Category: WWKW

Each Wednesday, submit your burning Boulevard beer questions on Twitter, tagging @Boulevard_Beer and #WWKW. I'll sift through the questions and select my favorites to answer in a blog post that will be shared here each Thursday morning. Everything is fair game! Go!

- Jeremy Danner, Ambassador Brewer

Whatcha Wanna Know? Wednesday – June 6th, 2018

When our brewing and quality lab teams are working on a new beer that requires the use of ingredients or processes not previously employed, they typically work with suppliers with whom we currently have relationships. For most anything they’d want to use in a beer, there’s a supplier we’re already familiar with that can get us samples or small amounts to play around with for small scale testing before scaling up to a full-size batch of beer on our 35 bbl pilot system.

I’d say the easy answer to this is ABV, but I’ve found that some folks disagree about the ABV range of what constitutes a session IPA and what’s categorized as a “regular” IPA. For me, I feel that a session IPA offers the same characteristics that you’d expect in a full-strength IPA, but at an ABV lower than 4.5% to 5% and I’d like to see a bit lower IBUs (50ish or less) to keep the beer super drinkable. I may be in the minority on this, but I’m (personally) not the biggest fan of beers that get much above 90+ IBUs. That doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate them for what they are; it’s just not something that I’d reach for on a regular basis. I hope this helps. Let’s grab a beer.

Oh, man. We’re currently in the planning stages for 2019 so I’d say that not many things are 100% off the table right now. I can say that we’ve all really enjoyed some of the fruity/juicy IPAs that have been on in the Beer Hall recently and that folks have also been digging on TEST – Salted Caramel Stout. At this point in the process, though, I’d be crazy to guess as to what I think will ultimately emerge as the winner/next seasonal release.

Whatcha Wanna Know? Wednesday – May 30th, 2018

Due to my travel and event schedule, I’ve been a bit of a slacker, but I’m here to make it up to you with the best questions and (hopefully great) answers from the past couple of weeks!

First off, welcome to Kansas City, man! I LOVE this city and would like to share a welcome beer with you at the Beer Hall when you get settled. Let me know.

As far as beers that you don’t see up in Wisconsin, KC Pils immediately comes to mind. I’m a huge fan of “beer flavored beer” (especially during Kansas City summers) and feel it’s one of our best, but due to the fragile nature of the beer, we don’t ship it too far outside Kansas City. Definitely check it out when you arrive. Beyond that, since we don’t distribute our full portfolio in outlying markets, you’re going to see quite a few beers that you wouldn’t normally see prior to moving here. You can’t go wrong with any of these favorites: Pale Ale, Single-Wide IPA, Zon Belgian-Style Witbier and Bully! Porter. You’re in for a treat!

The only truly new beers we’ve released over the past few months are Flora Obscura Dry-Hopped Porter, Jam Band and ¡Vamos! Mexican-Style Lager, the beer we brewed for the Kansas City Royals. I can honestly say that all three beers have been well received and are doing great! Personally, I’ve dug each one and found myself buying all three whenever I saw them on shelves in area liquor stores in addition to enjoying them with meals (or at the K) when I’m out. Of the three, Jam Band is the only year-round beer of the group and is doing well in the Kansas City area in addition to our outlying markets. The fact that it’s super delicious and there’s really nothing out there like it have put Jam Band in a great position to succeed. Plus, our designers crushed it on the can art!

As with all BLVD beers, there’s a packaged on and best by date printed on the neck of the bottle, but having said that, beers don’t necessarily “go bad” like food does. Sure, an incredibly old bottle of Boulevard beer won’t taste as great as a fresh one, but it’s important to note that there’s nothing that can survive in a bottle of beer that can make a human sick so there’s absolutely no risk in cracking the bottle and giving it a taste. Since Scotch on Scotch is a bigger beer with a stronger malt presence, I’d say it makes a great candidate for aging, but I do believe that we release beers that are ready to drink. Crack it open and let me know how it goes!

Hey, man. I’m not here to disagree with your wife on the internet. If it makes her feel good to finish all of the beers, I’d say keep it up! I will admit, though, that when I visit (new to me) breweries, I don’t often order flights as there will invariably be a style that I’m not necessarily interested in. That doesn’t mean that beer might not be fantastic, but it’s just not my thing. I love when breweries offer short/half pours in their taprooms. That gives me a chance to taste more than a couple ounces of a beer to decide for sure if it’s something I dig or not. If I don’t like a beer, I don’t finish it and I don’t feel that anyone should finish a beer they’re not enjoying. Brewers know/accept that not everyone will like every beer they brew and most won’t take it personally if you don’t finish a beer. You’re there to enjoy yourself. Do what feels good to you.

Given that we just released Rye on Rye on Rye on Rye as a Brewhouse One Series beer this year, I don’t think we have any plans to go further or do anything else beyond Rye on Rye, Rye on Rye on Rye or Rye on Rye – Sazerac. We have learned to never say never, though.

For aging Rye on Rye, I honestly wouldn’t go more than three years. For me, the beauty of Rye on Rye is that it showcases such a strong whiskey/oak presence from the Templeton Rye barrels and that character will only fade with time. I’ve never felt that Rye on Rye (or any of the variants) are necessarily hot when fresh so I don’t think the beer requires much time to “mellow.” Make sense?

I know that beer cocktails can be a mixed bag for some brewery folks, but I’m a huge fan. I think anything we can do to introduce beer to a wider audience (that may not identify as beer fans, but will give beer cocktails a try) is a good thing. I really dig cocktails that focus on and play up the flavors of the beer as opposed to beer cocktails that tend to cover up the beer. For me, cocktails (and cooking) should be about showcasing ingredients.

I have a message out to our Tours & Rec Center folks for recipes they’ve recently featured, but here’s the latest original creation from them, The Councilman Jam:

1.5oz Tom’s Town Corruption Gin

1 tbsp KC Canning Co Strawberry Champagne Jam

1/2oz simple syrup (2:1)

1/2oz fresh lemon juice

1 12oz can Jam Band Berry Ale

Combine first four ingredients in a shaker tin with ice, shake & strain into 14oz pub glass over fresh ice, top with Jam Band.

While we’re certainly aware of the haze craze, we don’t currently have plans to brew/release a New England IPA just yet. We have played around with a few variations on an Unfiltered IPA that sees massive dry-hopping additions and less filtration than usual, but we haven’t quite jumped to the super juicy side of things. While I could ramble on about the challenges a regional brewery faces regarding this style, I feel like the folks at Avery Brewing did a great job of explaining the challenges a regional/national brewery faces with the style. Check it out. Definitely let me know if you have any questions. I will say that now that our Kansas City canning hall is up and running, we’ll have a little more flexibility when it comes to packaging different styles and new beers.

I know this is going to sound like a total cop-out answer, but I wouldn’t want my own BLVD beer. I’d obviously be super flattered if it ever happened, but I’d rather see a beer to honor John McDonald, BLVD’s founder, or Brewmaster Steven Pauwels loooooong before there was a Danner beer. If I have to answer this, I’d want a low ABV (3.5 to 4%) Belgian-style table beer. I really enjoy drinking super sessionable, dry Belgian beers that have just a touch of hop flavor and aroma with subtle funk/acidity. That’s something I’d like to drink all day every day. As far as the name goes, I think it would be fun to just call it “Beers.”

Correct! I love both Tank 7 and Saison Brett and you’re absolutely right that they’re similar as Tank 7 is actually the base beer for Saison Brett. When we brew Saison Brett, the mash rests are extended just a bit resulting in a drier beer at the end of fermentation, but everything else is the same, apart from the inoculation with brettanomyces at packaging for Saison Brett. If you’re looking for a similar (yet slightly different) drinking experience, I’d encourage you to check out some of the more traditional Belgian saisons. They won’t be as fruity/hop forward as Tank 7, but assertive bitterness is a hallmark in the great examples of the style. I also really enjoy Belgian tripels, especially when they’re fresh, as I’m a fan of massive Belgian yeast aromatics. When taken care of, they present with super bright tropical fruit characters balanced by a subtle sweetness from the malt bill.

Whatcha Wanna Know? Wednesday – May 9th, 2018

This is only fun if I take it seriously, right? Okay, deal.

For the Top Ramen, I’m going to make it more specific and assume that it’s the hot & spicy chicken flavor packet, one of my favorites, and I’m going to go with The Calling IPA. Hops and spicy foods are an obvious match, but I dig how fruity the hops are in the calling and that the higher ABV (8.5%) causes the beer to present with just a touch of sweetness. The hops and spicy flavors amplify each other, but the fruitiness of the hop flavor/aroma and the ABV sweetness also serve to tone the flames down just a touch. Plus, if you’re going to be eating Top Ramen (which I regularly do), it’s nice to have a bit of a buzz.

For the boiled hotdog on white bread (Your specificity on this one is a bit concerning.), I’m going with KC Pils. This seems like something I’d only eat in my backyard so I’m going with the absolutely perfect backyard Kansas City lager. White bread is a little sweet and there’s just a touch of malt sweetness in KC Pils that will match up with that while the subtle Saaz hopping provides punctuation to the sweetness. Since a boiled hotdog isn’t the most flavorful thing on the planet (AKA delicate), I don’t want to overwhelm it with a giant beer so I think KC Pils is a perfect choice. Plus, it’s in a can so I can set the hotdog down on top of the can in between bites/drinks.

I think that a fried bologna sandwich must be paired with our original beer, Pale Ale. I’m assuming there’s some tangy, spicy mustard on this sandwich so I love the idea of some caramel malt sweetness playing with the vinegar in the mustard and the citrus notes of Cascade hops keeping everything light and fruity. There’s going to be a touch of caramelization on the meat and I think that will sing right alongside the Cara 50 and Cara 120 in the malt bill of Pale Ale. Plus, a classic deserves a classic.

Finally, for the PB&J, Jam Band is the obvious choice here. A blend of raspberry, blueberry, cherry and tart cherry juices are right on with the jelly and the slightly tart blonde ale base beer will cut through the richness of the peanut butter. I want this right now, man.

This one’s easy. I’m going with the original Saison from when the Smokestack Series debuted back in late 2007. I’d say the beer was a bit before its time, but I love how delicate, floral and fruity it was. I’ll admit that I didn’t know a ton about the style back in 2007, but when I started brewing at BLVD in March of 2008, I was in full-blown love with this beer. I don’t remember exactly when in 2008 we stopped brewing Saison, but I’d definitely brewed it (and drank it) enough to be head over heels.

Right now, Single-Wide IPA, Tank 7 and The Calling are brewed at Duvel in Belgium for portions of the European market. No Boulevard beer sold in the US comes from Belgium and all other beers that are seen in export markets are produced in Kansas City at Boulevard Brewing Company. At this moment, there are no plans for any breweries in our family to brew Duvel, except for the Duvel brewery in Belgium, of course.

When it comes to selecting fruit for beers, we employ two primary methods: trial and error. Seriously. When it comes to adding fruit to hoppy beers, we have a pretty good idea of what will work and what won’t, but when we’re looking at fruiting sour beers or other styles, we honestly just play around with very small amounts of beer and fruit until we have something we dig. Once we have a good handle on the base beer and how much (and what kind) of fruit we’re going to incorporate, we’ll brew a test batch and see what folks around the brewery and guests in the Beer Hall think. We’re also always on the lookout for great ideas. If you have anything, tweet it our way!

Whatcha Wanna Know? Wednesday - May 2nd, 2018

So, I wanted to give myself time to research this for an additional week and I’m glad I did because I found the best beer/baseball crossover name ever just now: Beer. Yep, Beer. Not much info is out there, but Beer played 10 games for the Lancaster Lanks back in 1901. Check out his Baseball Reference page.

I could go on, but I don’t think anything would be as good so I’ll drop the WWKW mic here.

Barring something super crazy, I think it’s going to be tough to match Beer Twitter’s outrage when it comes to glitter beer. Maybe if someone could come up with a way to make beer appear all crazy tie-dyed through adding drops of food color at pouring, they could dethrone glitter beer, but I don’t see that happening for a bit. I’ll openly admit that I’ve only had one glitter beer and that it didn’t do much for me, but I don’t necessarily understand the outrage. For me, it falls into the whole “drink what you like and let others do the same” category.

I really dig this question. First, I want to explain to everyone why most stores are organized by distributor and then brewery: It makes sense logistically for delivery folks, sales reps, brewery reps, etc. They know where their space in the store is so they know what they’re responsible for. It’s also waaay easier for delivery folks to drop off beer to just a couple spots in a store versus stocking shelves all over the place. Having said that, I think there are pros/cons to both.

If stores were organized by style, it would be easy to discover offerings from other breweries you may like based on current beers you already dig. Oh, you like RandomWordsHere IPA from Generic Brewing Company, check out its neighbor, Single-Wide IPA from Boulevard Brewing. It also makes it easier for someone who may not know much about beer to shop for someone who does. “Okay, Danner likes stouts. Let’s check out the stout section.” The downside for breweries is that their beers are split up throughout the store so you don’t see NewBeer Porter from Generic Brewing Company while you’re grabbing your favorite, OldStandby English Mild.

When stores are organized by brewery (as most are), it’s easier to find beers from your favorite breweries versus browsing shelves organized by style. You can go directly to Generic Brewing Company’s spot to see all the beers that store currently carries from them. The benefit for Generic Brewing Company is that all of their beers are together and it makes their presence look strong, especially if their packaging all carries similar (yet unique to each beer) branding to create what brewery folks refer to as a billboarding effect.

I see good in both approaches, but would love to hear from you. Hit me up with your thoughts/questions.

I’ve not and I think this is a cool topic. I exchanged a couple follow up tweets with Matt to make sure I understood the question and basically, we’re talking the motivation/rationale behind naming a pale ale “Pale Ale” or an imperial stout “Dark Truth.”

If you look back at BLVD historically, you’ll see that most of our names simply stated the style. This is true of a lot of breweries that started in the 80’s. Sierra Nevada is another example of a brewery that started out naming its core beers what they were: Pale Ale, Porter, Wheat, etc. I obviously wasn’t a craft beer consumer when Boulevard launched in ’89 (because I was 8), but I think it made a ton of sense to clearly communicate what your beer was in a time when folks had never heard of “craft beer” and beers like Pale Ale were considered “extreme beers.” Giving a beer a fanciful/brand name at the time would have created an additional layer of complexity to work through so I think it was wise to get to the point and the call the beer what it was.

Since we started that way, it allows us the ability to fall back on that from time to time. Recent examples include Tropical Pale Ale, American Kolsch and Ginger Lemon Radler. You could argue that “Tropical” and “American” are descriptive (and I’d agree), but when it comes to being able to trademark names like that, you just can’t as they’re too generic. This obviously doesn’t mean that they don’t say anything specific about the beer, though, especially in the case of Ginger Lemon Radler. If you already know what a Radler is, you have a pretty good idea of what you’re getting in a beer named Ginger Lemon Radler.

On the other hand, we do give beers fanciful/brand names and I’d venture to say that we’d prefer to do that in most cases. With craft beer far more widespread (yet still a 13% market share) than it was in the 80’s, there’s a ton of competition and shelves are becoming increasingly crowded. Anything a brewery can do to differentiate their beers, whether it’s by brand names or packaging design, is (in theory) a leg up on the competition. The challenge with this is that with so many breweries out there (with tons of clever folks working for them), coming up with an original name that isn’t already taken or trademarked is incredibly difficult. Whenever we sit down to name a beer, we always search Google and Untappd before getting too excited about a name. If those searches are clear, we’ll perform a public COLA registry search. Following that, our legal folks will perform trademark/registration searches to make sure a name is free before we commit to it and begin developing the look for the name. It’s crazy. It’s why we get super excited when names like Changeling, Requiem for a Pancake, Tough Kitty or Bundle Up are available.

Whatcha Wanna Know? Wednesday – April 25th, 2018

First off, let me say that I look forward to the Parkville Microfest each year as it represents the kickoff of the festival season in Kansas City. The weather doesn’t always cooperate, but brewers and attendees are unphased by it and turn out in droves to taste beer and listen to music. I love it!

For Parkville, we always try to throw down a bit and bring some fancy beers alongside fan favorites and this year is no different. We’re pouring:

Bourbon Barrel Quad – draft

City Market Cider – draft

Foeder Project #2 – bottles

Ginger Lemon Radler – draft

Hibiscus Gose – draft

Jam Band – draft

One Love – Imperial Stout Aged in Jamaican Rum Barrels – bottles

Rye on Rye on Rye on Rye – draft

Unfiltered Wheat Beer – draft

¡Vamos! Mexican-Style Lager – draft

You’ll notice we’re pouring One Love and Rye on Rye on Rye on Rye from the Brewhouse One Series, something we haven’t done at a festival yet so I’m super excited to be able to share these beers with folks who weren’t able to make it by the Tours & Rec Center on release days. Since we’re pouring a total of ten beers, we didn’t bring more than a 1/6 bbl (or equivalent) of any one beer so if there’s something you absolutely must try, I’d suggest stopping by table 11 early in the fest. I’ll be there!

At the risk of giving super generic advice here, honestly, the best way to learn about the technical aspects of tasting beer is to drink everything. Seriously. Try every beer you can get your hands on to figure out which styles you dig and which you don’t.

From there, I’d suggest grabbing a couple of classic books: Tasting Beer by Randy Mosher and How to Brew by John Jay Palmer. The latter is a homebrewing book, but it does a great job of exploring the science/chemistry behind brewing in a very easy to understand way. With Tasting Beer you’ll figure out what you’re tasting and with How to Brew you’ll get the why of it all.

If you’re really looking to dork out, I’d suggest checking out some of the off-flavor training kits and courses that folks are offering these days. I’ll warn you that beginning to study off-flavors results in pulling the curtain back a bit so there will definitely be some beers you currently love that will be absolutely ruined by sensory training.

Also, join a homebrewing club (even if you don’t plan to homebrew) to taste beers from brewers of varying skill levels. Novice brewers will often bring problematic beer to meetings to get advice from more experienced brewers and tasting real off-flavors (not from kits) in a variety of styles will help you greatly.

My final piece of advice would be to never stop having fun with it. As someone who’s been through sensory training, there are times that I have to just shut it off and drink (maybe not enjoy) a not so great beer. Even after ten years at BLVD, I continue to learn new things, but I never want to lose my ability to just shut up and drink a beer.

You’re right, Matt. I toe the “never say never” line pretty hard most of the time, but with Allegro Non Troppo (or other Brewhouse One Series beers for that matter), I don’t think any will graduate into regular/full-time releases given the nature of the series itself. It’s not that we’re intentionally producing super small batches for these releases. The size of the batch is dictated by raw materials, barrel space, aging time and other logistical constraints. For Allegro Non Troppo, we aged the beer on 2,000 pounds of freshly crushed Tempranillo grapes for five months at the end of the process. I just don’t see us being able to source those grapes on the regular to have this beer move beyond a one-off, limited release.

So I’m not all bad news, I will say that there are several sour projects in the works right now that are going to be fantastic. I try to stay up to date on what our barrel crew is working on and taste barrels when I can and I’ve had some really great samples lately. Stay tuned!

While we don’t share the exact source of our house Belgian yeast strain, I can tell you that when I offer advice to homebrewers looking to clone The Sixth Glass, I steer them towards Wyeast 3787, their high gravity Trappist strain. This is the same yeast that we use to ferment Tank 7 as well. Since I can’t share too much info on that, here’s a clone recipe of The Sixth Glass:

Malt

Pale Malt – 83.9%

Cara 300 – 6.3%

Munich Malt – 5.5%

Malted Wheat – 4.4%

Mash Schedule

64 C – 50 minutes

68 C – 20 minutes

73 C – 15 minutes

Mash off at 78 C

Hops

Magnum 12.9 IBU at 15 minutes after beginning of boil

Styrian Golding 9 IBU at 15 minutes after beginning of boil

Styrian Golding 4.8 IBU at 55 minutes after beginning of boil

We target a beginning of boil gravity of 15.9 and add the following sugars:

Dextrose for 1.2 degree increase in degrees Plato

Brown Sugar for .9 degrees Plato

Dark Brown Sugar for .5 degrees Plato

Dark Candi Syrup for 1.7 degrees Plato

We shoot for 20.8 degrees Plato at the end of the boil and cool the wort to 19C and pitch with our house Belgian yeast strain. We ferment at 19C until we reach 7 degrees Plato at which point we temp up to 25 for the remainder of fermentation. Final gravity is 2.6.

Specs

ABV - 10.2

IBU - 22

EBC - 73.2

I hesitate to mention a specific amount of Saison Brett that we produce each year as it varies. We’re a little unique in that we brew to order based on amounts of a given beer requested by our distributors. For that reason, the amount we brew of certain seasonals can swing a bit year to year, but Saison Brett is definitely one of our smaller runs.

To the second part of your question, no. We have an opportunity to buy beers like Saison Brett, Love Child blends or Rye on Rye on Rye at the same time you do. We typically tap kegs in the Beer Hall and have bottles in our Tours & Rec Gift Shop on the same day the beer releases to the public in Kansas City. It’s worth noting that folks on our tasting panel definitely try beers before they’re released so yeah, we taste the beer before the public does, but we don’t hold an employee pre-sale before Saison Brett drops.

Whatcha Wanna Know? Wednesday - April 18th, 2018

Yes and no. For the most part, the Beer Hall and Tasting Room serve as our first testing grounds for new beers that are in development. If beers sell well and we receive positive feedback, there’s a good chance they’ll be successful as real releases. Having said that, we also take advantage of the opportunity to brew small batches of styles we’re excited about or explore using new ingredients and techniques. Recent beers that fall into that second category would be TEST – Chocolate Cookie Stout and Barrel-Aged Messenger Spiced Mocha Stout. Here’s the deal, though. At the end of the day, we never say never so I can’t say for certain that beers originally brewed as one-offs will never return.

I can’t speak for what folks at other breweries do, but I definitely view Untappd as a valuable resource for learning how our beers are perceived. The thing that I dig about Untappd is that while there are definitely users who would self-identify as “beer dorks” (a term I use lovingly as I consider myself one), there are also tons of regular people who use Untappd to keep track of beers they like/don’t like. I think having that perspective is super cool.

I have no idea on the second part of the question, but I can tell you that we see over 24,000 check-ins per month and have over 3 million check-ins overall.

Prior to the completion of our canning hall in Kansas City, we were working with a couple of trusted partner breweries (Firestone Walker, Summit, Third Street Brewhouse) to produce/package our canned beers, but I’m very excited to share that, as of this morning, our Kansas City canning hall is 100% complete and all future canned beers will come from Boulevard Brewing Company!

Check out the Kansas City Business Journal article here!

We employ dextrose in a couple different applications. The most common use is as a priming sugar for our bottle conditioned beers. The dextrose is mixed with warm, UV sterilized water and dosed into the beer during filtration. The bottle conditioning yeast is blended in as the beer flows from the bright tank to the bottling line.

In terms of carbonation, nearly 100% of the CO2 in solution in our 750ml bottles is derived from this secondary, bottle conditioning fermentation.

The other use for dextrose in our brewery is primarily in our Belgian-style and a couple of our higher ABV beers. Since dextrose is 100% fermentable, adding it to boiling wort on the brewhouse allows us to boost the starting gravity (resulting in boosting the ABV) without adding body to the beer. This is a fairly traditional practice for most Belgian styles like tripels and quads.

Whatcha Wanna Know? Wednesday - April 11th, 2018

It is. A couple years back when we expanded in our original cellar, we pulled out six 105 bbl fermentation tanks and dropped in eight 300 bbl tanks designed to hold our dry-hopped beers. One of those 105 bbl tanks was the original FV 7 that held the first batch of Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale. I threw out the idea of cutting the top of the tank off, burying it in the ground and turning it into a giant stainless steel pool. Unsurprisingly, that didn’t happen and we sold the tank to our friends at Rahr & Sons in Fort Worth, Texas. I’ve been told that they point it out on brewery tours so the legend of FV 7 lives on!

This is a great question. I find the concept of (and what folks view as) gateway beers fascinating. For BLVD, we typically tell folks that Unfiltered Wheat Beer, American Kolsch and KC Pils are great entry points for new craft beer drinkers, but that doesn’t mean that someone who exclusively drinks whiskey or cocktails wouldn’t be able to jump right into enjoying massive beers like Rye on Rye on Rye, Bourbon Barrel Quad or Whiskey Barrel Stout.

As far as a style that I think is underrepresented, I'll go with American Brown Ales. To me, drinking a really great brown ale is like opening up a fresh bag of chocolate malt. I dig the bittersweet chocolate notes and subtle sweetness that are usually balanced by just a tough of earthy/herbal hops. I love it!

Alright, you’ve played to my love of baseball and beer so I’m definitely going all out on this one, man.

1 – Unfiltered Wheat Beer

It’s the BLVD beer that everyone drinks when they first cross over to craft beer. It’s been around for a LONG time, but still manages to get the job done when it’s called upon. As our top selling beer, Wheat Beer gets my nod for the leadoff spot.

2- Pale Ale

Pale Ale is the first beer John McDonald brewed and continues to be a brewery favorite. While it was recently passed in sales by Tank 7, Pale Ale remains our #3 beer, but given that it’s my daily go to, I’m counting on Pale Ale to get on base or at least move Unfiltered Wheat Beer over with a solid sacrifice.

3 – Tank 7

Tank 7 is a heavy hitter, but still has some speed given that it’s amazingly drinkable for an 8.5% ABV beer. I trust that Tank 7 could bring everyone home, but it’s still light enough on its feet that I view it as a threat on the base paths.

4 – Bourbon Barrel Quad

Having recently gone year-round, Bourbon Barrel Quad is getting tons of at bats and its 11.2% ABV is definitely capable of clearing the bases so to speak. While BBQ is definitely boozy and rich, the high carbonation keeps the beer nimble and balanced. You don’t often ask your #4 hitter to bunt, but Bourbon Barrel Quad is well rounded and a total team player.

5 – Whiskey Barrel Stout

If you’re looking for an incarnation of the Bash Brothers (I’m a diehard Royals fan, but LOVED Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco when they were A’s.), Bourbon Barrel Quad and Whiskey Barrel Stout have you covered. Also a year-round beer, Whiskey Barrel Stout is always sharp and ready to go. With one third of the final blend being composed of fresh beer, the whiskey barrel character is tempered just enough that you’re aware that you’re drinking beer making WBC capable of going from straight pull to the opposite field and everywhere in between.

6 – Saison Brett

I believe that Saison Brett is the best beer we brew, but given that it takes a little time in our warehouse to develop the brett character, it’s not always ready to head to the plate at the beginning of the game. Saison Brett benefits from standing on the top stair of the dugout, watching a few pitches and getting right before stepping up. Give Saison Brett time to develop and you’ll be greatly rewarded.

7 – KC Pils

You’re always looking for a little pop in the bottom of your lineup to keep the pitcher guessing and KC Pils has seen some pretty amazing sales growth over the past year. It’s not massive and ripped like Tank 7, but the amazingly balanced KC Pils can do it all in nearly every situation.

8 – American Kolsch

American Kolsch and KC Pils often swap places in the lineup depending on who you’re facing and what the conditions are like. Equally reliable and every bit as appealing, American Kolsch and KC Pils also make amazing partners in the middle infield. They’re so good together that you forget they’re individuals as you watch them function as a unit on the field.

9 – The Calling

Catching and hitting ninth is The Calling IPA. Deceptively drinkable for a beer that’s 8.5% ABV and 75 IBUs, this beer is a far cry from an easy out. Providing a bit of power in the bottom of the order, The Calling serves as the inspirational leader in the clubhouse and a super sold backstop in the field. And just like our catcher, it smells so damned good.

Whatcha Wanna Know? Wednesday - April 4th, 2018

Apart from Whiskey Barrel Stout going year-round and Manhattan Cask Imperial Stout dropping as a limited release Smokestack Series beer earlier this year, we don’t have any other stout releases on our 2018 calendar, but we are tapping a test batch of Chocolate Cookie Stout very soon in our Tours & Rec Center Beer Hall. Brewed with Oreo wafers, cacao nibs, brown sugar and vanilla, this beer is super tasty! Keep an eye on our Beer Hall draft lineup to see when it goes on.

In all fairness, I’ve never been at a brewery during the startup phase, so this is purely conjecture, but I’d say that your first investment should be in great people who truly care about the beer they’re making. You can fill your brewery with the finest, fanciest equipment, but if you don’t have awesome people who are wholly dedicated to brewing, packaging, marketing, serving and selling the best beer possible, it’s all for naught. I don’t recall who said it or how exactly they put it, but in discussing quality assurance/quality control someone once said something along the lines of, “If you hire great people who assure quality every day, you don’t have to worry as much about controlling quality.”

Folks are going to cry, “HOMER!” when they read this, but honestly, it was Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat Beer. It definitely wasn’t the only beer I drank when I first started exploring craft, but it’s the one I drank the most. I was working at Zio’s Italian Kitchen when I turned 21 and we had Unfiltered Wheat Beer on one of our four taps and all the bartenders dug it so it’s what I drank. I certainly drank my fair share of a wide variety of craft beers, but I always came back to Unfiltered Wheat Beer. I thought the addition of the lemon was cool too! I have a case of Wheat in my fridge at home right now.

I dig the timing of this question as I celebrated my ten year anniversary at Boulevard over the weekend. My official start date as a full-time Boulevardian was on March 31st, 2008, but I worked part-time on the Smokestack Series bottling line starting back on January 18, 2008. That was my first job at BLVD. I was the cork guy. I would spend around six hours during each Smokestack 750ml run stuffing corks into a PVC tube to shoot them over to the corker using compressed air. Back in those days, the corks had to be oriented a certain way so it could be a little stressful at times. Send a cork through the wrong way and it’s going to mess up a bottle and slow the line down. This mistake also came with a healthy dose of peer shaming.

Starting on March 31st, I worked on the brewhouse full-time brewing wort. I did that for five years until the beginning of 2013 when I crossed over to the marketing department. During my time on the brewhouse, I became the guy that would attend a lot of local tastings, beer dinners and festivals. I LOVED it and soon it became a big part of my schedule, so much so that it made sense to pull me off the brewhouse and into a role that allowed me the schedule freedom to do a little more traveling to represent the brewery. For the sake of this discussion, we’ll refer to this as my third job with Boulevard.

Near the beginning of 2014, I picked up social media duties for the brewery and was responsible for creating content for our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feeds. I LOVED this, but given my travel schedule and other responsibilities, it wasn’t always easy to stay 100% on top of things so in late June of 2017, Pat Mullin assumed the role of Digital Marketing Manager and I began what could be considered by fifth or fourth and a half (is that a thing?) role at the brewery. I maintained everything I was doing apart from the social media piece, but suddenly I had more time to focus on writing blog posts to introduce new beers or discuss topics I find interesting and wanted to share with a larger audience in the Brewer’s Blog section of our website.

Currently, I continue to travel to represent the brewery at events and new market launches. I write a TON (including this series of blog posts that I absolutely love!) and also involve myself in branding/naming discussions, the onboarding/training of new sales hires and a role that involves some internal education on our beers, the brewing process and the industry as a whole.

I’m stupid lucky and would have to say that my current role is my favorite so far, but since I plan to work at BLVD until I retire, I'm excited to see what my 8th, 9th or 10th jobs here might look like.

When you smell/taste a spicy/clove character in a beer (to which cloves have not been added), you’re experiencing a compound called 4-vinyl guaiacol, commonly referred to as 4-VG. Technically speaking, it’s a phenolic compound that is produced by most yeasts during fermentation, but is typically below threshold level so you might not detect it. Some Belgian strains create more than others and it’s definitely a prominent characteristic in German-style hefeweizens alongside isoamyl acetate which provides aromas of bananas.

I could dork out and go on and on here, but this article from Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine, does a great job of summarizing all things 4-VG.

It’s no secret that I absolutely love Saison Brett and feel that it’s one of our best beers so you know I’m going to answer any question about it. While I’d love to be able to drink Saison Brett year-round (without stocking up each time it’s released which is what I currently do), the challenges of making the beer all the time are big ones. Since we inoculate Saison Brett with brettanomyces at packaging, we effectively “infect” the bright tank and bottling line we’re using with a wild yeast strain. For this reason, we typically package Love Child blends and Saison Brett around the same time so that our Smokestack Series bottling crew only has to tear the bottling line apart once per year to perform a super deep cleaning/sanitation regiment to eliminate any brettanomyces from the equipment. It’s crazy, but just a few cells of brettanomyces left in the equipment could wreak havoc on future bottling runs of “clean beer” so our crew really gets after it with the cleaning and then our lab folks test samples of rinse water to ensure that absolutely zero brett is still hanging out. This is probably more than what you were looking for, but since I’d love to have the opportunity to drink Saison Brett year-round as well, I wanted to go into as much detail as possible. Definitely hit me up with any follow-up questions.

Whatcha Wanna Know? Wednesday - March 21st & 28th, 2018

Well, we're a day late, but with today being an off day we can talk about beer plans for tomorrow night. I thought about simply answering this question, “Yes!” but I feel like I’m leaning towards suggesting going with ¡Vamos! Mexican-Style Lager while it’s still around. KC Pils (which I LOVE) is a year-round beer and can be your go to all season, but what’s out there for ¡Vamos! is it. When it’s gone it’s gone!

Learn more about ¡Vamos! Mexican-Style Lager here.

Oh, man. What does innovation not mean these days? It’s incredibly important to play, experiment and innovate continuously. If you don’t focus on brewing new beers using new techniques and raw materials, you can be left behind super quickly. It’s an exciting time in beer right now, but also a challenging one as beer drinkers are all about what’s new.

At Boulevard, we’re fortunate to still have our original 35 bbl brewhouse that Founder John McDonald purchased when he started the brewery back in 1989. We’ve obviously made several upgrades to the system over the years, but we still use it today to brew test beers, yeast propagation batches or festival/special one-offs. While 35 bbls seems like a lot of beer (and it sort of is), brewing a test batch that size allows us to pour the beer in our Tours & Rec Center Tasting Room and Beer Hall to get immediate feedback from guests. We also have the chance to take test kegs to local festivals so we can get a wide variety of feedback. This interaction is super valuable and allows us to make informed innovation decisions.

The process we use is pretty straightforward. If someone has a good idea for a beer, we’ll try it out. Beer ideas don’t need to come just from the brewing team. Everyone is welcome to pitch ideas. Once a direction is chosen, our brewers will noodle with the recipe and brew a test batch on our original brewhouse. If it passes all internal testing (including a tasting by our expert sensory panel), it goes on tap in the Tours & Rec Center and we pay close attention to sales and the feedback we receive. Beers that do well might be tweaked for a future “real” release or sometimes we nail it and no changes are made. Voila!

Folks ask this a lot and I feel like everyone is expecting a serious answer along the lines of, “We conduct research about potential partner breweries and do our best to make the most strategic choice and blah blah….”, but really, we make beer with people we like. For our most recent Collaboration with Arizona Wilderness and Creature Comforts, I shared this on our Brewer’s Blog:

Our friendship with Arizona Wilderness can be traced back to the second year of Boulevardia’s Taps & Tastes Experience. Given the complex nature of hosting breweries that don’t currently distribute to the state of Missouri, they were unable to pour their beer during the fest, but still attended as our guests to enjoy the weekend. The Arizona Wilderness boys (a way in which they often refer to themselves) became particularly smitten with Steven Pauwels (and who came blame them, really?) during the weekend and it’s safe to say the feeling was mutual. The following year, they were able to pour beer during the festival and impressed attendees (and brewery folks) with their inspired beers that pushed brewing boundaries while celebrating ingredients indigenous to Arizona.

We first met the Creature Comforts crew during a game of bocce ball played in Paso Robles during the Firestone Walker Invitational Beer Festival. Just the right amount of beer (and rosé) had been consumed that we decided to have a friendly wager on the match, our breweries. Fortunately for us, Team Boulevard was victorious and we didn’t have to turn the keys to our brewery over to our new friends from Georgia. In a moment of pure generosity later in the evening, Steven gave them their brewery back. Having become insta-friends, we spent a lot of time chatting, swimming, eating and of course drinking beers with the Creature Comforts folks during the weekend. Known for brewing an impressive range of styles with great technical accuracy, Creature Comforts is best known for their incredibly balanced yet juicy IPA, Tropicalia.

Our brewhouses, fermentation vessels, bright tanks, pipes and packaging lines are all sanitized using a method called CIP or clean-in-place. This means that everything is cleaned and sanitized without being disassembled, either through the use of spray balls in the tanks or circulating cleaning/sanitizing solutions through the pathways. For the most part, we use peracetic acid for sanitizing.

Yes, we definitely use designated tanks and equipment for handling our beers that are inoculated with lactobacillus and brettanomyces. It’s not that we’re necessarily afraid of those microbes, but we operate with a healthy level of respect for them. While we love the crisp acidity of Love Child No. 8 or the earthy funk of Saison Brett, we don’t want those characters to manifest in a batch of Pale Ale or Unfiltered Wheat Beer. All of our tanks that hold sour beer are at an offsite facility just a few blocks down Southwest Boulevard and our sour barrels are stored separately from our clean barrels. We also don’t ever run any beer with active lactic acid producing bacteria or brettanomyces through our main bottling line.

I’m sorry, it won’t, but I can tell you that Hibiscus Gose returns next week (in cans!), you’ll see new blends of Changeling and Love Child this year AND I’ve recently tasted some truly amazing sour projects that our barrel crew is working on. The most recent small batch sour, TEST – Golden Sour Ale with Peaches is no longer on in the Beer Hall, but you’ll see other small batch, fruited sours rotating through in the coming months. I’m excited!

If you’re looking to get into our offerings with a smooth transition from PBR, I’d suggest starting with KC Pils and American Kolsch. When I introduce these beers at dinners or tastings, I always finish my descriptions noting that they’re super drinkable “beer flavored beers.” For folks who haven’t tried many craft beers, I find that beers that are a little more crisp and refreshing seem the most familiar while still introducing a little more flavor and body.

Drop by the Beer Hall, man. I’ll taste some beers with you.

Whatcha Wanna Know? Wednesday – March 14th, 2018

Man, that was a great beer. Unfortunately, all that we produced was racked into kegs and poured in the Tours & Rec Center Beer Hall. While I’m not aware of any definite plans, I feel safe making a guess that it (or a very similar beer) will make a return at some point. You and I aren’t the only ones who absolutely loved Barrel-Aged Messenger Spiced Mocha Stout.

While we’re certainly aware of the haze craze, we don’t currently have plans to brew/release a New England IPA just yet. We have played around with a few variations on an Unfiltered IPA that sees massive dry-hopping additions and less filtration than usual, but we haven’t quite jumped to the super juicy side of things. While I could ramble on about the challenges a regional brewery faces regarding this style, I feel like the folks at Avery Brewing did a great job of explaining the challenges a regional/national brewery faces with the style. Check it out. Definitely let me know if you have any questions.I will say that now that our Kansas City canning hall is up and running, we’ll have a little more flexibility when it comes to packaging different styles and new beers.

In a festival setting, I definitely suggest drinking water between pours to not only cleanse the palate, but to keep hydrated. This may ick some people out, but I usually drink my rinse water between pours at beer festivals. I don’t always have a water bottle on me and rinse water is a helpful reminder to keep drinking water during a fest.

Beyond that, sensory experts suggest snacking on unsalted crackers or oyster crackers between tastes. Anything you can do to prevent palate fatigue while not introducing strong flavors that will prevent you from being able to taste the beer is great.

Whatcha Wanna Know? Wednesday – March 7th, 2018

Yes. Absolutely. Dolly Parton is a national treasure. Next question.

This question is, no doubt, spurred by the upcoming release of Rye on Rye on Rye on Rye, our next Brewhouse One Series beer. Before I break down the individual beers, I’ll toss out a reminder that Rye on Rye on Rye on Rye becomes available exclusively in the Boulevard Tours & Rec Center on Monday, March 12th and 10am. For beer details and info on the bottle release, head to my Brewer’s Blog post that introduces the beer.

For the beers themselves, I’ll provide some condensed details, but each beer name will link to a corresponding blog post from the Brewer’s Blog.

Rye on Rye

Rye on Rye, first brewed back in 2010, is our original Templeton Rye barrel-aged beer. A rather sturdy beer composed of our two-row base malt layered with German rye, English crystal rye, Cara 50 and Munich malt and then accented with brown sugar, dark brown sugar and dark candi syrup, the base beer for Rye on Rye is hopped with Magnum, Citra and Styrian Golding hops. Following primary fermentation with Scottish ale yeast, Rye on Rye is transferred to freshly emptied Templeton Rye barrels. Following aging, optimal barrels are selected and blended with 33% fresh beer to create a delicate balance between spicy, slightly boozy rye whiskey barrel characters and the base beer. The most recent release of Rye on Rye is composed of beers that range in age from six to 18 months.

12% ABV, 33 IBUs

Rye on Rye on Rye

Inspired by the success of our "X" series of special Imperial Stout releases, we embarked on a journey to the outer reaches of our popular Rye on Rye. For this release, a rich, tawny rye ale is aged in first-use rye whiskey barrels then transferred to yet another set of first-use rye whiskey barrels for a second aging, effectively resulting in "Rye on Rye on Rye." Rye on Rye on Rye is 100% barrel-aged.

14.6% ABV, 33 IBUs

Rye on Rye on Rye on Rye

Pouring deep garnet in color, Rye on Rye on Rye on Rye pops with aromas of spicy, fruity rye malt and massive notes of rye whiskey, vanilla, toffee and charred oak. Certainly warming at 15.5% ABV, Rye on Rye on Rye on Rye is of medium body offering chewy caramel/toffee malt character balanced by earthy, herbal, citrusy Styrian Golding and Citra hops that give way to sweet, spicy rye whiskey character in a slow sipper that blurs the line between beer and whiskey.

Rye on Rye on Rye on Rye was created using the following aging regiment:

First Aging – 10 Year Canadian Rye Whiskey barrels – 1 year

Second Aging – Templeton Rye barrels – 6 months

Third Aging – Woodford Rye barrels – 6 months

Rye on Rye on Rye on Rye is 100% barrel-aged.

15.5% ABV, 21 IBUs

Questions? Let me know!

Following the discussion of Rye on Rye and Rye on Rye on Rye and Rye on Rye on Rye on Rye, this seems like a fitting time to mention that my non-beer go-to beverage is whiskey. I obviously drink mostly beer at home, but when I want something not beer, I typically make an Old Fashioned or a Manhattan. I’ll drink a little bit of wine here and there, but it makes me feel waaaay different than beer does so I don’t reach for it as often.

Oh, man. I wish it was as simple as just deciding to work at Boulevard and then making that happen. I fell in love with craft beer and the idea of it right around my 21st birthday. I had a buddy who was a brewer in a local pub and he invited me down for lunch and beers on my 21st. As I was walking into the pub, I noticed him climbing out of one of the brewhouse vessels after cleaning up and that’s when it hit me, “Whoa! People make beer!” Up to that moment, I hadn't given much thought to the idea of actual people making beer. I just thought that it came from giant factories. That’s when my obsession began.

I spent the next few years bouncing around from beer bar to beer bar attempting to learn as much as I could before I landed a gig serving/bartending at 75th Street Brewery in Waldo in November of 2005. I worked my way into the brewhouse by June before going into management because I thought I might want to open my own brewery at some point down the road. I quickly learned that I wasn’t “management material” so I moved on from that around a year later and snagged a job as the brewer’s assistant at the Power Plant Brewery & Restaurant in Parkville, Missouri.

While working at Power Plant, I was bartending at a sports bar in town and working part-time on the Smokestack Series bottling line for Boulevard. From January to March, I spent as much time as I could working for Boulevard attempting to learn as much as I could hoping to work myself into a full-time spot. As “luck” would have it, I was fired from my bartending job on St. Patrick’s Day so I called Boulevard Brewmaster Steven Pauwels to see if there were any full-time openings I could check out. I interviewed for a bottling line job, accepted that and proceeded to celebrate. Well, the very next day (Tuesday, March 26th at 6:25pm), Steven called me to say that while he’d offered me the bottling line job, a brewer had just given notice and he’d like to give me that job instead. BAM! I was over the moon. I called my fiancé immediately and we lost our minds. I’d gotten a job brewing at BLVD!

Over the next few years while working on the brewhouse, I started attending a TON of public facing events to represent the brewery to beer drinkers, so much so that in 2013, I was offered the chance to cross over to the marketing team to create the role that I occupy today.

As I approach my ten year anniversary, coming up on March 31st, I’m exceedingly grateful that BLVD took a chance on a goofy looking, long haired dude back in 2008 and that I’ve been super fortunate to work for great folks along the way. As Boulevardians, we’re also very lucky to have the amazing support we’ve had from Kansas City and the Midwest over the past 29 years.

In the first house that my wife and I owned, I would definitely do the shower beer here and there, but in our current home, I have dominion over a bathroom that just has a small shower so I don’t feel that I’m talented enough to drink beer and keep soap/shampoo out of my beer at the same time. But back in the early days, I would usually reach for something crisp and refreshing like KC Pils or Ginger Lemon Radler. I’d always opt to drink straight from the bottle/can due to the aforementioned lack of talent. If I were a little bit shorter, I could probably go for a bath beer, but I haven’t fit comfortably in a tub in years. Everyone reading will have to have a bathing beer for me next time!

Definitely. Now that we have the Beer Hall in the Tours & Rec Center, more test beers are available to the general public than ever before, but there are still batches that don’t make it to the Tasting Room or Beer Hall or don’t really have any trajectory for life beyond being a test beer.

It’s pretty rare that a beer turns out completely different than what the brewing team was shooting for, but it definitely happens. We obviously don’t love dumping beer, but when it’s not up to our high standards, it’s the right thing to do.

When developing beers that are likely to make our seasonal or limited release lineups, we’ve typically done enough research and tasting that we feel the style/direction has a future so it’s not often that those test brews result in a beer that’s wildly different than what we expected.

Whatcha Wanna Know? Wednesday – February 28th, 2018

First off, I’m excited you’re coming to Boulevardia this year. It’s going to be SO much fun! As a bit of a Royals fan (understatement is fun), I don’t feel like there are any bad seats at the K, but I definitely have spots I prefer over others. First off, Craft & Draft is baseball/beer/food heaven! It’s where you’ll find the biggest selection of BLVD beers on draft and in bottles and cans as well as craft beers from local players and regional/national breweries.

If you want to take a stroll through the outfield experience, swing by the Radler Station and Hop Stop and you’re not too far from Kansas City BBQ and super fancy hotdogs. I have to say, though, my favorite spot to grab a beer is at the Boulevard Pub just to the first base side of the Diamond Club. They typically have at least six BLVD beers on tap and there’s a ton of food (including more fancy hotdogs) just a few steps away. It’s also in close proximity to great seats and the escalators to get to seats in the upper level.

No matter what type of experience you’re looking for, you’re never going to be too far away from your next Boulevard beer. Okay, now I’m ready. Is it March 29th yet?

I miss Collaboration No. 3 – Stingo as well! Brewing that beer and getting to know Dann and Martha from Pretty Things was an amazing time. While I doubt the beer will return, I recently had a buddy ask for a homebrewer friendly version of the recipe. Here’s what I shared:

Malt

Maris Otter – 35.6%

Fawcett Halcyon – 20.7%

Fawcett Pearl – 20.7%

Pale malt – 3%

Fawcett Amber – 7.3%

Fawcett Crystal II – 10.4%

Mash Schedule

Mash in at 64 C

64 C – 25 minutes

73 C – 20 minutes

Mash off at 75 C

We target a beginning of boil gravity of 15.8 Plato and boil for 70 minutes targeting 18 at the end of the boil. 1.7 Plato comes from an addition of brown sugar midway through the boil.

Hops

East Kent Golding – 5.9 IBUs at 98 C

East Kent Golding – 25.7 IBUs at 15 minutes after the beginning of the boil

Fuggle – 2.4 IBUs at knockout

We cool the wort to 19 C and pitch with Wyeast 1469 – Yorkshire Ale Yeast. We ferment at 18 C until we reach 7 Plato at which point we temp up to 21 for the remainder of fermentation. Final gravity is 3.2.

Specs

ABV – 8.5

IBU – 35

Okay, so there’s all of the above, but where it gets tricky is that we brewhouse soured 15% of the total volume we packaged to give the beer a tartness/acidity that would have been present in the style historically. Additionally, 42% of the blend was aged on medium toast oak chips.

From where I’m sitting (just a floor above the BLVD Tours & Rec Center Beer Hall), I view blending’s contribution to creating consistent beer as an absolute blessing. For bottling or keg runs of most of our beers, multiple tanks are blended to create the final batch. While we’ve definitely nailed our year-round and seasonal beers over the course of the past 28+ years, there are still going to be subtle variations batch to batch coming off the brewhouse. The luxury of blending allows us to release a batch of Unfiltered Wheat Beer or Pale Ale that tastes just like the last bottle you pulled from the fridge. When you reach for a Boulevard Pale Ale, you expect (and deserve) to drink a beer that tastes like the previous Pale Ale you enjoyed.

I have! I was lucky enough to be invited over in June of 2014, just a few months after Boulevard officially joined the Duvel Moortgat family. I’d never been to Europe before and the trip was absolutely amazing! We spent our days touring the breweries in our little craft beer family and sitting in on marketing presentations and other meetings to get a feel for our new beer brothers and sisters, each brewery’s individual identity and the beers themselves. While there, we visited Duvel, Brasserie d’Achouffe, Liefmans and De Koninck. In the evening, we spent time exploring the surrounding cities with colleagues to get a feel for Belgian beer and food culture. I won’t lie. Following the evening activities, I also checked out the late night life. I’m a real bang for my buck kinda guy and wanted to take it all in. I consider myself very fortunate to have been invited over and it was a great experience that made me feel even better than I already did about Boulevard teaming up with Duvel. We have some great people in Belgium who are absolutely crushing it when it comes to brewing, packaging, marketing and selling world class beer.

These are similar questions so I’ll answer them together. First off, congrats to you both on making great choices. Boulevardia is going to be a ton of fun this summer and I’m really excited to host Taps & Tastes inside Hale Area this year!

Because I travel to so many beer festivals around the country each year, I’m often asked for advice on how to maximize your time so I feel like I could go on and on and on with this, but I’ll keep it simple and focus on a few key points.

1 – Drink water. Seriously. Water is your friend. In addition to cleansing your palate (and rinsing your glass) between tastes, water will keep you hydrated. I can’t stress the importance of this when you’re in a kid in the candy store type situation at a beer fest with tons of fancy beer. We allow folks to bring in empty water bottles/pouches to fill within Boulevardia and Taps & Tastes. Definitely do that. Also, I drink my rinse water that I use to refresh my glass. Each time there’s water in your glass, drink it.

2 – Know and accept that you’re not going to get to try every beer on the list. It’s borderline impossible and just a bad idea. With 60 breweries pouring two to four beers each in 2oz samples, it’s not realistic to plan to drink 22.5 pints of beer over the course of a few hours. Just don’t do it. Apart from the sheer volume to stomach real estate and personal responsibility aspects of it, some beers will be in high demand and won’t make it through the entire festival. We do ask breweries to bring a minimum amount of each beer, but just know that some beers will run out before you have a chance to get to them. Knowing and accepting this will help you avoid unnecessary frustration.

3 – Eat. This goes back to the points I made regarding water. At a beer festival, food is your friend. And at Taps & Tastes, we’ve done our best to curate a collection of some of the best restaurants in the Kansas City area and these folks throw down and bring their A game. In addition to soaking up alcohol, awesome food can elevate beer drinking. Try to create cool pairings with the fancy beer and food available during the fest.

4 – Plan your attack. Picking up from my second point and knowing/accepting you can’t get to everything, make a list of breweries/beers you absolutely want to hit and head to those tables first. If you’re really into a certain style, take note of what breweries are pouring before the festival (The beer list will be released a week or two out.) and jot out a map/route. In a large festival it’s easy to waste time zigging and zagging around the festival so try to work out an efficient route between the beers you absolutely need to taste.

5 – Be cool. Have fun. I’ve been to way too many festivals to count since I started in brewing back in 2006, but I’m still not tired of them. What I love is that we all enter the beer festival space and drop whatever’s happening in the outside world for a few hours while we hang out with friends, kick it with strangers, dance to some music and enjoy tasty beers.

If you have any questions leading up to the festival, don’t hesitate to reach out to me if it’s something Taps & Tastes related or hit up Boulevardia for general festival questions. I’m looking forward to an amazing weekend!

Whatcha Wanna Know? Wednesday – February 21st, 2018

If you’re going to eliminate the obvious choice of curling, I guess I’ll go with ski jumping. I’m crazy fascinated by it. They fly! I can’t imagine that I’m particularly aerodynamic, but I feel like I could build up some mean speed headed down the ramp (or whatever it’s called) to get decent air on the initial jump. I have zero confidence in my ability to land gracefully, but those few seconds of flight would be totally worth it. I imagine I’d only survive one jump, but I’m down.

Wow. I’ve had a ton of homebrewed beers since I started brewing professionally back in 2006 and luckily, most have been pretty good. If I have to pick one or two that stand out, I’ll go all the way back to 2007 when we held a homebrew competition at 75th Street Brewery for the first one. The best beer I tasted was an Orval clone that absolutely nailed it! As someone who appreciates Belgian styles and loves what brettanomyces can contribute to a well made beer, this one checked all the boxes for me. It had that beautiful floral/earthy hop aroma and the brett funk was right on. I can still taste this beer when I think about it. The other beer that immediately jumps out to me is a strawberry Berliner Weisse this past week in Louisville, Kentucky. The brewer added a TON of whole strawberries during secondary fermentation and the beer was a total strawberry bomb with just the right amount of acidity to prevent it from being super cloying. I’d like another glass of that, please.

The series or group into which a particular beer falls determines the bottle shape/size. For the group of beers we refer to as core beers (Unfiltered Wheat Beer, Pale Ale, Bully! Porter, etc.), we use the heritage (shorter/stubby) bottle. For Smokestack Series beers (Tank 7, The Calling, Bourbon Barrel Quad, Whiskey Barrel Stout, etc.), we use the longneck bottle that mimics the shape of the original 750ml bottle we used to launch the Smokestack Series. The idea is that the shape of the bottle allows it to be immediately identified as being a Smokestack beer as opposed to being one of our core/seasonal beers. The shape/size of the bottle doesn’t have any impact on the beer. It’s used to simply create a visual separation between the two families of beer.

It’s pretty rare that we have a beer turn out completely different than we expected, but I do remember when we brewed the first test batch of Two Jokers Double Wit. For folks who might not remember this Smokestack Series seasonal, Two Jokers was an imperial Belgian-style witbier that was brewhouse soured and then spiced with orange peel, coriander, cardamom, pink peppercorns and lavender. When writing a recipe for a hoppy beer, we have a good idea of how many IBUs and what sort of contribution we’re going to get from hops based on the amount and point in the process we add them. There’s actually a formula we use to help us nail down bitterness units, but when it comes to spicing, there’s not really a lavender quotient so it’s all about trial and error. The first batch of Two Jokers we brewed had waaaaay too much lavender and ended up tasting the way cheap purple conditioner smells. We were bummed to do it, but that batch of beer found the drain. Fortunately, we learned a lot about how much of each spice to use in the process and have since started making tinctures that we add to small amounts of beer in our lab before brewing pilot batches.

Isn’t it a cool beer? I’ve definitely enjoyed Manhattan Cask Imperial Stout as it’s a total departure from some of the barrel-aged imperial stouts we’ve brewed in the past. And yes, it’s our first still/minimally carbonated beer. Head here for more info on Manhattan Cask.

As far as the second part of your question, if you were to go back in a time machine, most early beers would have been still as they were fermented in open vessels (pots, jars, etc) and then not bottle conditioned or force carbonated. Even to this day, there are lambic brewers/blenders producing gueuzes and other Belgian sour beers that are served still or with minimal carbonation. It wasn’t until recently that American craft brewers began dabbling in still/flat beers. There are several examples out there of folks taking a page from the Belgians and producing still sour beers, but most recently brewers have applied this technique to imperial stouts or other big, malt-forward beers. It makes a ton of sense with imperial stouts as higher carbonation tends to give beer a more fluffy/airy mouthfeel and can make the beer seem much lighter bodied than it actually is. Serving the beer still or with minimal carbonation allows for a unique sensory experience in which the beer envelopes your palate and camps out for a bit so you ultimately taste more of the beer and experience a heavier mouthfeel.

Since it’s our first go at this type of beer, we’d love to hear your feedback. Feel free to tag us with your thoughts on social media or head to Untappd to review the beer.

Whatcha Wanna Know? Wednesday – February 14th – 2018

When brewing the base wort for beers like Whiskey Barrel Stout, Cabernet Cask Imperial Stout or the recently released Manhattan Cask Imperial Stout, we only collect the first wort/runnings during lautering as opposed to running off the first wort and then sparging (rinsing any residual sugars off the grain with hot water) and collecting second runnings, a diluted/lower gravity wort. Doing this creates a wort that has a much higher end of boil gravity than if we collected both first and second runnings from one mash. So, what we do is mash in, collect first wort, grain out and then mash in again and only collect first wort from that mash. The wort is crazy viscous and looks like a bubbling tar pit in the kettle. It takes quite a long time to brew the beers this way, but the big/sticky body we gain as a result is totally worth it.

All of our draft and bottled beers are brewed and packaged in Kansas City, but we’re currently working with trusted partner breweries to brew and package our canned offerings while we complete our canning hall construction. We discussed this in a Brewer’s Blog post when we first announced that we were introducing canned beer. At the moment, BLVD cans come from Firestone Walker Brewing Company, Summit Brewing Company and Third Street Brewhouse. It’s incredibly important to note that Brewmaster Steven Pauwels, along with other members of our brewing and quality teams, makes regular visits on brewing and packaging days to ensure that everything is up to our super high standards. Additionally, all canned beer is shipped to Kansas City and tested by our lab and tasted by our expert tasting panel before a single drop of beer heads off to our distributors’ warehouses. Once our canning hall is complete, all Boulevard beer will be brewed and packaged in Kansas City.

I’m a huge fan of Dry Stout too, so let’s take a quick pause to reflect back on its deliciousness.

Okay. While it’s never an easy decision when it comes to retiring a beer, ultimately, we have to look at sales numbers. While we were definitely aware that Dry Stout had a super loyal (yet small) following, the issue was that it just wasn’t moving quickly enough. We were brewing the smallest size batches we could and still had issues with selling Dry Stout before it reached its best by date in our warehouse. When it comes down to that, we have to make the tough call to retire a beer. It’s worth noting (especially in the case of Dry Stout) that retirement doesn’t mean final, permanent death. We recently brewed a batch of Dry Stout for the Kansas City Renaissance Festival and were able to have the beer on tap in our Beer Hall as well as a few accounts around town. Given the love we saw for this small batch, I’d say it’s likely we’ll see small batches of Dry Stout again in the future, but I obviously can’t make any promises or share any plans as none exist.

A few years ago, I would’ve said, “NO WAY, MAN! GET THAT OUTTA HERE!” but right now, I think that’s a fantastic question. As craft beer continues to boom and we look to grow beyond a 13% share of the total beer market, it’s going to be important (read: necessary) to find new (or old) ways to bring folks into the fold who wouldn’t necessarily self-identify as “craft beer drinkers.” I think a beer like Jam Band, a brand new year-round fruit beer from us, is a great start to this as it appeals to beer drinkers who love fruit beer or are looking for something a little different as well as folks who might say they lean more towards wine or cocktails. Brewing beers that challenge the notion of what the average person thinks beer tastes like is exciting. But back on your question, yeah, I definitely think there’s an opportunity there, especially as beer drinkers show more interest in drinking local. Apart from the major brewers out there, I can only think of a handful of light beers produced by brewers that qualify for the designation of “craft” as determined by the Brewers Association. I do think it’s going to require a bit of shift in thought before something like a light craft beer truly takes off. I think we’ve built craft beer with mantras like “We’ll never brew light beer!” or “Here’s a list of things we’ll never do!” Maybe it’s time to more proactively ask craft beer fans, “What do you want to drink?” So...well...what do you want to drink? @ me.

Whatcha Wanna Know? Wednesday – February 7th – 2018

We have a saying around the brewery. “Pale Ale goes with cow.” I often refer to this when I’m thinking about beer and food pairings for beer dinners, blog posts or marketing materials. I’d say for the most part, it holds absolutely true. Pairing a big ole fancy burger? Pale Ale! Brisket? Pale Ale! Burnt Ends? Pale! Ale! For me, it’s a no-brainer go to at one of the many killer BBQ joints in Kansas City.

To branch out from Pale Ale, I’d suggest the following pairings:

Tank 7 – Lamb ribs

Beers with near effervescent carbonation flat out (get it?) rock with rich foods because they scrub the palate clean between bites. I dig the way the fruity Belgian yeast character tempers and plays off the slight gamey flavor in lamb. So good.

The Calling IPA – Smoked BBQ wings

For a while, any time someone asked for suggest pairings for our beers, I would do my best to work in smoked or buffalo wings because I believe they’re the perfect beer food. While I’ve diversified my suggested food pairings lately, I’m not willing to back down from this. Hoppy beers are a natural pairing with spicy foods because hops and spice tend to amplify each other resulting in really cool, intense flavors. I like The Calling in this instance because it’s higher ABV and ethanol tends to present as sweet so you also get a bit of a cooling effect. For me, this pairing hits both contrasting and comparing notes.

American Kolsch – Everything, man.

Seriously. Pairing a lighter beer that still has some subtle malt sweetness and just enough herbal/earthy/citrus hop character with BBQ nails it every time.

When asked about my favorite beer and food pairings, I always mention that my current favorite pairing is the beer in my hand with the food on my plate. I LOVE BBQ and obviously have an affinity for our beers so it’s pretty tough to mess up pairing our beers with the cuisine that Kansas City made famous.

Saison Brett - I believe this to be the best beer that we brew. It's sturdy enough to handle a voyage and makes me happy every single time I drink it. Becasue the beer is inoculated with brettanomyces at packaging, the brett strain remains active and I could harvest it to produce future batches of the beer. I would, however, have to isolate it from the champagne yeast we also add for bottle/keg conditioning, but if I’m picked to travel to Mars on a rocket, I’m assuming I’ve developed some skills.

Pale Ale – While I’m totally in love with Saison Brett, Pale Ale is my go to Boulevard beer. I can’t lie and say that I drink it every day, but it’s pretty close. If I’m somewhere with a really cool beer list, I usually like to have a Pale Ale to start the night because I know it’s always going to be solid and then I venture out. If I have room, I’ll have one at the end of the night too. Pale Ale is just such an amazing beer.

Ginger Lemon Radler – I’ve been living the #TeamRadler life for several years now (even before we introduced our own Radler) and I still get super excited each year when Ginger Lemon Radler returns. I dig refreshing, palate cleansing beers and GLR does just that for me. It’s a great “thirsty beer.” If anyone on the trip brings rye whiskey with them, I might toss a splash into the can after I take a drink. (Please DO try this at home.)

City Market Cider – I obviously love beer, but there are times when I don’t feel like a beer so I’ll definitely want to have a cider around for that moment on Mars. I love that City Market is on the drier side of things too.

Rye on Rye on Rye – Rye on Rye is the beer that taught me drink whiskey and when Rye on Rye on Rye came along, my mind was absolutely blown. In addition to being rich and full of toffee/caramel notes, Rye on Rye on Rye is 14+ ABV. If things go south on Mars, this will be a good beer to cry in.

Tank 7 – As we expand into markets outside the Midwest, Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale has become our lead dog. If the people (?) of Mars are anything like the people of California or Boston, they’re going to love Tank 7 so I’ll bring along a bottle to share with my new friends.

Oh, man. So many! As more breweries open (which is totally a good thing), it’s become tricky to come up with a name that speaks to the beer, represents the brewery well and is available. It’s the last part that’s tough. Before we get super excited about an idea we have, we usually head to Untappd to see if it’s currently in use at a commercial brewery. If it’s not, we then perform a public COLA search to let us know if there are any breweries who have the name locked down for future use. Finally, our legal folks do all of their fancy searches to make sure the name is good to go.

To go deeper into the naming process itself, if possible, we drink the beer we’re trying to name. We’ve started brewing test batches out fairly far in advance of public releases (so we can really nail the style we’re going for) so it’s usually possible to taste the beer or at least look at a recipe to get an idea of what the final beer will taste like. There’s a great scene in Empire Records where a character is talking about band names and says, “The first thing you need is a name. Then you’ll know what kind of band you’ve got.” While it’s hilarious, we’d prefer for things to work the other way. First, we want to know what kind of beer we’ve got so we can make sure the name fits. We wouldn’t want to give a bold, boozy imperial stout a name that would be better suited for a crisp, delicate saison.

If there’s a particular ingredient or process involved in the production of the beer that is super important or speaks to us, we might steer the name in the direction of that. Rye on Rye and Rye on Rye on Rye are great examples of that. The beers are all about featuring the effects of rye whiskey barrel-aging on rye beers so it would follow that we’d want to focus on rye.

And then sometimes names just come up during brainstorm sessions that we like and feel are appropriate for a wide range of beers. These names might work for the beer we’re currently trying to name or they might be so good we write them down for future releases. Even in these cases, we always want to make sure that the beer is appropriate for the name we’d like to use and vice versa.

Finally, we want to make sure the names we use could never ever (seriously EVER) be construed as offensive to a particular group of folks. Our brewing and production teams work amazingly hard to get fantastic, world-class beers into kegs, bottles and cans so there’s no way we’d ever want to foul that up by naming/branding a beer with anything offensive. I feel like I’ve used this quote in a previous WWKW or blog post, but when John McDonald started the brewery, he had a great answer when asked what happens if someone doesn’t like our beer: Not everyone will like our beer, but there’s no reason they shouldn’t like us.

Once we've settled on a name that checks all of the above boxes, we shop it around the brewery to get approval from folks in sales, marketing and brewing/production. Marketing is something that speaks for everyone at the brewery so we want to make sure everyone feels good about it.

Whatcha Wanna Know? Wednesday – January 31st – 2018

Well, yes, today is definitely Thursday, but since I take the questions on Wednesday, we decided to call this Whatcha Wanna Know? Wednesday. I suggested Tell Me Thumthin! Thursday, but no one liked it…so….here we are.

We actually joked about doing this a couple years ago during a new beer release interview with Jonathan Bender from Flatland KC. As we joked about it more, we decided that it should become a real thing so we did it. We brought in Kyle Hopkins from our Tours & Rec Department and together we sat down and paired fancy Boulevard beers with roller foods gathered from around the city. It was a deliciously good time and I’m oddly proud of the video we produced. Check it out:

Roller Food. Craft Beer. The Pairings That Were Never Supposed To Happen.

While I can't speak for all breweries, I'll say that, at Boulevard, we think it's super exciting and awesome to win medals at competitions, but we’re never upset when we don’t win. Winning a medal (especially at the Great American Beer Festival or World Beer Cup) is a huge achievement given the sheer number of breweries that enter, but I wouldn’t say that folks get bummed out if they don’t win.

Ratings/rankings are a bit different. In the same way that folks look to consumer reports and reviews when buying a car or a major appliance, lots of beer drinkers check out reviews/ratings before grabbing a beer they’ve not tried before. In that respect, I’d say that ratings definitely matter, but at the same time, you have to realize that reviews and ratings come from a huge range of folks with different levels of education and palates when it comes to craft beer so reviews can be all over the place. The thing to remember, though, is that every brewery is subject to this so it ultimately results in an even playing field.

I’d also mention that the approach to reading reviews is similar to the mindset when it comes to medals. While we always love to read great reviews, we don’t get super freaked out when someone doesn’t care for one of our beers (provided there’s not a quality issue at play) because we know that everyone won’t like all of our beers. That’s why we brew so many different beers and don’t fret when someone’s personal preferences don’t align with the stated intent of a beer. We also never go after someone following a poor review. John McDonald had a great philosophy when he started the brewery: Not everyone will like our beer, but there’s no reason they shouldn’t like us. I LOVE that quote.

When it comes to developing new beers, we pretty much give our brewing crew total freedom to brew whatever they’re excited about. Once the beer makes its way into the Tours & Rec Center Beer Hall or Tasting Room, we get a good idea of how marketable a beer actually is. For the most part, it’s rare for a test beer to completely flop when we start sharing it with the public, but it usually becomes quite clear when we have something that’s ready to be scaled up for a production run. Black Walnut Ale is a good example of that. We brewed a test batch last year simply named TEST – Black Walnut Ale and folks (guests and BLVD employees) fell in love with it so we knew it would be a great candidate for a Tasting Room beer in our Sample 12 Pack. Another great example is Ginger Lemon Radler. We first released it in the Sample 12 and it blew up so quickly that we immediately transitioned it to a draft-only summer seasonal within a few weeks. The reaction to that was huge so we made it a “real beer” when we launched our canned lineup. We've found that our most successful innovation happens when it's brewer driven. We're lucky to have a great team dreaming up new beers!

We’re very lucky to have such strong support and love from beer fans in Kansas City that it makes sense to offer our entire portfolio at home and in cities within a few hours of the brewery, but as we get further away from the Midwest, we definitely offer a more focused lineup of beers. While we do quite well in cities like Chicago, Boston and San Francisco, we realize that bars won’t necessarily offer us eight tap handles and liquor stores won’t have room for ten Boulevard six-packs so we work with our local sales folks and distributor partners to determine a lineup that we feel makes the most sense for the given region. This means choosing beers that we feel are a little more differentiated like Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale or Tropical Pale Ale. In the same way that a brewery from far outside Kansas City isn’t likely to crush it with an unfiltered wheat ale in our backyard, we realize (and accept) that more common styles from us might not stand out as much several hours from the brewery. We also try to choose beers that are a little more hearty and travel well. Sure, our beer is shipped on refrigerated trucks and held cold by distributors, but we want to do all that we can to put our best (beer) foot forward.

Honestly, we don’t worry too much about other breweries “stealing” our beers as that would be a super odd move to make. If suddenly a brewery had a beer out there that tasted just like Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale or Ginger Lemon Radler, beer drinkers would notice and find it rather weird. Sure, as more breweries open up, the craft beer scene is becoming increasingly more competitive, but craft brewers tend to look at it as more of a friendly competition. Yeah, we all want to win, but we want to do it nicely. For that reason, there’s not a ton of worry regarding theft of intellectual property or recipes. In fact, craft brewers regularly attend and speak at conferences and workshops designed to help everyone do what they can to produce better beer. It’s definitely a “rising tide raises all ships” mentality when it comes to craft beer. I hope that as more breweries open, the friendly atmosphere survives.

This question has come up a couple times in the past for WWKW, but as we get further into the new year, I imagine it will continue to come up so I’m happy to answer it again. Here are the thoughts I’ve previously shared. Definitely let me know if you have any questions.

While we’ve typically shared the next year’s release calendar at the end of the previous year, we’ve made the decision to move away from that practice this year and moving forward. While we enjoy operating at the highest level of transparency possible to give our loyal fans the most and best information we can, we’ve found that in the interest of doing so, it’s possible that we’ve rushed ourselves in committing to beers and release dates while potentially sacrificing the ability to remain nimble and react to emerging trends and requests from beer drinkers.

Beginning in 2018, we’ll no longer share a full calendar of beers with forecasted release dates. Instead, we’ll tell the story of each beer as we conceive, brew, package and taste it (at several steps along the way, of course). We feel this shift in thought will allow us the time and opportunity to truly focus our attention on each beer as it comes our way from both a brewing and production standpoint as well as a sales, marketing and distribution approach. Taking the most time possible with each individual beer allows us to tighten our focus on making the absolute best beers we can while delivering optimal experiences for loyal beer drinkers.

For return limited release and seasonal beers, we’ll add a general release period to each beer’s profile on our website noting the season in which you’ll typically see the beer on shelves and draft walls.

Whatcha Wanna Know? Wednesday -January 24th, 2018

While we've previously mentioned that it's highly likely (read: 100% certain) we'll expand our canned lineup once our Kansas City canning line project is complete, we’re not quite ready to share what that lineup looks like. We’re on track to have the first cans rolling off the line in the coming months so expect some more formal, concrete information on that very soon!

First off, this is not silly! I'd love to see more Whatcha Wanna Know? Wednesday questions like this, please and thank you! Allison from Old Ox Brewery nailed it with zymurgy and zwickel before I had a chance to read this. Unless anyone out there has a word worth more than 25 points, she’s our Beer Scrabble champ!

Both of our brewhouses (35 bbl and 150 bbl) employ steam for heating water, raising/regulating mash temperature and boiling. While I’ve not brewed on a direct fire or electric system, I can say that one of the advantages to using steam is that we’re able to create closed loops at several points in the process to capture/repurpose steam heat/energy for other applications in the brewhouse. Given my lack of experience with the other two, I’d hesitate to say too much about advantages/disadvantages as it would be simply culled from the internet.

I think there are two possible, yet very different, paths to this. The first, and easiest, is to contact the brewery that made the beer you feel might have an issue. Any time you have a less than awesome experience (or a super awesome experience) with a beer, breweries want to know. The folks who make the beer are best equipped to address any potential quality concerns or to confirm that what you’re smelling/tasting is as intended. Whenever folks contact me to express that they’re not digging something, I always ask for specifics on what they feel might be off to see if there’s an issue or if they simply don’t love the beer.

The second and more involved path is to become familiar with common off-flavors through a self-taught study or a formal training course. There are several companies out there that produce “spikes” you can add to beer to mimic flavors that present following brewing issues or infections. I’ll caution you, though, that while beginning to study off-flavors can deepen your appreciation for well-made beers, it tends to “pull the curtain back” a bit and may cause you to recognize flaws you’ve missed in beers that were prior favorites.

No matter which route you choose, I’d suggest that you always reach out to breweries when you feel you’ve encountered a beer that might have a quality issue. Folks want the opportunity to address issues and make things right.

I dig the shoutout to KCMO Water because we’re lucky, as brewers and water drinkers, to have delicious tasting water to start with. Beyond the mentioned filtration, we honestly don’t too much to the water beyond UV sterilization and pH adjustment. For brewing water, you want the water to be close to neutral so we dose our hot liquor tank with lactic acid to bring the pH down and add the same lactic acid in-line during sparging. The other adjustment we commonly make that’s more style dependent is adding calcium sulfate (gypsum) to our more hop forward beers. Brewing salts tend to add a crispness to expressing hop character/bitterness.

Whatcha Wanna Know? Wednesday – January 17th, 2018

Personally, I don’t rouse the sediment in any of our beers except for Unfiltered Wheat Beer and Zon Belgian-Style Witbier. For bottle conditioning, we’ve selected yeast strains that perform their desired functions and then flocculate (settle out) to the bottom of the bottle. When entering our beers in judged competitions, I usually select the “quiet” or “normal” pour option which requests that the pourers leave the yeast sediment in the bottle of the bottle as opposed to swirling and pouring it into the sample glasses with the beer. Like I said, though, when you’re drinking beer at home, it’s totally your call. Some folks enjoy the flavor the bottle conditioning yeast adds and some don’t. The easy way to test this is to pour all but a couple of ounces into your normal drinking glass before swirling the final inch or so and pouring into a side glass. Taste the two glasses side by side and if you enjoy the contribution of the yeast, dump the side glass into your normal glass. The great thing about drinking beer is that it’s pretty difficult to mess it up.

While I loved Requiem for a Pancake as well and was excited to see the overwhelmingly positive responses to the beer, we don’t currently have plans for a rebrew. We do, however, have several great ideas for upcoming Brewhouse One Series beers. I’m not able to talk beer specifics just yet, but stay tuned for exciting news as I’m aware of at least three beers that are currently in development. Our brewers and barrel folks are killing it lately!

I’ve worked in breweries going on 12 years now (I’ll hit 10 years at BLVD in March!) so I’d hesitate to say that anything really irritates me at this point, but if I could change a couple of things, here’s what I’d hope to do:

Convince everyone that personal preference and objective quality aren’t the same thing. As part of my job, I read a ton of beer reviews online and for the most part, I actually really enjoy it. I feel it’s possible to glean valuable information from Untappd, BeerAdvocate, RateBeer, etc. The trick is knowing what to look for. Some folks will rate/review a style they don’t particularly care for and say, “I don’t like (style here). This beer was bad.” I use smoked beer as an example a lot since I don’t personally prefer it, but I’m able to tell a great smoked beer from a not great smoked beer. Too many times, I see folks make the leap from “I didn’t like this beer.” to “I probably got a bad bottle.” While I’m not saying things don’t happen to beer, it’s far more likely that you just don’t like the beer and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

The other thing I’d like to do is eliminate beer snobbery. I’ll admit it. I did my time as the resident beer snob at a couple bars/breweries I worked at before landing at Boulevard and when I think about the things I used to say/do, I honestly cringe a bit. I can recall being at a bar drinking (fancy beer here) and silently judging the dude next to me drinking (whatever beer I thought wasn’t great here). As I’ve been around more and matured a little (not a ton, a little), I’ve come to the realization that what the guy/gal next to me at the bar is drinking says absolutely nothing about me and has zero impact on me unless I’m a bit of a jerk. The fact of the matter is that we’re not going to get folks drinking what we feel is better beer by mocking them for their personal preferences. If you want to help grow the craft beer scene, it’s going to happen through positive, friendly advocacy. If you’re a homebrewer, share your beers with your friends, family, neighbors and cool strangers. If you’re into good beer, offer to buy your non-craft drinking buddy an American Kolsch or a KC Pils next time.

Whenever I’m on a podcast and I’m asked for my final thoughts, I always say, “Just be cool.”

I really want to say that I’m Pale Ale, but I don’t think I’m cool enough to be our original beer that’s been continuously brewed since the brewery was founded in 1989 so I’ll go with Tropical Pale Ale. For me, Pale Ale is the ultimate every day beer because it’s become a bit of a security blanket for me (and most folks at the brewery), but I feel like the addition of passion fruit and grapefruit to Tropical Pale Ale offers a bit of a twist on the classic style that sounds like it might not work, but totally works in an unexpected way. So I think I’m that, a pretty regular dude with just a touch of fruity quirkiness. Wait, maybe I’m Ginger Lemon Radler because I love #TeamRadler so much. I really need to think about this more.

At this time, with our current setup, it’s not possible to offer public tours of our barrel library. When we moved to our new, much bigger warehouse, we moved our barrel collection from limestone caves to this warehouse. While it’s not nearly as romantic, it’s better for our barrel crew to have our barrels in an easy to access, temperature controlled spot. The trouble is that there’s tons of forklift traffic in the warehouse as our crew unloads trucks from the brewery and loads distributors’ trucks headed off to deliver our beer around the country. Unfortunately, it’s just not a great space to offer tours.

If you’re looking for a brewery tour that goes a little above and beyond our public tour, I’d suggest checking out the Smokestack Tour. Led by our most experienced and beer geeky guides, Smokestack Tours are a bit smaller, more intimate tours that offer guests access to areas of the brewery not normally seen on public tours. They also feature a curated Smokestack Series beer and food pairing at the end. They’re awesome!

Oh, man. I really dig all the festivals we have in the Kansas City area. That’s not a lie. I just genuinely love the unspoken agreement into which we all enter at a beer fest. No matter what’s going on in our lives or the world, for those 3-5 hours, we just hang out and drink good beer. I’m super lucky to work in an industry that throws so many mini-parties throughout the year. If you’re going to make me pick just one festival, I lean towards the Parkville MicroBrew Festival. It’s been around for going on 15 years and this year will be my 13th time at the fest. I don’t know why it is, but it always seems that the weather is rainy and chilly at the fest, but no one cares. Since Parkville sort of kicks off the festival season in Kansas City, everyone is just so excited to be outside with great people, listening to music and drinking great beer. It’s awesome. If I can throw an honorable mention in, I think I’d go with the Westport Strong Ale Fest. It’s held outdoors in November and features big, warming beers. This past year, it was cold and rainy the whole day and I had an amazing time. Again, it’s just great to be outside drinking great beer. I also dig that they always have a great DJ at the festival so it devolves into a giant dance party by the end of the afternoon. I like to drink beer and dance. It’s the best! Additionally, this is one of the festivals that my wife, Randyl Danner, hosts and I'm always on the lookout for bonus points.

Whatcha Wanna Know? Wednesday - January 10th, 2018

One of the responses to this tweet called out a couple of local homebrew supply shops that offer classes on homebrewing and I think those are great starts, but I’d also suggest checking out the local homebrew clubs. The brewers I’ve met from Kansas City area clubs have been absolutely on fire about not only brewing (and drinking!) great beer, but also sharing that experience with folks who are new to the scene. Head to a meeting, share some great beer with the club members and you’ll have no trouble making your way to a brew day at someone’s house. Helping out with and seeing the process unfold will give you a great grasp on what goes into homebrewing and will help you determine if it’s for you.

Ask and you shall receive! While I can’t speak to the codes used by other breweries, I’m proud to share that at Boulevard, we include both a packaged on and best by date on our bottles, cans, cases and keg rings. In fact, I shared a Brewer’s Blog post introducing our updated packaging codes a year ago today.

The long and the short of it is that we recognize that folks deserve to know when the beer they’re drinking (or considering buying) was packaged, but we also want to provide guidance to those who like to hold onto beer or are new to the scene. The packaged on date is just that, the date and time the beer was packaged as well as a letter (A-F) that indicates the bright beer tank from which the beer came. The best by date is determined by our brewmaster, quality assurance lab and expert tasting panel. We age our beer in a variety of conditions that simulate a range between the best and worst settings in the real world. As our beer ages, we taste it and conduct analysis to determine when we feel the beer is no longer an excellent example of our intentions.

I’m super proud of this approach and happy to discuss it at length if you have any follow-up questions.

Craft beer is absolutely helped by it! Without the invaluable expertise provided by our distributor partners, our beer wouldn’t see the reach it currently has. At our size, it’s simply impossibly to own and execute all the logistical challenges that exist in distributing beer to 39 states and a few countries. The efforts of our wholesaler partners on behalf of our beers allow us to reach new beer drinkers every day. There’s no way we’d be able to do it without them. While we have sales reps on the ground throughout our distribution footprint, folks from distributors act as the face of our beer every single day too. Cheers to them!

While I’d love to say yes because I’m all for Saison Brett in any package/configuration as I believe it’s the best beer we brew, the process we use to inoculate the beer would put our main bottling line, the only one capable of filling 12oz bottles, at risk of becoming “infected” with brettanomyces. Since Saison Brett is inoculated with brettanomyces at packaging, the beer itself contains active brettanomyces, a wild yeast strain that we just wouldn’t want living in our bottling line. Currently, all of our sour/funky beers are packaged in 750ml bottles using a bottling line in an off-site facility. We do this out of respect for brettanomyces, lactobacillus and other microbes that would be considered beer spoilers in “clean beers” like Pale Ale, Unfiltered Whea