Limited Edition KOVAL Bourbon Barrel-Aged Coffee

It's back, and this one might be our most unique yet: barrel-aged coffee, made with our friends at KOVAL Distillery in Chicago.

KOVAL has been a fixture of Chicago craft spirits for years, and we are proud to partner with them for our first barrel-aged release of 2026. Their Single Barrel Bourbon is the heart of this collaboration.

Here is how it happens: We start with a freshly dumped barrel. The American oak is still saturated with whiskey and unroasted coffee is porous enough to soak it up. We loaded the barrel with green coffee, a semi-washed lot from Bali in Indonesia, and let it rest for about two weeks, rolling it around the roastery about every other day to make sure the beans were being evenly affected by the barrel. The beans pulled flavor from both the oak and the KOVAL Single Barrel Bourbon Whiskey (#9481) that soaked it. Then we took the coffee out and roasted it in 17.5 pound batches to a medium roast.

The result is intense, complex and maybe a little surprising. The bourbon is front and center, and as the cup cools it turns into something like an oatmeal cookie, the kind that gets crispy on the outside, with butterscotch sweetness and a hint of cedar and oak underneath. A lot of people are surprised by how much whiskey character carries all the way through to the brewed cup.

Don't worry, there is no actual alcohol here. The ABV is 0% so anyone can enjoy it.

This is a limited-edition run and some are available at KOVAL's distillery shop in Chicago. Get one while you can. Once it's gone, it's gone.