Most limited releases start in the brewhouse. This one started in the cellar, among barrels Founders had already filled.

KBS Select is the first entry in a new series of the same name, and the premise is an inventory one. The brewery says the series taps into its limited reserves of KBS, its bourbon barrel-aged imperial stout, in order to explore variants that have never before been bottled. Rather than brewing something new, Founders is going back through beer it already has and releasing versions that until now stayed in the building.

This first variant was finished with sugar maple wood. Founders says that gives the beer a nuanced sugar maple character, rounding out the bold chocolate and coffee flavors typical to KBS. The brewery's tasting notes for the finished beer list chocolate, coffee and vanilla alongside the maple, and describe it as moderately sweet with a light bitterness and a warming finish.

The wording matters more than it might appear. Finished with sugar maple wood is not the same claim as aged in a maple syrup barrel, and it is not the same as dosing a stout with syrup. Maple here is a timber rather than a sweetener, contributing whatever a dense hardwood contributes over a period of contact. It is also an unusual choice. Barrel and finishing programs run overwhelmingly on oak, which has the grain structure and the flavor chemistry the industry has spent centuries learning to predict.

The specs underneath are KBS specs. Founders lists KBS Select at 12 percent ABV and 45 IBU, built on Nugget and Willamette hops with pale, oat, chocolate, roasted barley and wheat malts. Those figures match the brewery's listing for standard KBS, which supports the framing: this is the existing beer with an additional finishing step, not a new recipe wearing a familiar name.

The packaging leans into the series as an event. Bottles and the four-pack carrier are done in black and gold with a small skull, under the words The Amazing Kosmicki's, a nod to Jeremy Kosmicki, the brewmaster who has been running Founders' brewing since 2000.

KBS Select is available in the Founders taproom and on shelves in select stores, in four-packs of 12-ounce bottles. The brewery lists the release as running from September through December.

Editor’s Take

There is a particular kind of confidence in a brewery announcing that it has been keeping things from us. The KBS Select series is, by its own description, a raid on the barrel cellar - variants that have never before been bottled, which means that somewhere in Grand Rapids there have been barrels of Kentucky Breakfast Stout quietly turning into things nobody outside the building had ever tasted. Most well-stocked beer cellars belong to collectors. This one belongs to the people who filled it, which strikes me as a considerably better arrangement for everyone involved.\n\nAnd then there is the wood. Sugar maple is a furniture timber. It is what a butcher block is, what a good hard floor is, the thing you reach for when you want something dense and pale and unwilling to dent. It is not a barrel wood, and Founders has not claimed it is - the beer is finished with sugar maple, which is a different operation from being aged in it. That distinction is the whole interest of the release, because the reflexive assumption with maple and breakfast stout is syrup, and syrup is not what is happening here. Whatever sugar maple has to give a twelve percent stout, it gives up slowly, as wood. I would very much like to know what that tastes like, which is more or less the entire point of putting it in a bottle.

Source & Editorial

JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.

KBS Select Finishes on Sugar Maple Wood, Not Maple Syrup

Founders has opened a new series that bottles KBS variants it had been sitting on and never released. The first one spent time on sugar maple wood, which is a different proposition from maple syrup.

Source & Editorial