Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale from Boulevard Brewing Company. Boulevard
Brewing Company is a very well known brewery, yet few people have been lucky
enough to have any of their beers and if they have it was likely their excellent
Unfiltered Wheat Beer. The Unfiltered Wheat Beer is definitely an
excellent beer and by far their most popular, and it provides the support for their
brew master Steven Pauwels, originally from Belgium, to get creative and work
outside of the box. Fortunately for
Boulevard when you allow an excellent brew master to be creative you will, more
often than not, be impressed. Attempts
to produce interesting sour beers are well accepted and loved by many home brewers
yet they have yet to gain popularity with the average craft beer drinker and
are even less accepted by the average mass-market light lager drinker. After all, AB and Miller-Coors have spent hundreds
of millions convincing Americans that “real beer” should be light in flavor and
highly carbonated. But I digress, on to
the review.
On Beeradvocate, Tank 7 has a 91, over
at ratebeer it has a 98 overall and a 98 for style.
They say:
On
the bottle –
A
refreshing American rendition of a classic Belgian style, Tank 7 starts with a
surge of alluring aromatics. Lush notes of tropical fruits deftly frame its
sweet body of crispy, bready malt.
On
the Website –
- Style: Saison/Farmhouse Ale
- Availability: Year-round, Draught and both 750 mL and 4-Pack Bottles
Most breweries
have at least one piece of equipment that’s just a bit persnickity. Here at
Boulevard we have fermenter number seven, the black sheep of our cellar family.
Ironically, when our brewers were experimenting with variations on a
traditional Belgian-style farmhouse ale, the perfect combination of elements
came together in that very vessel. You could call it fate, but they called it
Tank 7, and so it is. Beginning with a big surge of fruity aromatics and
grapefruit-hoppy notes, the flavor of this complex, straw-colored ale tapers
off to a peppery, dry finish.
|
Color (EBC)
|
12
|
|
Bitterness (IBUs)
|
38
|
|
Original Gravity (Plato)
|
17.3
|
|
Terminal Gravity (Plato)
|
2.5
|
|
Alcohol (ABV)
|
8%
|
Sensory Profile
A straw colored,
light to medium bodied beer with an earthy, spicy, grapefruit aroma and flavor,
a soft, sweet malt flavor and a prominent hop bitterness.
|
Aroma
|
Floral, citrusy
hops, Belgian yeast esters
|
|
Malt
|
Soft, light,
sweet flavor
|
|
Hops
|
Prominent hop
bitterness and citrusy, grapefruit, peppery flavor
|
|
Balance
|
Hops
|
|
Body
|
Light/medium to
medium
|
Malts and Adjuncts - Corn flakes, malted wheat, pale malt,
wheat
Hops - Amarillo, Simcoe, Tradition
Pairings - Herb-roasted
chicken, pork, Taleggio cheese
I say:
Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale is a wonderful beer. It is everything I was hoping for and
more. It pours a hazy straw (below style
guidelines) with a nice thick, long lasting head. Earthy and grapefruit aromas bound out of the
glass backed up by an interesting spiciness and light bready notes from the yeast. The flavor is complex at multiple
levels as well. There is an immediate floral and
grapefruit citrus characteristic from the hops, with a slight bit of pepper
from the high Belgian fermentation, though the spiciness remains in the
background. There is a slight corn sweetness
that I had to go back and look more closely for on my next sip. A light maltiness persisted, with a pleasantly
tart finish.
This
was an exceptionally drinkable beer that I would recommend. In fact I wish that I would have been lucky
enough to find a 750ml bottle, but unfortunately I was only able to locate one
of the 12 oz 4-pack bottles.
That’s
all for tonight, check back soon for a write-up on Finch’s Threadless IPA.
Happy Drinking!!!