Boulevard Sixth Glass
As I wrote here. I tried the Boulevard Sixth Glass. My first observation of the beer was how pretty it was. Unlike the Delirium Tremens, there was no pesky foil to peel away. The wire cork trap was exposed and easy to get to. It's times like this that I wish I had an appropriate goblet to drink from so I used my trusty little iced tea goblet (aka Stella's single girl glassware) for my beer. I wanted to use my Boulevard Stout pint glass, but I wanted to follow specs.
When I bought the Sixth Glass it was warm so when I got to the Bull E. Vard mansion I refrigerated it immediately at about 4:30. By 8:00 (coincidentally the kids' bedtime), the beer was appropriately chilled according to Boulevard's specifications. I messed up the pour, the Sixth Glass has a really aggressive head that multiplies quickly. I also messed up successive pours of the beer, making a mess of my kitchen table, my kids' table and one of their chairs. Unfortunately, my first sip of this beer was real foamy as I tried to suck the head as quickly as possible (aka the back seat approach), so I didn't get the best first impression. But, even the foamy mess tasted good.
The sixth glass is a nice dark amber color with a tan head. The smell of the beer was intoxicating, a sign of things to come, it smelled of a Mediterranean fruit fair, figs, dates and raisins. The taste, ohhhh the taste, was full and multilayered. On the top was the fruit flavors and on the bottom was a bit of a good dessert wine with some chocolate in between.
Halfway through the beer, I realized the secret is to have a buddy drink one with you because it's a lot of beer. At 10.5% alcohol it's stronger than wine and in the same size bottle as wine. I stopped drinking whole bottles of wine in one evening with a nice purchase of the Vacu-vin and was better because of it. This beer was strong and I felt it when I finished off the second glass.
There was no way I wasn't going to finish it, so I powered through. The Sixth Glass provides a nice warming touch, the alcohol warms you all the way through and your mouth feels as if it's filled with hot air (Stella says my mouth is always filled with hot air). I typed out the post announcing it was out with my sticky fingers (from handling the beer stained glass) and drunken head as I was finishing off the bottle. In all it only took an hour to finish, I wish it had lasted longer it was sooooo good. It's well worth the $7.50 especially if you share with a buddy.
We don't write enough about Boulevard on here because we try to sample all the beers available in KC and no one wants to read about how much we enjoy Boulevard Wheat or Pale Ale. We really do love those beers and they are on tap more times than not in the Bull E. Vard mansion. But, there just isn't a lot of new stuff that comes out of Boulevard. This series of beers makes me very happy. Boulevard invested in building themselves a building where they can brew more beer and more varieties of beer. This is a great thing and the KC beer community should really embrace it. There aren't many better breweries in America better than Boulevard, the only ones in their class are Sierra Nevada, New Belgium and Sam Adams. This series of beers distinguishes Boulevard as being equal or even better than these great breweries. I hope there are more special beers to come, but for now, I'll just try to drink the 3 left on my list. The IPA is next!
