- Check it out. I put some scenery in the picture.
Brooklyn Brewery goes all-in on a gimmick with their Black Ops barrel-aged stout. “Brooklyn Black Ops does not exist,” reads the label. “However, if it did exist, it would be a robust stout concocted by the Brooklyn brewing team under cover of secrecy and hidden from everyone else at the brewery. Supposedly ‘Black Ops’ was aged for four months in bourbon barrels, bottled flat, and re-fermented with Champagne yeast, creating big chocolate and coffee flavors with a rich underpinning of vanilla-like oak notes. They say there are only 1,000 cases. We have no idea what they’re talking about.”
And sure enough, Black Ops is nowhere in evidence on the “Beers” section of Brooklyn’s website—though when you visit the “Big Bottles” page, there’s a conspicuous space at the right end of the lineup where it clearly belongs.
Chicagoans could be forgiven for suspecting that Black Ops doesn’t exist, given that a release of just 1,000 cases means nobody outside New York is gonna see much of it—I lucked into the last bottle at the Binny’s in River North on Thursday. In years past I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the beer at Whole Foods (at least at the big store on Kingsbury), but I’d call before making a trip just to find it.
