Goose Island revealed its 2026 Bourbon County lineup in July, which is the normal rhythm for a beer that pours the day after Thanksgiving.
The paperwork cleared in May.
Bourbon County Brand Apple Crisp Stout got federal label approval on 26 May. Proprietor's, NOLA Café, and Triple Barrel cleared the next day. That is the useful thing about label approvals: a brewery cannot ship a beer across state lines without one, so the filing has to come first, and a lineup that is a secret in July has been a public record since spring for anyone reading.
The filings
Nine records carrying the Bourbon County name have cleared for the 2026 season so far. Some variants appear twice, which usually means a second package format — a keg collar and a bottle label are separate approvals.
| Beer | TTB ID | Approved |
|---|---|---|
| Bourbon County Brand Apple Crisp Stout | 26117001000150 | 2026-05-26 |
| Bourbon County Brand Proprietor's Stout | 26141001000157 | 2026-05-27 |
| Bourbon County Brand Proprietor's Stout | 26146001000286 | 2026-05-27 |
| Bourbon County Brand NOLA Café Stout | 26146001000290 | 2026-05-27 |
| Bourbon County Brand Triple Barrel Stout | 26146001000293 | 2026-05-27 |
| Bourbon County Brand Tiramisu Stout | 26148001000813 | 2026-06-02 |
| Bourbon County Brand Tiramisu Stout | 26182001000552 | 2026-07-02 |
| Bourbon County Brand Apple Crisp Stout | 26182001000527 | 2026-07-06 |
| Bourbon County Brand Proprietor's Stout | 26183001000623 | 2026-07-07 |
The 7 July filing is the one worth a second look. Its fanciful name is Proprietor's, but the label text reads “Upside-Down Cake Stout” — an imperial stout aged in bourbon barrels with pineapple, Montmorency cherry, and panela sugar, at 14.2%. Filed as a keg.
The one that is not called Bourbon County
On 1 July and again on 21 July, Goose Island cleared labels for a beer called Xocolatl: bourbon barrel-aged stout with cinnamon, cocoa nibs, and guajillo chile. Once as a 500ml bottle, once as a keg.
Nothing on the label says Bourbon County. The barrel treatment, the adjunct bill, and the 500ml bottle are all Bourbon County's shape, and it filed inside the same window as the rest of the lineup. I would not bet against it belonging to the family, but the label does not claim it, so we are not going to claim it either.
It is in the register at 26202001000365 and 26180001000736. Read the label and decide for yourself.
And one that looks like a grail and is not
Goose Island also cleared Reindeer Games on 24 July. The name is seasonal, the timing is right, and it would slot neatly into a winter stout lineup.
It is a 5% Czech-style dark lager.
This is the entire argument for reading labels instead of names. A release calendar built on names alone would have filed that one under Bourbon County and been wrong by about nine points of alcohol.
What the timing tells you
The gap between first approval and public reveal here was about seven weeks. That is normal, not unusual, and it holds for most annual releases: the barrels are picked, the blend is set, and the compliance paperwork moves months ahead of the announcement.
Which means the rest of this winter's stout season is already partly on file. We logged 150 barrel-aged stout filings between May and August. Most of those beers do not have a press release yet.
How we track this
Bourbon County Brand Stout is in the Pantheon, our registry of beers worth hunting. When a filing clears that matches a Pantheon entry — by name or by a known alias — it is flagged automatically and shows up on the release calendar. All nine filings above were matched that way. Xocolatl was not, until we taught the matcher its name, which is the ordinary failure mode of matching on names.
No part of this is a sales channel. We record what files and when it lands; where you buy it is between you and the brewery.