Boulevard Zeus IPA

Sampled at the brewery - test batch. Pours hazy orange with a dense off-white head. The aroma has lots of floral and citric hop traits with some pale malt backing it up. Medium resiny body with fairly soft carbonation. The taste is very dry with pine, dry grapefruit, pine cone and some soapiness. The finish is quite bitter and resinous. This is a good attempt at the style, but it’s missing something it needs to be great. According to the those at the brewery I talked to this is all Zeus hops. I don’t think I’m the biggest fan of that hop variety. Worth trying & I’ll be interested to see what the final product is like if it hits the shelves.
Earlier Rating: 5/28/2006 Total Score: 3.1
Bottle from St. Louis Microfest - this is apparently a tester bottle. Poured orange and had a soapy off white head. The aroma had butter and piney hops with some muddied malt in there as well. Medium bodied beer with typical IPA carbonation. There is some malt and some piney hops, but not a whole lot going on. It both smell and tasted like the bottle could have been aged. I would expect Boulevard to do better than what I sampled. I would gladly try this again and will hopefully rerate with a higher score if there is a finished product.

Experimental batch in a 12-oz. bottle. Poured a hazy deep dark amber color with a thick white head and fine bubbles. A very big hoppy aroma followed by an intense hoppy flavor. The full mouthfeel was matched with a solid hop bitterness and medium body. Well-balanced, with hop flavor edging out the malt and carrying through into the finish and aftertaste. Great potential for going commercial when the new brewhouse opens.

@ brewery - Decent but not the greatest IPA, I have ever tried. A little maltier, with some butterscotch notes, some toasted bread, and some spicy, albeit earthiness from the hop characteristic. Has a kind of aged sage flavor going on in the finish.

I enjoyed on tap in the brewery tasting room. Poured pretty hazy yellow-orange. The head had marble sized bubbles. Very potant citus and grass aroma. Grassy dry hop flavor with some buttered toast and caramel. A nice change for BLVD. I’d drink this from time to time.

poured from test batch bottle with no label at the St Louis Microfest. lightly hazy orange with a nice soapy off-white head that lasted forever. nose is a little on the stale side-caramel malts that seem dusty with some oxidized notes with some lightly earhy/piney hops that seemed stale as well. flavors are very restrained for an IPA-lightly sweet caramel malts and lingering resinous hops. I wonder if this was an old test batch somebody got a hold of to send to the fest. nonetheless, it needs work and/or i need a fresh sample.