One of the Biggest Beers of the Year Is Coming—But Should You Drink It?
Fast Facts
Goose Island brewery is dropping its annual collection of highly acclaimed Bourbon County Stouts. But while the beer is good, it’s also alarmingly bad for you.
Something most sane humans can agree on: Beer isn’t good for you. A few drinks in moderation isn’t life-altering, but not all beer is created equal.
Goose Island’s Bourbon County Stout is an annual release of severals stout-style beers. For beer geeks, it’s one of the most important and sought-after beers to hit shelves every year. The beers are typically aged extensively in ex-bourbon barrels and often fold in complimentary flavors like coffee, dried fruits, or confectionaries. They also carry very high ABV figures. All of this makes the beers obscenely rich to drink, and significantly more taxing on your body than whatever is on tap at your local bar. Here’s what you need to know about Bourbon County Stout’s calorie and carb counts.
How Many Calories Are There in Bourbon County Stout Beers?
Probably between 550 and 700 calories per bottle, but officially we don’t know. Beer and other alcohol producers are not required to publish nutritional information like the food you see at grocery stores, or what you buy at restaurants like McDonald’s or Chipotle. This is because alcoholic drinks are not considered food, technically, and are not regulated by the FDA (ironic considering beer is a regular part of many diets, and is also effectively a drug). Instead, alcohol is regulated by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), which does not require nutritional information be present on consumer products.
So how are we getting 550 to 700 calories per bottle? As a rule of thumb, there are about 30 to 40 calories per ABV point in a beer. These beers are exceptionally high ABV, and come in larger bottles than regular beer. There’s a good chance the calorie count per bottle is actually higher than this estimate, given the ingredients added to many of these beers.
Where Do Beer’s Calories Come from?
Though beer style, brew method, and ingredients do play a part in determining a beer’s calorie level, it’s largely down to the alcohol. Alcohol-by-volume is the single largest indicator of calorie level in beer, and the reason Bourbon County Stouts are so caloric. We only know the ABV of three of the seven beers releasing in 2022, but they are high: Goose Island Bourbon County Stout and Bourbon County 30th Anniversary Reserve Stout are 14.4 percent ABV, while the Two-Year Barleywine Reserve is a whopping 17 percent ABV.
Bourbon County Stout’s sky-high ABV combined with the size of the bottle—a very large 16.9 fluid ounces—means drinking one of these will get you absolutely torched, and constitute a meal’s worth of calories in one go. Our advice: split them with friends. You’ll spare yourself the shame of drinking hundreds of calories in one sitting and lots of heartburn.
The Bottom Line
Goose Island Bourbon County Stout beers are best shared among friends. Each bottle is more calories than an average meal, with almost none of the nutritional value. Not to mention the bottles themselves are bigger than average.
