Highland Brewing Black Watch Bourbon Barrel Stout Review (2019)

By Richard Thomas

Rating: B+

From Asheville’s Highland Brewing, this annual release takes their double chocolate imperial milk stout and ages it in ex-bourbon barrels. This year’s edition came out at 11% ABV (or at least that is what my bottle says).

The usual pitfall with any beer aged in a bourbon barrel is that it comes out the other side as too barrel-influenced, which makes for a syrupy sweet beer, whatever the description of the beer happens to be. That was not the case here.

The nose on this jet black brew was definitely sweet, but not overpoweringly so. It came across as malty, milk chocolate with touches of vanilla. While sipping on it revealed it was, in fact, quite barrel-driven, it was restrained for all that. It never went anywhere near cloying, and retained a certain chocolatey (if sweet, rather than earthy) character. The finish is where the traces of native earthiness and bitterness made an appearance, almost as an afterthought and just to let you know they were back there.

I had this as a dessert beer, and in that role I loved it.