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Brooklyn Brewery drops Black Ops in December
[Discuss this beer in the Brooklyn Black Ops thread.]
[10/30 Update from Garrett Oliver via Beer Advocate:
"We will release about 900 cases of Black Ops in December. It has been in bourbon barrels for the past four months and will be bottled in a couple of weeks."]
The back label describes this one best:
“Brooklyn Black Ops does not exist. However, if it did exist, it would be a robust stout concocted by the Brooklyn brewing team under cover of secrecy and hidden from everyone else at the brewery. Supposedly “Black ops” was aged for four months in bourbon barrels, bottled flat, and re-fermented with Champagne yeast, creating big chocolate and coffee flavors with a rich underpinning of vanilla-like oat notes. They say there are only 1,000 cases. We have no idea what they’re talking about.”
So is this Black Chocolate Stout aged in bourbon barrels or a new concoction altogether?
Regardless, the beer debuted around the first of the year but this is its first “wide” release in bottles. According to Bob Townsend, who has a beer blog over at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Brewmaster Garrett Oliver selected Woodford Reserve barrels for this one. And who can blame him considering the distillery makes the official bourbon of the Kentucky Derby and the Breeders’ Cup.
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October 29th, 2008 at 11:11 am
Someone please notify Brooklyn Brewery to ship some of this new beer to Colorado. Black ops sounds delicious. Also, if we could get more breweries to make these kind of beers available in 12oz bottles as well as the big 750ml ones it would be nice.
October 29th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Garrett Oliver was talking about this beer a year ago when he was over in the UK at the British Guild of Beer Writers’ seminar on wood-aged beers, though he said then that Black Ops might never be released. Glad to see it’s finally out …
October 29th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
I got to try a small sample from a bottle some generous soul brought to the Cuvee de Castleton release, and it certainly lived up to the hype.
October 30th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
[...] our wishful thinking hopes the beer gods will grace us with two to three cases (being generous). Beernews.org has a good write-up about it—including the hilarious back label goodness [...]
November 7th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
There was a big Brooklyn event at Blind Tiger Alehouse in NYC this past Wednesday. Among other things, they had two kinds of Black Ops on cask - regular and barrel aged. They still had it last night, and their website says it’s still on cask today, if anyone’s looking to try it.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:30 am
[...] that will lead you to the promise land. And in case you missed it last week, here is my article on Brooklyn Black Ops, due out in [...]