Boulevard BBQ: INFECTED!

Well, to celebrate my birthday yesterday I decided to treat myself to something I already bought 11 months ago: Boulevard Bourbon Barrel Quad (BBQ) 2011.  Yes, 2011.  I bought two bottles shortly after it was released, one to drink fresh and one to put away in the basement until the next batch came out, for a comparison.  Unfortunately, Boulevard just announced there will be no BBQ this year, and none next year until the fall.  I decided I’d rather not wait another year, which as it turns out was probably a good idea.  I’ve appended my original review of the fresh bottle at the end in bold.  As it turns out, I think I drank it from the exact same glass as last time (a snifter from Bavarian Lodge).

BBQ is loosely based on the Belgian beers typically called Strong Dark Ales or Quads (they’re essentially the same thing).  Pretty much the Belgian equivalent of a barleywine, they are dark (ranging from red to deep brown), strong (rarely less than 9%, and when they are they’re called doubles or dubbel); minimally hoppy but often maximally carbonated.  Their carbonation level is high enough that many breweries seal them with champagne corks rather than bottle caps, which is what Boulevard does.  They are said to cellar well.  The main differences between a quad and a barleywine are the carbonation level, the use of fancy adjunct sugars (candi sugar, invert sugar and date sugar, for example), and very aggressively-flavorful yeast strains that taste like spices, figs and dates.  I have also found that most quads have very little alcohol flavor compared to barleywines, which don't integrate it as well and can taste quite boozy.

This beer is a quad brewed with cherries and aged in bourbon barrels.  It was great fresh.  It’s still good now, but those cherries have turned out to be a bad idea with age.

On first pour, BBQ looks pretty much the way I would expect it too, and not much different than it was fresh.  It is dark red color, not quite brown, and it is topped by about two fingers’ worth of foam.  It wasn’t that foamy fresh, but quads often get more carbonated with age (the opposite of most beers).  Where this differs from the fresh bottle is that it is much cloudier now, and when I can actually get some light peering through it I notice the carbonation level is very high.  Bubbles everywhere; I’m not surprised the cork exploded.

The smell is where things start to really get off course.  When it was fresh, this smelled mostly of figs (classic Belgian yeast flavor) and a woody-vanilla aroma from the bourbon barrel.  There was no boozy smell like some cheaper barrel-aged beers.  Cherry was mild.  Not anymore; cherries are now the dominant smell, with a bit of burnt sugar on top of that.  Fruit flavors are supposed to fade with age, so I’m a little confused.

After tasting it, I know why: the beer is infected!  It has a light sour edge to it that gets more pronounced as the beer warms.  I guess those cherries weren’t rinsed off before they used them, as they seem to have brought some lactobacillus with them that’s starting to kick off.  Lactobacillus is a common, naturally-occurring organism in sour beer, though it is usually not supposed to be there (most beer is not supposed to be sour, including this one).   I’m fine with sourness, I just don’t expect it in a quad.  Nice enough touch to make it interesting here, without taking away from the beer.  Unfortunately, apart from the cherries, most of what I liked about this beer fresh is now gone.  Vanilla and toffee flavors from the bourbon have been replaced by a sharp alcohol note, and that fig flavor is nowhere to be found.  It is now dominated entirely by cherries, and sour cherries at that.  There is an extremely faint hint of salad vinaigrette, which means this might also have an acetobacter infection.  In that case, glad I’m drinking this now and didn’t unknowingly wait until it turned to complete vinegar.

Unfortunately, the combination of intentional bottle-fermentation with live yeast and an accidental fermentation with wild bacteria has pretty much obliterated this beer’s texture.  It was the perfect balance of high carbonation and thick barley when fresh.  Now the carbonation is overkill.

Overall, I like it, and find it interesting.  There is sort of a niche market for sour quads (De Dolle comes to mind---more on that here), and maybe I’ll try some more.  Here though, as interesting a touch as the infection is, it simply takes away too much of what I liked about it fresh.  Next year, I don’t think I’ll be putting away any bottles in the basement.

Here’s a Copy + Pasted Word doc from my fresh review:

Name:                 Boulevard Bourbon Barrel Quad (BBQ)

Style:                   Abbey quad

Twist:                  Brewed with cherries, aged in bourbon barrels

Strength:           11.8%

Notes:                 750ml bottle of the 2011 vintage, split with a friend and served in a snifter.  Previous iterations of this beer have been a combination of fresh and barrel-aged beer, with cherries being added during the aging process.  Last year’s 2010 batch was all barrel-aged with cherries.  For this year’s release, the whole thing was barrel-aged but cherries were added during primary fermentation, not the barrel fermentation.  In addition, it is a blend of different batches---some aged for eight months in barrels, some for two years, and the rest somewhere between that.  Confused yet?

BBQ 2011 pours a deep bronze red color.  Though it only has a single finger of foam on top, the lacing is great, and the carbonation level looks great for a quad.

It smells delicious.  I’ve never had the earlier batches, but many people said (as a commendation or a complaint) that it never really smells or tastes like a quad.  This batch begs to differ.  The underlying aroma here is the classic Belgian yeast aroma of figs, an aroma/flavor seemingly present in all dark Belgian ales.  I say underlying but the most prominent aromas are from this beer’s ancillary twists.  The bourbon aroma is a nice woody vanilla flavor with just a hint of alcohol, not the cheap plastic-handle bourbon some beers have.  Cherries are subdued, but present.

The bourbon and booze character is mostly on the backend when I taste the beer, however.  The yeast and the wood give the dominant flavors: vanilla, toffee, and lots of figs.  There is a hint of cherry, and also of coconut.  Alcohol warming is kept to a minimum, and hops are nonexistent.  This is really damn good.

The mouthfeel is perfect for a quad.  It is just the right balance of light body and depth, held aloft by that excellent carbonation I mentioned earlier.

Wow!  This beer, or at least this batch of it, is a definite A-.  It should age well too, and I have a bottle to test it.

This was written in early January 2012, and typed on February 21, 2012.