Boulevard Bully Porter
By John & Dad on April 4, 2008 @ 7 PM (No Comments)
The Bully Porter (technically written as “Bully! Porter”) comes to us from the Boulevard Brewing Company in Kansas City, MO. This is another in a series of Thursday evening phone reviews between Father and Son Beer Love.
The 12 oz bottle features a 5.4% ABV and we served it up in an American pint glass at 52 F. The bottle has a great label on it featuring a monocled bulldog wearing a tuxedo holding up a beer. That may be the best highlight to our session.
The initial pour yielded a huge 2 1/4″ light brown rocky head that had a good amount of lacing as it dissipated slowly. The color was an opaque ruby dark brown, almost black. No carbonation to speak of, but it can be hard to tell in a beer this dark.
The aromas were burnt, chocolate, coffee, earth, black licorice and smoke. The initial flavor was lightly sweet and heavy bitter, as were the finish flavors. The finish was long in duration and there was only a fair amount of body lacing. The mouthfeel was terrific – nice and creamy. On the malt to hop scale it was on the very malty side.
Aside from the great mouthfeel there wasn’t a lot to write home about with this one. It started out well enough with a good, somewhat surprising first impression, but it became much less enjoyable towards the end. The lack of balance really started grating on our nerves. It’s not very complex and the burnt malts led to some strong bitterness. What was attractive in the beginning became annoying in the end. It’s like you’ve been on 6 dates already and now you’re resenting her. Do you break up or keep going because it’s too much trouble?
It’s definitely not repeatable and was only so-so in drinkability. It wasn’t memorable, had no wow factor and we wouldn’t buy it again. The 6 pack was in the $7 price range, so that may have some appeal, but we’d say it’s worth trying only if you can pull a single of it. There’s a lot of other porters out there better than this one.
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