Goose Island going Crazy

There are a couple of beers and breweries I attribute to really developing my interest in craft beer. None more important then the first time I had Goose Island Bourbon County Stout back in 2006. At the time, I was just getting into big stouts but this beer really changed my perception of what beer could be, especially in a 12 oz bottle. It was so expensive, but it was so good, it started a paradigm shift on how I focused my attention to beer and new beers, and is probably the beer to blame for the over two hundred bottles I now have sitting in a dark cool room. Not sure how long ago it was, but Anheuser-Busch bought Goose Island and contrary to my belief at the time, Goose Island has gotten better and gone crazy!
There is an assumption among hard-core beer geeks that the Big 3 are all evil and I tend to agree -- the mass dissemination of BMC in this country has given American beer a low class blue collar image especially in Europe and abroad. We know now that when A-B bought Goose Island, it really didn't hurt the brand, in fact it might have made them go crazy! In 2010, Goose Island came out with an insane amount of new beers and most excitingly, various iterations of Bourbon County Stout. The hype train rolled and the beers delivered. They also released a variety of Belgian Style sour beers that I really enjoyed as well. Which begs the question, did A-B help Goose Island? Take for example the beer -- Madame Rose that was released this year -- Greg Hall had special Cherry Trees brought over for Belgium and a care-taker implemented to have the cherries to make this beer. It's just really impressive, and the beers have all been stellar. In my opinion A-B is letting them do what they want and giving them the dollars to do it, and I couldn't be more happy about it, is this a benefit to the buy-out?