KBS - Kentucky Breakfast Stout brewed by the Founders Brewing - Grand Rapids, Michigan

What we've got here is an imperial stout brewed with a massive amount of coffee and chocolates, then cave-aged in oak bourbon barrels for an entire year to make sure wonderful bourbon undertones come through in the finish. Makes your taste buds squeal with delight. 11.2% ABV. 70 IBUs.

  

           
Beer Review by Beer Advocate
Appearance: Sludgy pour yields black with a ring of creamed coffee-colored head. Three or four dozen bubbles perch on the surface. Great legs. Very viscous. Very rich-looking. Quite the promising start.

Aroma: Trusty bourbon-vanilla nose with serious dark roast, black coffee, alcohol fumes, burned-out lactose, and char. Huge nose that's whiskey forward with some excellent oaky qualities that come off like sandalwood. Intertwining flavors include dark roast coffee, root beer, dark stewed fruits, bitter chocolate, anise, and butter rum.
 

                
Taste: Rich chocolate crossed with bourbon in the forefront, like those foil-wrapped chocolate candies that have a liquor center. Milk chocolate flavor with some added alkali, buttery vanilla, and earthy-toned coffee with some underlying caramel and smoke notes. Licorice in the finish washed-out with vanilla sweetness and wood from the barrel. Spikes of oak flourish from start to end, peaking at the last. Big ol' alcohol burn follows the whole presentation, as well, ranging from sharp to sweet to warming. The caramel starts to really shine as this one warms up. There's an almost spicy/minty hop element carrying out some supplementary bitterness that is both intriguing and beguiling. A top-notch imperial stout that goes without saying.

Overall: An unreal beer. A massive, complex stout. A real treat. So happy to have it so good.

  
    
History of Founders Brewing Company
Mike Stevens and Dave Engbers both had steady jobs when they decided to chase their dreams and open a brewery–which meant writing a business plan, quitting their jobs, and taking out giant loans. They figured if you’re going to live life, you ought to live it hard, without regrets.

After some initial challenges, due to making well balanced but unremarkable beers, we were on the verge of bankruptcy. It was at this point that the original Founders team decided to brew the kind of beer that got them excited about brewing in the first place: complex, in-your-face ales, with huge aromatics, bigger body, and tons of flavor.

The Founders Family, a group of passionate beer enthusiasts, has grown around this simple philosophy: “We don’t brew beer for the masses. Instead, our beers are crafted for a chosen few, a small cadre of renegades and rebels who enjoy a beer that pushes the limits of what is commonly accepted as taste. In short, we make beer for people like us.”


We at Founders Brewing Company have been lucky to evolve into one of the highest recognized breweries in the United States. Since 2011, Ratebeer.com has ranked us as the 2nd best brewery in the world (we were 4th best in 2010), and we have several beers listed in the top one hundred beers of the world on Beeradvocate.com. We were the winner of four medals at the 2010 World Beer Cup, and the winner of two medals at the 2010 Great American Beer Festival.

We are proud to be doing what we are doing, and we give great thanks to our many customers and credit to our staff for whom we continually work to reinvent and provide world-class beers