a brew year, month two.

 

Our 'brew year' started its second month at Boulevard Brewery. I love love love Boulevard beer, especially their flagship brew, the unfiltered wheat --a sweltering Kansas City afternoon just begs to be paired with a cold Bouli wheat (and a lemon wedge perched on the edge of the pint glass)! Despite moving three times since leaving my parent's house in 2006, I've been lucky enough to live in cities that carry Boulevard beer, both on tap at most bars and in liquor stores. . . including the completely whacked drive-thru liquor stores that have sprung up all over my new home state (I. Know. Right?). Boulevard has always reminded me of home even when I was two or five or eight hours away.

You can probably guess that I was damn excited for the tour.

Boulevard's tour was the longer than Goose Island's, as the factory is much bigger and they produce far more beer there. They weren't brewing any that day, but we did get to see rows and rows of fermentation tanks that were filled with Irish Ale for next month's celebration. Pipes crisscrossed the ceilings and led from the very first fermentation space we gathered in to the last lofted factory room.

 

Our guide explained to us that one of the largest fermentation rooms was built with three and four foot deep cement and steel reinforced walls, designed to withstand tornadoes, earthquakes and a category five hurricane -- making Boulevard one of the safest places to be in Kansas City. He didn't mention anything about nuclear holocaust, but I'm convinced the walls were thick enough to withstand radiation (I mean, come on, what better way to go out than with a couple of brews?).

The barrel room holds Boulevard's Smokestack series, a mix of higher quality beer and their experimental lagers. They age anywhere from half a year to one and a half. Also, this room was creepy and dark and smelled like a pirate ship. 

And then we got locked into a glass alleyway with the guide and his mother. The door leading into a tasting room locked behind one of the other tour guides and we were trapped for a while. Granted, we were trapped in a very nice glass alleyway with a beautiful panoramic view of downtown Kansas City, but still. It was February.

No, really, we were locked in right here:

photo courtesy of silvio aeberli

Great views but, uh, that joint wasn't warm at all.

After breaking free, we joined all of the other tour-goers down in the tasting room -- and lemme tell you, if I were a bar, I would be the Boulevard's private bar. It reminded me of the small pubs I visited with friends in Dublin; small and quaint, not enough decor to be hokey and scattered with little round tables and oak chairs. We had enough tokens to sample four brews, but J and I ended up with a few extras from the guide and his mother (score!). They had the usual suspects on tap that afternoon (Pale Ale, IPA, Bully! Porter, Stout) and a terrific twist on the unfiltered wheat, using dry hops in the fermenting process.

The tour completely solidified Boulevard as my all time favorite beer of all time.