Beer Spotlight!

Firestone Walker Proprietor’s Vintage Series:
2023 Parabola

$10.99 for the 12oz bottle
Whiskey and Bourbon Barrel-Aged Imperial Stout

The iconic central California craft brewery Firestone Walker started as a craving and a friendly argument.

In the early 90s, brothers-in-law Adam Firestone and David Walker (an American and a Brit, respectively), were looking for decent beer where they lived. That search led to “dedicated discussions” on the merits of the ales of their respective countries. Finally, the two struck a détente over the idea of making their own beer. (Ah, if only more cultural disputes could end that way.) With Walker advocating British brewing traditions and both men coming from wine backgrounds, barrels rose as a common interest. The two set up in the back of a family vineyard, intent on making barrel-fermented beers — not barrel-aged beers, barrel-fermented beers, which pretty much no one was doing at that time. In 1996 — with the help of their first brewmaster, Jeffers Richardson — they launched Firestone Walker Brewing Company in Paso Robles with a barrel-fermented ale inspired by English cask bitters, their Double Barrel Ale. All of this background is to say that barrels run deep with Firestone Walker.

It should be no surprise that they migrated over to barrel-aging. In 2005, as part of their legendary blended anniversary ale, they first brewed the bourbon barrel-aged imperial stout that would become the Parabola. Soon, the brew broke out from being an ingredient to being a featured beer in its own right. Over the years since, the Parabola has earned fans who wait for its yearly reappearance.

Firestone Walker has aged the 2023 Parabola for a year in “an equal combination of eight year-old Blanton’s bourbon and 12-year-old Weller wheated whiskey barrels.” What we get out of that mix is a smooth, rich, sweet medium-bodied stout with coffee on the finish, where the bourbon and whiskey notes sit on top like a cherry.

Originally brewed 10 years after Goose Island first commercially introduced the style, the Parabola is one of the classic American bourbon barrel-aged imperial stouts.

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