Butcher & Bullock in Downtown Vancouver were given a barrel from Beam Suntory to use as they wanted. After thinking on it for a bit they contacted Parallel 49 to brew a one off beer to be aged in this barrel and served from the barrel at the Pub. The beer that came out of it is the P49/Butcher & Bullock Imperial Chocolate Bourbon Stout that was infused with a few bottles of Knob Creek 9 year and the barrel was seasoned with a few more bottles. This 200L barrel is a one off and sounds seriously epic.
If you want to get in on trying this epic beer then check out their event Smoregasboard that will be held on January 21st from 7pm to 11:30pm.
Press release
~Imperial Chocolate Stout Collaboration with Parallel 49, Knob Creek & Donnelly Group~
It’s no secret that we at Butcher & Bullock love our beer. Over the past 3 years we’ve been steadily adding extra taps, heavily rotating featured seasonal beer offerings, and working with breweries and beer importers to make sure there’s always something interesting on tap.
This past fall we were gifted an intact, water-tight, one-time used American Oak barrel by our friend Matt Jones, Whiskey ambassador for Beam Suntory. Not being distillers ourselves and no whisky to age – we sat on the barrel for a few weeks before linking up with our friends at Parallel 49 to talk about some up-coming events. They were about to brew their S’more stout… we had a barrel and some extra bottles of Knob Creek… thus the P49/Butcher & Bullock Imperial Chocolate Bourbon Stout was born.
Head Brewer Graham With used a few bottles to Knob Creek 9yr Bourbon to season the barrel as well as a few bottles to add a massive punch of bourbon to the beer itself – their S’More stout, but without the vanilla. Knowing that simply aging an Imperial Bourbon Chocolate stout in a barrel and kegging it has been done – we decided to take this event a step further…
We won’t be force carbonating or kegging this beer. We won’t be bottling or packaging it at the brewery. We are rolling this barrel into Butcher & Bullock and tapping & pouring the stout direct from the barrel.
The beer is literally a one-off. There are 200 litres and all 200 will be poured only at Butcher & Bullock. The night will be full of chocolate goodies & good times. Growler Fills will be available to take some of this amazing beer home from the first Butcher & Bullock Beer Club event of 2016.
Mike's Craft Beer 
I am sure you know Beam Suntory own several Irish Whiskies, including Kilbeggan which is about ten miles away from me, I’m not sure how good they are at sharing barrels though!
Actually i know almost nothing about beam suntory not a spirits guy
Ha, well, they have a lot of fingers in a lot of pies!
It sure looked like it from their website.