Boulevard Rye on Rye

750 ml bottle, caged and corked. 11% abv. Had no idea what to pour this into, so I went with a slightly thinner belgian chalice. Starting to drink it at probably about 45 degrees F or so. I imagine the beer will probably change moreso than most as it warms up. I also plan to not submit this writeup until the bottle is done, meaning I'll be 1/2-way towards "shitfaced". That should make for a more entertaining review, huh?

This is a limited edition release of Bully's Smokestack Series, this is bottle 7863 out of 12148. It was about 12 bucks for this bottle at The Friar Tuck's in O'fallon, MO. This is pretty much what the name says. It's a rye-malted ale, aged in Templeton Rye whiskey casks. There's plenty of hops in it as well, but obviously this is all about the rye. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't excited about this as I've had a bit of a rye-malt hard on as of late.

Pours a nice, deep red-tinted mahogany. 1 1/2 finger head quickly goes into a soapy foam and stays there with minimal lacing throughout the session. This beer just flat out, looks boozy. Smell is a lot of malt, then the rest is a battle in your nose between the spicy rye and a very very distinct alcohol (not really a surprise at 11%). There are some syrupy hints (like molasses/maple syrup) but it's not mind blowing. Sweet malt like you'd get in big Belgian Quad, mixed with the rye and the booze. Maybe a 750 bottle of this was a bit too much? We'll see.

Taste. Wow. This is very unique. Big and malty up front as expected, but a nice spicy bite to it as well. You think that the maltiness is going to coat your tongue and just kind of linger, but it gets out of the way a lot faster than you'd think. The spiciness of the rye stays throughout each sip, but the sweetness quickly subsides for a strong, but still well placed booziness that is every bit of the whiskey barrel this was aged in. I'm not a huge whiskey guy, but it absolutely works with the spiciness of the rye. The finish is what lingers, and it's a really nice, dry oaky finish that has a touch of the bitterness from the hops. When I say it "lingers" it's not that it overpowers, just that the oak sits on your tongue for awhile. It's pretty cool. This is an extremely interesting beer. And it's every bit as "good" as it is "interesting".


Drunken rant......GO!!!!!!!:


Boulevard gets it. Once again, they take their top-notch brews and absolutely (like the Saison-Brett and the BBQ Quad) just knock it out of the effing park. Sure there are slightly non-traditional ingredients in this, but when you drink it, you can tell that there was actually a thought process to the beer and an idea in mind as to what they wanted to do. Breweries like Avery, Schlafly, and New Belgium should take notes. Exquisitely crafted, and even their freaking lame story of the beer on the back label is spot-on as to what to expect in regards of taste.

You may or may not like Bully's every day beers like their Wheat, Pale, and Porter (although they are all solid), but their super top end stuff, especially their limited edition stuff can compete with absolutely anything this country makes. They take a supposedly "unique" style that everyone is screwing around with (oak/bourbon barrel aged fad we're currently seeing), tweak it just a touch to make it their own, and don't beat you over the head with the new, cool ingredient that everyone's playing with. They let the rye, and the oak aging (for example) work with the style at hand. It just seems like they take their time to make a top quality product, and in the end bend over every other midwest brewery that tries to hang with them. It's truly a shame that they don't get the same nation-wide love of some other operations as I think they, at times, deserve it. I'm not sure if their entire catalog can hang with a company with the diversity of a Rogue or Bells, but they certainly have some beers that should be in the discussion as far as the elite beers that are available in this country. This being one of them.

This beer is every bit of the 11% it says on the bottle, and it's going to take a while to completely finish it. But that's fine. If you have an hour or two where you're not doing anything, pop open a bottle of this guy and just enjoy. An absolutely remarkable brew. The quintessential balance of sweet and bitter, with the spicy rye linking the two.

Verdict:

9.5 out of mother******* 10.