Boulevard Bourbon Barrel Quad

Brewed by Boulevard Brewing Company
Style: Abt/Quadrupel
Kansas City, Missouri USA

Purchased at John’s Grocery in Iowa City. This beer pours a dark brown/reddish color with a thick head. Aroma of sugar, cherries, oak, and alcohol. Flavor of cherries, sugar, and a whiskey flavor. A little too much for me.

Bottle 6932 poured a little cold and it developed a thick creamy head over a medium brown beer. Initial nose was all alcohol and bourbon, but it was cold, so let it warm before I tasted it. Initial taste was only bourbon and alcohol: I could barely find the beer base, so I waited another half hour for the temp to come up to nearly room temp. And then it was only marginally better. The bourbon completely overwhelmed everything else in this beer. With work, I could find a hint of the quad I liked just fine, but, man it was buried deep. Bourbon barrel was a bad idea. Bad things sometimes happen to good beers.

750ml bottle number 7968. I had this on my want list for a while and randomly ran into it at a liquor store in IN. Dark ruddy brown pour with off white head. Aroma of sweet cherries, ripe fruit, with apparent bourbon notes. Flavor walks a tightrope between fruity quad notes and bourbon. Mouthfeel is slick with good carbonation. The bourbon is nice and rich and compliments the quad very well. Finishes with a nice wood note. Badass mofo of a brew right here. Makes me glad there is more in Kansas City than meth houses.

750 ml bottle from the Four Firkins. Reddish brown pour with a light tan creamy head. The bourbon, cherry and vanilla are definitely showcased in both the aroma and the flavor with the bourbon being the star of the show. It has a great creamy mouthfeel and a very smooth finish. One of my new favorite beers. This is an amazing beer.

Strong pop. Thinner bodied pour, dark mousey brown, wispy head. Some boozy aroma, good medium toast and dark squishy bing cherries. Little boozy, cherry and blackberry, medium bodied, light for a quad, with a dense fruity core wrapped in wood.

Bottle as shown. Pours a cloudy dark brown with a small creamy beige head that leaves good sticky lacing along the glass. The aroma is a smokey wood with alcohol and clove. Medium mouthfeel with a cherry and vanilla with a nice tart finish. Alcohol present but not too overpowering, A very well done quad from Boulevard.

This is truly a world-class beer, fantastic in every way. Pours a dark reddish brown with a decent sized head. Aroma is heavy on malts with some definite oak notes as well. Has a nice toffee-malt start when you first sip it, then the vanilla-bourbon flavor hits you, with a hint of cherry rounding it out. The alcohol is surprisingly absent for a beer of nearly 13% ABV.

Bottle 4624/11248, 2009. BB 10-12. The pour is an effervescent dark ruby/orangey color with a full, fizzy, beige head which settles to a small, pillowy layer of foam and leaves minimal tight lace. The nose is interesting with lots of baking spices (cinnamon, nutmeg), tart cherries, toasted toffee, spicy oak notes, cake-like malts, and some wisps of alcohol. The flavor is similar with tart cherry being prominent, ginger bread cake, cinnamony, brown sugar, light vanilla bean, and some oaky hints. The palate is nice with a nearly lively carbonation, velvety and round texture, and a medium to full body. Finishes with some of the oak becoming a bit bitter, some mild earthy and perfumey hops, and the cake and cherry notes lingering. I actually liked this one but the cherry seemed to hide some of the malt complexity. However, it also seemed to hide some of the perfumey hops from the original. The oak was apparent, but it must have been from a subtle bourbon because I did not pick up any bourbon notes. Nice beer but seemingly not very quad-esque.