Bramble Brandy Double Barrel Catch Hell Spends 18 Months in Wood

Catch Hell goes back through the barrel room and comes out somewhere else entirely. Twelve months in Buffalo Trace and Early Times bourbon barrels, then another six in blackberry and vanilla brandy, landing at 12.6 percent.

• Style: Double Barrel Imperial Stout
• Release Date: 2026-09-16
• ABV: 12.6%
• Half Acre Beer Company (Chicago, IL)

Twelve months in bourbon barrels, then six more in brandy barrels. Half Acre's next Catch Hell variant has spent a year and a half in wood before it ever reaches a can.

The beer starts as Catch Hell, the Chicago brewery's imperial stout. From there it goes into Buffalo Trace and 10-year-old Early Times bourbon barrels for twelve months. It is then re-barreled and finished for a further six months in blackberry brandy and vanilla brandy barrels. Half Acre files the finished beer as a Double Barrel Imperial Stout aged in bourbon and blackberry brandy barrels with cinnamon and vanilla, at 12.6 percent.

Re-barreling is the detail worth pausing on. Most barrel-aged stouts go into wood once and come out when the brewer decides they are ready. Moving a beer into a second, different set of barrels partway through is a separate technique, and a less forgiving one. The bourbon character is already set by the time the decision gets made, and the brandy barrels then have to add to it rather than correct it.

The two barrel sets are doing distinct jobs. Bourbon barrels contribute the familiar vanilla, caramel and oak tannin of charred American oak, and naming Buffalo Trace and a 10-year-old Early Times is a level of specificity most breweries do not bother with. The brandy barrels bring fruit. Half Acre describes the second stage as adding layers of dark fruit, vanilla, cinnamon and warming spice to the weight of the base stout.

The brewery is positioning it as the front end of what it calls Stout Season, the annual turn toward heavier beer that Chicago winters make easy to sell.

The Oznr presale opens September 16. Oznr is the app a good number of American breweries now use to run allocated releases, which is generally the signal that a beer is limited enough to need one.