Breweries’ winter beers pack plenty of cheer

There comes a time every year when my beer tastes change.
During warmer weather, I go for light beers, the ones suitable for easy summer sipping. When winter arrives, my taste buds know it’s time to man up and go big. I start looking around for my favorite breweries’ Christmas and winter seasonals.
A few years ago, there weren’t that many options. A couple of imports annually satisfied my hankering for spiced cold-weather warmers.
But some Christmas beers taste more like pine trees and reindeer tails than holiday cheer. The Christmas beer landscape has changed, and so have my holiday beer tastes.
Last weekend I scoured the shelves at area beer retailers that specialize in craft brands. I wanted to see what was out there for Christmas gatherings and New Year’s Eve parties. The retailers I shopped all offered a “Build a six pack” deal for around $8.
It’s fun to take a mixed six to holiday parties and sample around. Give these craft selections a chance and you won’t be disappointed.
• Shiner Holiday Cheer: I didn’t know what I was getting into recently when I picked up a six pack of Spoetzl Brewing’s Holiday Cheer, a dark, peach flavored Dunkelweizen. The garnet colored, mildly bitter brew (5.4 percent alcohol by volume) has a big peach flavor and a nutty aftertaste.
The guy at the counter where I picked it up said its hard to get and he sells his supply quickly. No wonder: It’s brewed with Texas peaches and roasted pecans.
• Redhook’s Winter Hook: I have been a Winter Hook fan for years. It’s always been a drinkable and flavor forward ale. I’ve enjoyed it on tap at Club 609 downtown and know it’s available in bottles around the area. The recipe for this winter — new for 2010 — is a new one and it’s a winner at 6 percent ABV.
• Sam Adams’ Winter Lager: Since 1989, the Boston Beer Company’s Winter Lager has been a staple of the winter beer experience for everyone but me. I hadn’t tried it until recently.
It’s a great balanced beer and not too malty. Winter Lager would have good party appeal and pair well with spicy dishes and bold finger foods.
• Sierra Nevada’s Celebration Ale: Drink Celebration Ale and you are drinking a part of American brewing history. The bitter seasonal from one of California’s craft beer pioneers is available through January, so get a six now.
The ale has won awards at beer contests around the country in the India Pale Ale category. At 6.8 percent ABV, Celebration packs a punch and will appeal to bitter beer drinkers.
• Anchor Steam’s Liberty Ale: Want to impress holiday party snobs with your knowledge of beer history? Take a six-pack of Anchor’s Liberty Ale.
Liberty, brewed first in 1975 as Anchor’s inaugural Christmas beer, is 6.8 percent ABV and a smooth, medium bitter ale. The reaction to Liberty was so positive then brewery owner Fritz Maytag added it to the year-round line up. I think it’s Anchor’s best beer, but many loyal Steam lager drinkers disagree.
• Boulevard Nutcracker Ale: Nutcracker Ale surprised me. Its dark color made me think it was going to be a super heavy beer, but it was light (5.8 percent ABV) and drinkable. It’s mildly bitter character paired great with a Cajun blackened burger and fries. I suspect it would go well with about any meal.
• Michelob Winter Bourbon Cask Ale: When I picked up Michelob’s holiday beer (6 percent ABV) I was expecting a bitter winter ale and was shocked to get a sweet vanilla flavored brew. I didn’t want to like it, but I did. It’s as close to drinking a cupcake as you will get. I’ll buy it again.
• O’Fallon Brewery’s Cherry Chocolate: If sweet beer — malt liquor in this case — is your thing, it’s hard to imagine one sweeter that this.
This dark cherry cordial flavored beer isn’t for everyone. I think it’s a great beer to share as dessert or the last one of the night. I don’t think I could make it through an entire bottle without going into a sugar coma. I hear the brewery’s Christmas Ale is a great winter beer, but didn’t find it around town.
• Say ‘Yes’ to Ciders: I’m always a big cider guy at the holidays. I love it cold on a summer day and warm on a winter night.
Take a few bottles of hard peach, apple or pear cider and warm it up with a cinnamon stick and some vanilla sugar. It’s a great liquid substitute in a fruit cobbler or pie and — trust me — it isn’t bad to sip while you bake. Wyder’s, Woodchuck and Ace ciders are great brands to try, but many others are available around town.
Merry Christmas and cheers!

K.C.’s Boulevard Brewery comes of age

John McDonald, founder and president of Boulevard brewing Co. in his Kansas City office.

John McDonald made no bones about his love of beer. The founder and president of the Boulevard Brewing Co. in Kansas City said his fascination with brewing goes back to his youth.
“I grew up in a Western Kansas small town,” he told me as we talked in his small, crowded office inside the brewery. “That’s kind of what we did when we were kids. My dad made a little home brew, which you know was more of a conversation piece than something good to drink.”
John said you had to add a little tomato juice to his dad’s home brew to get it down. Once you did, “It packed a wallop,” he said, laughing.
John grew up and moved away to college at Kansas University, earned a fine arts degree and became a cabinet maker and carpenter.
It was on his first trip to Europe that John’s eyes were opened to the vast number of beers available and the traditions small European brewers embraced.
“I just fell love with English ales,” he said. “When we were in Paris, I stumbled in to a Belgian beer bar. My wife would go to museums and I would go back to the bar every day. They had 400 different bottled beers from all of these different breweries. I was just like, ‘Wow, this is crazy interesting.’”

In 2009 Boulevard was ranked the ninth largest craft brewer in America.

Finding financing
It wasn’t long until John’s interest in brewing became more serious and he decided to put his career as a carpenter on hold.
“I started thinking about a brewery in the mid ’80s,” he said. “I was always enamored with the idea of small production beer and wine.”
Over a four-year period, John admits he went down “a few wrong roads,” but finally, in 1989, raised enough money to start the brewery. Raising the money needed to get going wasn’t easy. He met with about 30 bankers and a lot of disappointment, but kept searching for financing.
He eventually found the funds needed to get started, but, to this day, remembers one nay-saying banker.
“He was a young banker at a bank downtown and I was still working as a carpenter,” he said. “I meant to go home and take a shower and change my clothes and then go to the bank. I was kind of dusty with my work clothes on and he said, ‘Dude, first of all, I think your business plan is totally crazy and second of all, next time you come see a banker, you better put a suit on.’ So, I took his advice and bought a new suit.
“It didn’t help me, though,” he said, laughing. “I just wasted the money on a suit.”
John ran into the same banker years later, after the brewery was successful. The banker, he said, “was fairly apologetic.”
In 2009 Boulevard was ranked the ninth largest craft brewer in the America by the Brewer’s Association. John said the quick success of Boulevard surprised even him.
It’s really a great time to be a brewer, John said.
“It’s great to have access to technology that we didn’t have back when we started. We’re as automated and as high tech as any big brewery. It’s a constant battle to make sure that the craftsmanship part of it, the quality of the beer, is the most important thing.”

Julie Weeks, marketing communications manager, said the Boulevard team is excited about the new 12-ounce four packs of selected Smokestack Series beers.

Best beers in the world
One Boulevard beer, their unfiltered wheat, the company’s most prolific product, accounts for more than 60 percent of their business.
“I thinks it’s been so popular because of the unfiltered nature,” he said. “That’s what makes it good, the lack of processing, and it’s real easy to drink. It’s an American style wheat beer. It’s not something that’s going to put anybody off and it’s got a nice flavor to it.”
The company’s Smokestack Series of craft beers pays tribute to old world craftsmanship. It is available in small batches that are sold in 750 ml corked and caged bottles. Some Smokestack beers are now available on tap and several varieties are newly available in four-packs of 12-once bottles.
John said it’s really “amazing” what’s going on in American brewing.
“Beyond a shadow of a doubt, the best beers in the world are being made in the United States,” John said. “We need to create more beer culture. That’s what missing. We have these great beers, but the population doesn’t really know what to do with them or how to drink them, compared to (drinkers) in Belgium, England or Germany.”
Unlike American beer drinkers, Europeans tend to pour their bottled beer into glasses, rather than just tipping the bottle back.
“If you can get people to pour beer into a glass, that’s half the battle,” he said. American brewers, he explained, originally marketed their beers in bottles to maximize the label recognition and brand marketing.
“Shame on them,” he said. “They never should have done that. Look at the wine industry. You wouldn’t think about drinking a $10 bottle of wine out of a bottle.”

Some of Boulevard's Smokestack Series beers are aged in oak barrels in a climate controlled room at the brewery.

Kansas City’s brewery
Not all of Boulevard’s brews have met with acceptance and success.
“The one beer that was a total flop, that I still think was a good idea, came out in the mid ‘90s called Ten Penny,” he said. “The idea was to make a beer that tasted good that had low alcohol. We came out with this baby version of a pale ale that had a really good flavor that had like 2.6 percent (alcohol). You could just slam them. As soon as the consumer found out that it was low in alcohol people just wouldn’t drink it.”
Boulevard’s Bully Porter, a dark, chocolate-forward, American-style porter doesn’t set any sales records, but John said they will keep it in the line.
“I love that brand and the beer, but we don’t sell hardly any of it,” he said, looking a little disappointed. “I don’t understand why, but we don’t. We will keep making that brand. It’s part of who we were and who we are.”
Who they are, John stressed, is Kansas City’s brewery.
John pointed out that five years ago there were three breweries that made 85 percent of the beer sold in the U.S. and they were all owned by Americans. Five years later, all three are owned by foreign interests.
“Anheuser-Busch was one of the largest brewers in the world for a long time,” he said. “Well, that company, AB-InBev, is now four times as big as AB was and it’s all through acquisition. Does the world get better because of theses global conglomerates? I don’t think so.”
It’s all about efficiency, John said.
“So, if in this striving to be more and more efficient all of the time, eventually you don’t employ anybody,” he said. “That person who was going to buy your beer doesn’t have any money to buy it. It’s sort of a long term self-defeating prophecy to keep going that way. My thing is drink our beer and we’ll give somebody a job, which is what people need, jobs.”
Good philosophy.
Cheers!

Boulevard adds brews to Smokestack Series

Image source: http://www.pitch.com

I discovered American micro and craft beers in my late 20s.
In Seattle, the only thing more fashionable than gourmet coffee is beer. Every guy you meet has a bubbling vat of fermenting grain and yeast gassing away in a dark closet.
There were a dozen or so craft and microbreweries within walking distance of my Capital Hill apartment, so becoming a beer hound in the Great Northwest was easy. The search for unique hand-crafted brews was a great way to while away a weekend afternoon.
No so in Joplin. Finding small-batch brews around Bud-is-king country can be a challenge.
Don’t get me wrong: When I want a value brand I go Natural Light. I’m not a beer snob. I love the fruit of the malt and chewy, craft beers.
Recently I was thrilled when I checked out the Boulevard Brewing Co.’s Smokestack Series of craft beers. I found a rack of Boulevard Brewery’s signature 750-ml bottles on my vacation in Oklahoma City.
The line offers small-batch craft beers made in the style of European farmhouse breweries. The Smokestack Web site features a few of their offerings, including the Double-Wide India Pale Ale (8.5 percent alcohol by volume, ABV).
The brewery’s Long Strange Triple (9.0 percent ABV) is named after an early Boulevard employee and contains triple the amount of malt than other beers. The Sixth Glass brand (10.5 percent ABV) is brewed in the style of great Trappist Ales from Belgium. Boulevard’s Saison (6.2 percent ABV) is an approachable golden-colored craft beer made for summer drinking.
In OKC I enjoyed the Saison and Long Strange Triple with a pesto-chicken pizza and prosciutto-wrapped pears. Wow! Both are good, hearty beers; not too heavy with great spicy notes, good color and a smooth finish. Great with a meal.
The others I sampled — not in the same setting, by the way — were the Double-Wide IPA and the brewery’s Saison-Brett. Both beers developed a sweet, foamy head when poured into an iced glass.
The India Pale Ale is a hoppy joy to drink — bitter, but balanced. The Double-Wide IPA is exceptional, but a lil’ bitter for my taste. I recommend both.
Boulevard plans to introduce small batches of each beer and rotate new selections in and out throughout the year. I spotted a couple of new offerings from the Smokestack series at a couple of Joplin-area beer retailers before I headed south to Oklahoma city last weekend.
Dark Truth Stout and the Rye on Rye bring the number of Smokestack offerings to 14, with more are on the way. The beers retail in 750-ml champagne-style bottles with cork-and-cage closures. Classy.
Boulevard’s beginning

The line debuted in Nov., 2007, a recent news release from the brewery noted: “The debut of the Smokestack Series marks an important milestone for our company,” said John McDonald, Boulevard’s founder and president. “While I love all the beers we brew, these specially-crafted styles are close to our brewers’ hearts, and I’m really excited to offer these new flavors to our loyal fans.
Boulevard beers are available in 12 states: Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota and Wyoming.
“Boulevard Brewing Company has grown to be the largest specialty brewer in the Midwest,” McDonald said. “We are dedicated to the craft of producing fresh, flavorful beers using traditional ingredients and the best of both old and new brewing techniques.”
Locally I found the series at Mays in Joplin. I’ll look around and report back when I find other locations. I paid $15 for a bottle at The Wedge Pizzeria in OKC, and around $10 in a liquor store in OKC and around $8 retail in Joplin.

Cheers!