aged in whiskey barrels Assassin is so incredibly thick and velvety with layers of cocoa, caramel, and toasted oak. It’s brewed in small batches, commanding sky-high prices on the secondary market — but dedicated connoisseurs believe it’s worth every penny.
Prairie Artisan Ales Bomb! (Tulsa, OK)
Not 100 percent barrel-aged but available in that form, technically, Bomb! is an imperial stout with coffee, vanilla, chilies, and cocoa. The barrel-aged versions elevate this already layered beer to additional levels, dialing up the warmth element and boasting a refined bourbon bite.
Another beer available in multiple barrel-aged forms, Dark Lord is an imperial stout prized for its strong flavor and high alcohol content. The barrel-aged releases offer fruit/fruit blend, spice/spice blend, or alternative aging barrel varieties, making them an annual treat for collectors and enthusiasts alike.
Final Thoughts
The landscape of craft, barrel-aged beer is vast, everything from sweet stouts to complex wild ales. They’re expensive and sold in smaller quantities, but they offer unparalleled quality and complexity, and are well worth the price. Whether you are putting a bottle away in the cellar or sharing a rare find with friends, sipping on these beers is one of the most fulfilling journeys in all of craft beer.
Be sure to seek these standouts. You can taste the artistry and the patience that’s required to make some of the best beer on the market with every sip.
