Boulevard of tasty beer

When it comes to drinking good beer, one thing is a crucial factor.  That one thing is availability.  There has to be a market for good beer in your area.  If you live in an area without that market, you pretty much are stuck drinking whatever the beer aisle in your local supermarket offers.  Luckily, I live in an area with a very good craft brew availability.  There are several really good liquor stores and not to mention there are 2 breweries other than AB in the Show-Me State.  One is Schlafly.  I will write on them at a later date.  The other is Boulevard.  This is the brewery that I will be sharing with you this time around.

Boulevard is based out of Kansas City, Mo.  It is the second biggest brewery in the state (second to you know who).  They offer an extensive variety of beer too.  They have a very impressive catalog of beers and it is growing at a pretty regular pace.

I first heard of Boulevard in college.  Their flagship is the Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat.  This is the beer that was first brought to my attention.  I heard it and instantly thought “Ewwww, unfiltered, gross”.  I was thinking that it would be full of stuff that I did not want to put in my mouth, much less swallow.  God, how wrong was I.  It seems that I have been wrong on most of my notions about beer that I made in college.  Damn higher education, this is the stuff I should have really learned.  Anyhoo, I avoided it for a while.  At a party a buddy of mine, who went to Mizzou (University of Missouri at Columbia), brought a sixer.  He said it was all the rage.  I finally tried it.  I liked it.  Not as much as I do now, since I have learned much more since then, but I liked it.  It had a nice flavor and it had a unique feel in my mouth.  It reminded me of drinking a heavy orange juice.  After that I would get it at the bar now and again if it was available.  Unfiltered wheats tend to go well with a lemon wedge and this one is no exception.  It helps bring out the flavor of the wheat in the beer.

After drinking the unfiltered wheat for a year or so I went to the store and found a sampler of the other beers that Boulevard had to offer.  Some of these beers were the first kinds of a style of beer that I had tried.  The sampler had the Bully! Porter, the Dry Stout, the Pale Ale and the Lunar Ale.  The Bully! Porter was the first porter I ever really tried.  From that experience I learned that I was not a porter fan.  Way to dark and thick for my liking.  I felt the same about the Dry Stout.  Their Pale Ale was also one of the first pale ales I had ever tried as well.  I found it intriguing and really hoppy.  I had not yet developed by taste for hops yet.  I drank this one quite regularly until I tried other pale ales that I found much more appealing, like the Schlafly. The Lunar Ale, however, I instantly fell in love with.  The Lunar Ale is an unfiltered brown ale.  It has a very unique smell and has a delicious toasted malt flavor.  I tried this beer and I knew that I was going to truly enjoy some of this brewery’s selections.

Recently, they have put out a new collection of beers called The Smokestack Series.  These beers are in a bigger bottle (1 pint 9.4 oz).  These beers are much higher in alcohol content and are more flavorful.  There are a few of these out.  More are getting put out every season.  One of them is the Double-Wide I.P.A.  This is one of my top I.P.A.s.  This is a very well balanced, yet, it still has a very strong hop profile that I love ever so much.  They also a quadruple ale called The Sixth Glass.   It is a very warming, robust ale.  It is comparable to an abbey ale.  Sitting at %10.5 abv, it will warm the soul on a cool winter’s eve.  They have a Seeyalater Doppelbock.  This is a serious malty beer.  There are several others out too, all of them a step above the standard beer in the 12oz bottle.

Another thing that they had just put out recently is the Boulevard Pilsner.  This is an attempt at a standard pilsner.  The label states that it is a recipe that follows an old tradition of classic American lagers.  I was very excited to see this beer and even more so to try it.  I was pleasantly surprised.  This beer can hold up to most American lagers and pilsners.  It is way better and more well balanced than Budweiser or Miller Genuine Draft.  It has a nice full flavor and a body that is not that heavy at all for a pilsner.  Trying to drink a Bud is kinda like drinking a three course meal out of a bottle…it is way too heavy.  The Boulevard isn’t and it doesn’t sacrifice the flavor to do it.

All in all I am glad that I have this brewery close enough to me that I can enjoy these beers.  I consider this a “local” brewery even though it is about six hours away from me.  I consider myself lucky to have them there.  I enjoy most of what they  have to offer and it is a welcome change from the AB drudge than can be seen in bars in this area.  I have been blessed to have learned to enjoy beer and live in this area.  It gives me plenty of new beers that are available.  I was going to put in some really bad pun to end this using Boulevard but…they don’t deserve a bad pun.  They deserve appreciation, and that is the avenue I am going to take…

Cheers!!

Here is a link to the Boulevard site with all the year round and seasonal beers.

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