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WWKW – October 4th, 2018

Posted October 4, 2018

Category: WWKW

WWKW – October 4th, 2018

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


Since Brewhouse One Series beers (Requiem for a Pancake, One Love, Allegro Non Troppo and Paw Paw's Got a Brand New Bag) are only available in the Tours & Rec Center Gift Shop, apart from becoming a beer jetsetter (which sounds awesome), your best bet is to find yourself a trading partner in the Greater Kansas City Area. The cool thing about there being soooo many breweries around the country that release beers that don't always see distribution, is that there's always something you have that we can't find in Kansas City, especially in a city like Chicago. I'd suggest checking out the trading forum on CraftBeerKC.com or the many beer trading groups that exist on Facebook and Reddit. The other option is to just move to Kansas City, dude. It's awesome here.

At this time, we don't have any plans to expand our selection of beers that we sell in crowlers as we currently only offer beers that aren't otherwise available to take home in bottles or cans in our gift shop. Since our bottles and cans are filled on our fancy, state of the art packaging lines, they offer a superior version of the beer with a much longer shelf life. As far as growlers go, no, we don't see ourselves adding growler fills as we feel that crowlers already offer a better, more portable experience as compared to growlers. Just FYI, you can always view which beers we're currently offering in crowlers at the bottom of our Beer Hall page.

You're just awesome so we wanted to share new and experimental beers in a format that allowed you to take the beers with you. Selfishly, the new BLVR&D IPAs Pack also allows our brewers the chance to share IPAs they're proud of with a wider audience and we feel they've absolutely crushed it with these three. We couldn't see ourselves not finding a way to get these out into the world. We depend heavily on the feedback of beer drinkers to inform future decisions regarding new beer releases. We're tricky like that.

Right. Now. We launched Whiskey Barrel Stout as a year-round beer from the get go so you should be able to find it where you normally snag four- and six-packs of other Smokestack Series beers. You should also expect to see another round of Whiskey Barrel Stout kegs hitting bars and restaurants soon!

In a word, yes. Going back to its inception in late 2007, the Smokestack Series has offered our brewers the chance to play and experiment with new styles, raw materials and processes. Since we opened the Beer Hall a little over two years ago, our brewers have had a bit of a captive audience for test beers. Couple that with a challenge from Brewmaster Steven Pauwels to create two or three new test beers each month and you have a fairly robust R&D program. For test beers in the Beer Hall, the sky is the limit, but as we think about adding new beers to our lineup (whether they're year-round, seasonal or one-off beers), things get a little more serious. Sure, we brew the beers that we want to drink, but we also have to make sure they play to folks outside the brewery. Beer Hall performance plays into this for sure, but we bring folks from our sales and marketing teams into the mix to determine what makes the next year's release calendar. Having said all that, if you ever drink a test beer in the Beer Hall that you think has potential, tell us! Our Tours & Rec crew comes to work every day not only wanting to talk beer with you, but also to listen to your thoughts. We're in this together.

Nope. Sometimes it comes down to something as simple as, "Hey, which looks better on this hoodie?" There aren't any category/legal rules when it comes to how you decide to name your brewery.

Man, I LOVED Tasting Room - Black Walnut Ale. While we have talked about the idea of it returning to the Sample Twelve pack, I'm not aware of any conversations related to having the beer join our regular lineup as a year-round or seasonal beer. Having said that, it's worth noting that Ginger Lemon Radler, Heavy Lifting (formerly Mid-Coast IPA) and American Kolsch were all born as Tasting Room beers. Anecdotally, Black Walnut Ale is the one I hear the most about.

That's a great idea for Requiem for a Pancake. While we do have a few Smokestack Series limited release beers that generate some buzz each year, I can't say that we have a beer that's tied to a specific date/occurrence each year in the same way that a few Midwest breweries pull off with their massive imperial stouts. I'm totally stealing this idea and emailing my boss right now, man.


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