Boulevard's Chocolate Ale

This is the Beer that started this whole experiment.

Ahh Boulevard. Thank you for giving me a beer to start this whole shindig off. This is the beer that could establish my beer snobbery. Seriously folks after drinking this beer I could go into a long tirade about how Budweiser is evil blah blah blah and I'd hop onto my single speed bike and ride away into the wind muttering "you've probably never heard of it". But I'll be damned if I do.

Anyway if you've missed the buzz behind this creative concoction here's a quick rundown: Boulevard teamed up with some renown chocolate guy to make an ale brewed with cocoa. Now many a brewer has made chocolate porter's and stouts, but Boulevard is the only company to try an ale (so far) and beer geeks have been going nuts over this thing. It's a limited run released right around Valentines Day and last year they sold out within the hour. To combat the demand Boulevard tripled the production and people lined up like Black Friday for the stuff. To say the least, this brew is hyped, and I got pulled into buying 2 bottles of the stuff.

So it's hyped to shit? How the fuck does it taste?

So I Tried it.

And by tried it I mean I waited all fucking day to drink this stuff. Picked it up around 2, lovingly placed it in the fridge, studied some ancient hieroglyphic programming shit, and went to class at 6. Spending all of 4 hours in class listening to a teacher drone on while fantasizing about how STUPENDOUSLY DELICIOUS this beer should be. I rushed my way home and poured up a pint. Took a nice wiff of the glass and enjoyed it's odd aroma. Lemon-y with a dash of cocoa. With my first sip I understood the hype. This ale is good.

What does it taste like?

Picture if someone took a glass of boulevard wheat, took the lemon zest down a hundred notches spiked in a bit of hazelnut vanilla and cocoa. The ale does not have the kind of flavor that punches you in the mouth. It's smooth and slow with several different layers. Honestly I felt like the glass I was drinking it out of didn't really do it justice, but I'm not about to start sipping my beer out of some fancy flute glass like some over-classy dickhead. As good as the beer is the novelty of the flavor got old after I downed the first half of the pint, but by that time the 9.1% ABV content kicked in and my attitude to this beer changed completely. All in all I drank all of a 9$ Bottle to myself and got a pretty decent buzz, with only the 2nd quarter of the bottle being less than great.

The final Verdict?

Boulevard Chocolate Ale is good, but I have the strong feeling that a good chunk of it's following stems from it's relative rarity. I'll be picking up another bottle next year, but I wouldn't bother adding this to my stable of regular beers if it were available year round. Regardless if you can find a bottle now, pick it up. It's worth it.