Think Salma Hayek in "Desperado", Kathleen Turner in "Body Heat", Eva Green in "The Dreamers". Think Marvin Gaye singing "Let's Get it on" or "Sexual Healing" or Barry White singing "Practice What You Preach". You got it in your head? Has anyone besides me seen "The Dreamers" (if you haven't go get it and watch it, it will be a better use of your time than reading the following)? Only when you've got all of those things in your head can you feel what it's like to drink
Boulevard Chocolate Ale.
Now since I drank it in a
Gents meeting with 20 other dudes, this comparison to sex is a little disturbing. Steven Pauwels, Boulevard's brewmaster, did the pouring wearing a sweater that I own and gave us the spiel of how he worked with
Christopher Elbow and had to do a bunch of stuff with the chocolate nibs and blah blah blah. We were an hour into Gents, I wasn't into listening, I was into drinking.
It's amazingly light for a chocolate beer but it really brings the chocolate flavor. I wanna say, drinking it was like eating a Hershey bar, but that's not quite right, it's like eating a whole Christopher Elbow chocolate bar with some vanilla beans and Whoppers. It also packs a little punch at about 9% ABV. It's unlike any beer I've had with chocolate in it's name. The chocolate in other beers is usually just a complementary flavor and most of the time I don't enjoy its presence. With the Chocolate Ale, though, chocolate is the star.
Boulevard is hoping they can release Chocolate Ale by Valentine's Day. If they do they'll be doing a bunch of guys and girls a really big favor. I predict a Kansas City baby boom around Thanksgiving this year and Christopher and Steven should be really popular boy's names.
Full Disclosure: I was provided Chocolate Ale by Boulevard. It didn't have any effect on the review, but you can be the judge of that.
