Each Wednesday, submit your burning Boulevard beer questions on Twitter, tagging @Boulevard_Beer and #WWKW. I'll sift through the questions and select my favorites to answer in a blog post that will be shared here each Thursday. Everything is fair game! Go!

- Jeremy Danner, Ambassador Brewer

EXTREMELY important answer: Check out our beer finder! Type in your ZIP Code, select the beer you're trying to find and smash that "submit search" button. I will say that it's important to remember that the beer finder pulls ordering history so it doesn't necessarily reflect actual inventory. For that reason, we suggest calling ahead before you make a trip to snag beer. And in case you missed it, here's my Brewer's Blog post discussing our latest Love Child blend.

Since our beers have varying shelf lives and we prefer to provide as much information as possible, all of our cans, bottles and kegs have packaged on and best by dates printed on them. Check out my blog post we shared to announce updated packaging and best by dates for a full rundown.

In the early days of the brewery, John used whole cone hops in all of our beers, but as the quality of pellets increased (greatly in recent years), we transitioned to using pelletized hops. The last beer we used whole cone hops in was Pale Ale. The end of boil addition was whole cone Cascade, but we switched it to pellets a few years back. It's worth mentioning that whole cone hops aren't necessarily the same as fresh hops. Fresh hops typically refers to the first bales/pellets that have been kilned and shipped right after harvest while wet hops refers to whole cone hops that are shipped to breweries within hours of being harvested.

This is going to sound like crazy talk, but the base beer for Rye on Rye, before it's been aged in the Templeton Rye whiskey barrels, isn't particularly outstanding. Sure, it's a solid, tasty, well-made beer, but the beer is really designed to benefit from aging in Templeton Rye barrels. For that reason, we've never released or poured the beer in the Tours & Rec Center on its own. Unlike Whiskey Barrel Stout and Bourbon Barrel Quad, whose base beers are similar to Dark Truth Stout and The Sixth Glass, the base beer for Rye on Rye does not exist as a separate beer.

But because it's fun to dork out, here's the recipe for the base beer:

Malt Bill
Pale Malt – 68%
Malted Rye – 10%
Munich Malt – 5%
Cara 50 – 11%
Crystal Rye – 7%

Mash Schedule
47 C – 10 minutes
63 C – 30 minutes
73 C – 15 minutes
Mash off at 78 C

We target a beginning of boil gravity of 16.3 Plato and reach 22.0 at the end of our 70 minute boil. 5.2 degrees Plato is added with equal amounts of dextrose and brown sugar added midway through the boil.

Hops
Magnum – 18.3 IBU at 98 C
Citra – 10.5 IBU at 10 minutes after beginning of boil
Styrian Golding – 9.5 IBU at 5 minutes before end of boil
Ahtanum – 2.2 IBU during whirlpooling

We cool the wort to 19 C and ferment with our house Scottish ale strain at 19 C until we reach 6 Plato. At this point, we temp up to 23 C for the remainder of fermentation. We target a final gravity of 3.2.

Tuesday! Hazy IPA, our collaboration with WeldWerks out of Greeley, Colorado, drops exclusively on draft in the Greater Kansas City Area on Tuesday, September 4th. A few kegs will also make it out to the Denver area.

Want to discuss any of the above in more detail or have follow up questions or comments? Hit me up on Twitter: @Jeremy_Danner