Chicago‘s Goose Island Beer Co. took home four medals from the Great American Beer Festival, proving that even after nearly four decades in business, it’s still on top of its game.
Winning Brewery and Brewer of the Year in the category of 100,000+ barrels produced annually, the Fulton Street staple was the only Illinois-based brewery that got a gold medal, through its 2025 Bourbon County Brand Proprietor’s Stout in the festival’s Dessert and Pastry Beer category. It also received a bronze medal for its 2026 Bourbon County Brand Apple Crisp Stout in the same category.
“We just are so proud that 38 years later, we’re still winning awards and still winning Brewery of the Year,” Todd Ahsmann, Goose Island Beer president told Inc. “It’s not easy, in all that time, to stay relevant, to stay nimble, to evolve and still really pay attention to quality.”
Both flavors submitted to the Dessert category are the ingenuity of the brand’s County Brand Stout lineup, a collection of beers the company unveils annually. Out of this collection, the Proprietor’s Stout is only available in Chicago. To have a fresh lineup each year, employees of Goose Island are encouraged to create original flavors of beer and submit them to a blind testing, a process that is akin to an “internal Shark Tank,” Ahsmann said.
Refreshed leadership advice from CEO Stephanie Mehta
Submissions are blind, and “through three sessions, we pick what we think is the best concept, either in story concept, flavor, and we give advice along the way,” he said.
The ingredients are perfected throughout the year and aged in bourbon barrels leading up to the release date. Bourbon barrel-aging is a technique unique to Goose Island developed by Greg Hall, son of Goose Island founder John Hall, and dates back three decades. The stout, a type of dark beer fermented warm, ages in bourbon barrels for a year, through Chicago’s pronounced summers and winters.
The winning 2025 stout was the creation of Colby Magratten, a Goose Island brewer, who played on the flavors of a nutty baklava. The beer is brewed with walnuts, pistachios, cassia bark, cinnamon, and honey, inspired by the beehives Magratten’s aunt keeps. The Baklava also won gold at the World Beer Cup this April, in the Wood and Barrel-Aged Dessert or Pastry Beer category.