Breweries Are Evolving Their Approach to Stout

In 2019, Brad Clark conceived Private Press Brewing with a rather stout business plan. After spending a decade-plus as brewmaster at Jackie O’s in Athens, Ohio, the brewer relocated to Santa Cruz, California, to be closer to his fiancée and produce his forte: imperial stouts and barley wines aged in bourbon, brandy, and rum barrels.

Instead of selling bottles and snifters inside a taproom, Clark would offer his limited-edition barrel-aged imperial stouts and barley wines directly to a members-only club limited to 500 people. The $300 annual memberships went on sale on June 1, 2020, and vanished in three minutes, leading Clark to add another 100 members. Today’s club hovers around 700 to 800 members, but “I’m seeing pretty big turnover,” Clark says, with declines in members’ average spend. Restricting sales to a tight consumer radius wouldn’t reverse that trend.

So when a winery tasting room became available in the industrial park where Clark ages his beers, he took over the space and opened, in May, a place to sip strong beers while LPs soundtrack the mood. (Private Press is named after self-published vinyl records.) The trial is similar to sampling wine, no bottle splurge needed. Four drafts sell for $6 and $12 respectively per three- and six-ounce pour, introducing Clark’s hardy imperial stouts—they’re 14 percent ABV and higher—to a new and growing audience. “People are like, ‘I didn’t know beer could be that strong,’” Clark says, sparking additional pours and sales.

During craft beer’s 2010s heyday, breweries created objects of dark desire by redoubling stouts’ ABVs, adding cocoa nibs and coconut to evoke liquefied candy bars, and aging the roasty beers in bourbon barrels. Creative extravagances led fans to line up and buy (and later trade) rationed allotments and attend festivals headlined by imperial stouts served by the indulgent ounce. Can you fill that glass with peanut butter cup stout? And then maybe some stout that tastes like Count Chocula?

Limits do surround nostalgic decadence. “As an industry, we swung too far on some pastry stouts,” says Todd Ahsmann, the president of Goose Island Beer, speaking of the dessert-stout trend. And the ubiquity of barrel-aged beers didn’t always correlate to excellence, a problem when a 500-milliliter bottle or bigger might cost more than $20. “Not to throw anyone under the bus, but some barrel-aged stouts weren’t doing anyone any favors,” Ahsmann says.

Now stouts are undergoing a dark turn as breweries right-size production and dial back sweetness, as well as turn cultish releases into stress-free buys at grocery stores. ABVs and package sizes are shrinking to encourage customers to drink stouts and not cellar them, while other breweries are broadening reach by aligning barrel-aged stouts with subcultures. New Holland Brewing now partners with game company Hasbro, makers of Dungeons & Dragons, on barrel-aged Dragon’s Milk stout variants tied to the board game. There’s no better time to drink stouts than while hanging with friends for hours. “It opened our brand to the entire world of tabletop gamers,” says Jake Maddux, beer brand manager for the Holland, Michigan brewery.

Moderate-strength stouts and their closely related cousin, porter, were central to craft beer’s early days in the late 1970s and early 1980s. As dark and roasty as strong coffee, stouts and porters became calling cards for pioneering breweries including New Albion, Anchor, and Sierra Nevada. In fact, Sierra Nevada’s inaugural beer in Chico, California, on November 15, 1980, was a five-barrel batch of stout that remained a widely distributed staple for decades. Today, the stout and a porter are only brewed in small batches and mailed to die-hard fans or sold in the Chico and Mills River, North Carolina, taprooms. As IPAs and other styles grew ascendant, widespread distribution disappeared as “consumer demand just wasn’t really there,” says Ellie Preslar, the chief commercial officer.

Finding a classic stout or porter on store shelves is tough. Outside of Bell’s Brewery’s Kalamazoo Stout or the Obsidian Stout and Black Butte Porter from Deschutes Brewery, few craft stouts and porters have broad distribution. Sales numbers for craft stouts are also slipping, with year-over-year decreases in dollar sales; craft stouts declined nearly 12 percent in 2024 and are down roughly the same amount year to date through early August, according to NIQ data provided by 3 Tier Beverages. 

One outlier is Ireland’s Guinness, which rode youthful social media trends for “splitting the G” (sipping a pint so the beer’s surface level bisects the logo’s letter) to increase American sales by 6 percent last year. But Guinness is Guinness, a name brand that exists outside stout. “Guinness is its own style of beer to many of these young people who are drinking it,” says Greg Engert, the beverage director for Neighborhood Restaurant Group. Still, craft breweries are finding success by creating creamy, nitrogen-infused stouts that deliver differentiation in an IPA-driven world.

At Lawson’s Finest Liquids in Waitsfield, Vermont, IPAs are between 80 to 90 percent of the brewery’s sales, led by Sip of Sunshine. But taproom visitors seek variety. Several years ago, the brewery trialed a nitro stout, light in body and roast, that fast hit favorite status. This year, Lawson’s turned Nitro Stout into a widely distributed year-round release that’s a domestic alternative to Guinness. “Bars are looking for a trusted regional brand with a nitro stout,” says Adeline Druart, the CEO. A nitro stout’s creaminess and familiar flavors of chocolate and coffee can court customers. Left Hand Brewing’s Milk Stout Nitro, which incorporates the milk sugar lactose for lush sweetness, “has converted so many non-beer drinkers into beer,” says Eric Wallace, the founder and CEO of the Longmont, Colorado, brewery. “Nitro is like putting cream in your coffee.”

Left Hand’s Milk Stout Nitro is the brewery’s top-selling beer—in six- and 12-packs of 12-ounce bottles, no less—as the beer’s 6 percent ABV makes it easy to enjoy at most any happy hour. Imperial stouts, especially the barrel-aged variety, are typically more than 10 percent ABV. That’s a commitment, especially considering the standardvolume. The 22-ounce bottle, or bomber, became thedefault format for barrel-aged stouts, leading manydrinkers to cellar bottles for future consumption.

I certainly did. Over decades of beer writing, bottles stacked up into pyramids of dusty neglect. Last year, as I prepared to leave Brooklyn after a quarter-century, I spent months giving away barrel-aged stouts before my clattering move to Columbus, Ohio. The bottles that survived the move now slumber in my basement office, untouched as I tapped out this story. Bottle size is a barrier to imbibing.

In response, breweries are rolling out smaller bottles and cans for big stouts. In November, Goose Island is switching its Bourbon County Brand Original Stout from single 16.9-ounce bottles to four-packs of 10-ounce bottles to encourage drinkers to “not feel like they have to save it for special occasions,” Ahsmann says. (The brewery’s more limited-edition beers will remain in the embossed 16.9-ounce bottles.) “Let’s get more people to try stout and barrel-aged stout.”

Traditionally, one obstacle has been access. Waiting in line was a prerequisite for buying rare barrel-aged stouts, a trend that accelerated in the early 2010s when Goose Island began releasing its Bourbon County stouts the day after Thanksgiving on shopping-crazed Black Friday. “It was almost a joke to stand in line for beer like it was a TV that’s on sale,” Ahsmann says. Black Friday stout releases then became an industry norm, drawing taproom traffic to breweries like the Veil in Richmond, Virginia.

In 2017, the brewery started hosting Black Friday’s Dark Daze event featuring upward of 15 stouts and barley wines. Family commitments and holiday travel meant some ardent fans “missed out on Dark Daze every year,” says Matt Tarpey, head brewer and co-founder. In recent years, Tarpey has seen line culture wane, and fewer day-of sales, leading him to halve the number of barrels from 600 to around 300. The upshot is that, following release day, extra bottles of barrel-aged stouts are available in the taproom, minimizing consumer FOMO. “I do appreciate that we have some lingering bottles,” Tarpey says.

During dreary February, Fort George Brewery in coastal Astoria, Oregon, rolls out the black carpet for Stout Month, which co-founder Jack Harris created. Fort George hosts the Festival of Dark Arts, combining bands, artists, and fire dancing with more than 100 unique stouts, including variants of its Matryoshka imperial stouts aged in bourbon and whiskey barrels. “Last year, we had a different stout for every day in February,” says Brian Bovenizer, the marketing director.

That’s not enticing enough for out-of-towners to take a frigid coastal trip to Fort George, located several hours from larger cities such as Portland. Fort George instead brings its stouts on the road to regional bars and stocks cellared Matryoshka variants in its retail store. During Astoria’s touristy summer, barrel-aged stouts are among the top-selling packaged beers to take home. “People come and are like, ‘When am I going to see this again? I’m not. I’ve got to buy a bottle,’” Bovenizer says. Fort George also runs a bottle club that provides customers with a gym-style locker where allocated bottles are stored for members, the majority of which live outside Astoria. “They’ve got a code and can get the beer anytime,” Bovenizer says.

For breweries, running a club often means making sought-after beers member exclusives. In 2010, the Bruery in Placentia, California, created its Reserve Society that gave enrollees access to rare beers like cultish imperial stout Black Tuesday. (The Bruery now offers additional clubs.) “You had to decide: Are you going to sell it exclusively to members, or are you going to make it more broadly available?” says Barry Holmes, the CEO. Last year, the Bruery began distributing 375 milliliter bottles of Black Tuesday in grocery chains including Whole Foods, while making other member-only beers. “More people have access to Black Tuesday, but you’re not compromising your membership,” Holmes says.

No membership club is bigger than Costco’s, which counts nearly 140 million members worldwide. Last year, Deschutes partnered with the retail giant on Kirkland Signature Vintage Ale, a bourbon barrel–aged imperial stout sold in 22-ounce bottles for $9.99. When a product is perceived as a value, “people are willing to take a risk and try it,” says Peter Skrbek, the CEO. Buoyed by Vintage Ale’s success, 2024 became the brewery’s best sales year ever for barrel-aged stouts, and Deschutes and Costco released a new version this September. “We plan on releasing it every year as long as people want to buy it,” says Russ York, a wine, beer, and spirits buyer at Costco.

Craft brewers regularly reinvent the wheel to meet drinkers’ desire for different delicious directions. As pastry stouts recede, breweries are aiming toward less sweetness and “leaning into the barrel as an ingredient,” says Ahsmann of Goose Island. This fall’s Bourbon County releases include one aged for two years in Parker’s Heritage Collection rye barrels sourced from Heaven Hill Distillery, while a variant inspired by cherries jubilee earns its fruitiness from bourbon and Cognac barrels. “Instead of throwing in random ingredients, a barrel can create those flavors,” Ahsmann says.

Boulevard Brewing in Kansas City, Missouri, has more than 5,000 barrels of beer aging in a climate-controlled warehouse, including Whisky Barrel Stout and Bourbon Barrel Quad. They’re plenty strong, around 12 percent ABV, but big flavors and booze aren’t universally beloved. For drinkers seeking less intensity, Boulevard recently created Wood Baron as a blend of 65 percent barrel-aged porter and 35 percent fresh beer. Its its at a comparatively svelte 7.2 percent ABV and has less pronounced barrel character. The hope is that Wood Baron can “introduce people to barrel-aged beers,” says Bobby Dykstra, chief commercial officer for parent company Duvel USA.

Beer festivals are a reliable source of trial for barrel-aged stouts, but it’s easy to overdo it. To interrupt the indulgence, stout-focused celebrations are adding easygoing lagers and nonalcoholic options. Each spring, Three Floyds Brewing unites fans of intense metal and stouts during Dark Lord Day, a celebration of its eponymous imperial stout. This year’s festivities featured both a nonalcoholic hop water and Floyds Deluxe, a lower-alcohol lager. “That was one of our best sellers,” says Cory Just, the marketing director. “When you’re watching bands and already had 10 four-ounce pours of different Dark Lords, it’s time for a lager.”

Attendance at many beer festivals is slumping, and some stout festivals are suffering. This year, Schlafly Beer in St. Louis postponed its Stout & Oyster Festival, a tradition since 2000, to take “time to assess how to bring the event back in the future,” CEO David Schlafly said in a statement. Chicago’s Festival of Wood and Barrel-Aged Beer (FOBAB) hopes to welcome thousands thanks to rigorous outreach to wine and whiskey drinkers and evolution. In 2023, the November festival welcomed a lager category, and lines to try them can rival those of hyped stouts. “People associate barrel-aged beer with a 14 percent stout, and it doesn’t have to be that,” says Ray Stout, former executive director for FOBAB organizer Illinois Craft Brewers Guild.

Digging up deep-rooted beliefs is difficult. Like cider to fall, stouts and porters are aligned with cooler weather and wintertime. But drinking a dark stout, not too strong, during summer can be a revelation. As the beer warms, all those coffee-shop flavors and aromas intensify. Contrast that to a sun-warmed light lager that’s as flat and flavorful as tepid tap water. These are indisputable matters of taste. But come summer, I seek session IPAs and pilsners, ignoring stouts until I retrieve sweatshirts from storage. My beer-drinking heart wants what it wants. I’m no outlier.

Prime sales season for Left Hand’s stouts runs from September through March. Why not a cold beverage that tastes of coffee come summer? After all, “you see people walking around with iced lattes,” Wallace says. Revolution Brewing opened in Chicago in 2010 with the chocolaty Eugene porter as an all-year beer, yet the brand’s sales disparity—winter far outstripped summer—signaled that it “could no longer be year-round,” says Josh Deth, the founder. Eugene is now earmarked for a November release.

Revolution still runs a robust barrel-aging program for its Deep Wood beers, including its Deth’s Tar imperial oatmeal stout, that are released in cans annually in October. The beloved series is celebrating its 15th year and remains sustained, in part, by nearly 850 season ticket holders. “Especially now, people want to connect to their breweries and support them,” Deth says. Maybe people are no longer buying two or three subscriptions, but the true fans are enough to ensure that Revolution’s dark stouts see the light of another day. “You can put out almost any beer as long as you make the right volume,” Deth says. “Stout isn’t my business priority. It’s my passion.”