About this beer: Boulevard is a regional craft brewery located in Kansas City, Missouri. They were virtually unknown to me until this year’s American Craft Beer Fest. I didn’t get a chance to try the quad and was incredibly excited to get my hands on it. It clocks in at a healthy 10.5% ABV and is supposed to have hints of dates with a “sweet malt smell.”
Beer of the Week: Boulevard Sixth Glass Quadrupel
Wednesday, September 14th, 2011Beer of the Week: Jolly Pumpkin Bam Noire
Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011
About: 
Michigan’s Jolly Pumpkin is perhaps best known for their American take on traditional Belgian and French styles like saisons and bière de garde. Jolly Pumpkin is also known for a characteristic tart-ness of many of their beers, and those of us who love sours are big fans of their work. Much of that characteristic flavor comes not only from their yeasts but from their particular aging process – all of Jolly Pumpkin’s beers are matured in oak barrels before being re-yeasted and left to bottle-condition.
Billed as a Dark Farmhouse Ale, the Bam Noire asserts that it’s ”Dedicated to the dark side.” Let’s find out.
Beer of the Week: Great Divide Oak Aged IPA
Tuesday, July 5th, 2011
About the beer: Great Divide Brewing Co. has to be one of my favorite breweries. Based out of Denver, CO, it’s rare to find a beer that’s bad from them (only once have I really disliked one of their brews). Today we’re doing the little dance with their Rumble Oak Aged India Pale Ale. They claim the beer is a, “gently aged on French and American oak resulting in a wonderful balance of bitterness, caramel sweetness, vanilla, and undertones of pine and citrus.”
In a nutshell: All I can say is, it’s not bad.
Review: When you first take a sniff, you definitely get some really nice, hoppy smells that are balanced out by the woody undertone brought in by oak barrels. In my ever so humble opinion, I don’t think the smell really matches what you’d expect in taste. You definitely get the barrel flavor in there, but it almost overtakes the hops, to the point of not being able to taste them much at all. I know that barrel aging a beer like an IPA helps round out the flavor and mellow out the beer as a whole, but I feel like this isn’t the best attempt at producing a fantastic result. It doesn’t taste as great as some of their other beers (my favorite being the Titan IPA), but it’s way better than their Double Wit. I don’t get much of the vanilla, pine or citrus from the taste, though the caramel and bitterness come in just fine. And as I sit in my 80 degree apartment drinking this, I realize it’s not the most refreshing option to beat the summer heat. This would probably be really great in the fall time.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Beer of the Week: Brewdog Dogma
Wednesday, June 29th, 2011
About this beer: Scotland’s Brewdog is one of the most intimidating craft beer companies around. They make the world’s strongest beer, The End of History. (41% ABV) They aren’t just known for making crazy high ABV beers alone, they also have an incredibly wide range of non-coma inducing goodness. For this beer review I choose to step away from the relative safety of trying their highly regarded IPA (Punk IPA) and chose to drink something a bit more eclectic. Having never tasted one of Brewdog’s brews before I decided to go with Dogma, which is a strong ale made with honey, kola nut, poppy seed, and guarana.
Beer of The Week: Anchor Small Beer
Wednesday, June 15th, 2011
About: Session ales are attracting an increasing amount of attention lately in craft beer circles. For years it was the big and bold beers that caught the eye of craft beer enthusiasts, brews that were intense in both their flavor and alcohol content. While everyone still loves those bold beers as much as they always have, beer lovers and brewers alike are beginning to investigate what possibilities there are at the opposite end of the spectrum.
Beer of the Week: Dieu du Ciel Rosée d’hibiscus
Tuesday, May 17th, 2011
About the beer:
Regular readers will know that I take a special interest in the tradition of using flowers, spices, and unusual ingredients in beer. Before the Reinheitsgebot and other regional regulations on beer production, this practice was fairly common. Brewers used a wide variety of ingredients as flavoring, bittering, and even fermentable agents – some that we might find unusual, even distasteful today.
Beer of the Week: The Notch Session Ale
Tuesday, May 10th, 2011
About the beer:
Craft beer is all about options. With the rise in popularity of higher alcohol craft beers some are turning their interests towards other options in the form of an up and coming category in the craft beer community – session beer. Awareness over the session style of brewing has risen over the last two years with many American breweries creating some tremendous crafted ales, all of which carrying significantly lower ABVs than the stereotypical craft ale.
The term “session” finds it’s origins in the UK and refers to the allowable drinking periods that were imposed on production workers during World War I. The licensed sessions were 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 7 to 11 p.m. Workers would find a beer that they could adequately quench their thirst with during these restrictive “sessions” that were imposed by the government without getting legally drunk.
With this groundswell of awareness and rich history to live up to, enter Notch Session Ale, an independently brewed ale which is the brain child of Notch brewer and founder Chris Lohring. In collaboration with his friends at Ipswich Ale Brewery of Ipswich, MA, Chris is brewing low-gravity American style session beers that pack immense amounts of robustness and flavor without heavy alcohol content.
Beer of The Week: Harpoon Island Creek Oyster Stout
Tuesday, April 26th, 2011
About the Beer: Oyster stouts are a very rare style of beer, but they’re more than worth your while if you can get your hands on one. The dark, grainy texture of stouts are a perfect pairing with oysters and other shellfish so it was only natural to bring the two together in a beer. The Harpoon Brewery in Boston uses real oysters from nearby Island Creek oyster bar for their take on the style.
The Crafted Can – Sly Fox Dunkel Lager
Tuesday, March 29th, 2011
About the beer: This week’s Beer of the Week/Crafted Can comes out of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. Though I’ve never spotted this in the Boston area, Sly Fox seemed to have a good place with the New Jersey market where I found this pack. This lager is an attempt at a popular style in the German/Bavarian market. Dunkel, which is German for “dark,” is a style that’s known for it’s smooth, malty flavor, along with notes of chocolate, coffee, caramel, and/or toasted malts. This lager specifically uses Munich, Pils, and German Roast malts along with several types of Bavarian hops.
Beer of the Week: Sam Adams Latitude 48 IPA
Tuesday, March 8th, 2011
About the beer:
Released in early 2010, the Sam Adams Latitude 48 IPA is a unique IPA brewed with a blend of hops from German, English, and American growing regions located close to the 48th latitude, widely considered the the “hop belt” of the Northern Hemisphere. While the Sam Adams gang has tip-toed around the American IPA style, this new release by the brewery, who have previously only brewed one other now-discontinued IPA, jumps right into the conversation with a 6% ABV and hoppy authority. Originally available in the 2010 Sam Adams summer styles mix pack, the Latitude 48 IPA now comes in six pack and draft offerings where available.
