In my continuing effort to review the entire Boulevard Smokestack series, I have now come to the Seeyoulator Dobblebock. It is customary for Dopplebock names to end in –ator, and it is clear that someone at Boulevard is an aspiring comedian. Apparently the homage to the Dopplebock tradition only goes so far, as I looked all over the bottle for the depiction picture of a goat, and disappointingly I found none.
So, I am a bit behind in reviewing this beer, as it is a fall seasonal. However, in Kansas all of the bombers sit on the shelves for years before anyone buys them anyway, so there was no real rush. A Dopplebock should last a while anyway.
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NOTES: Shared with the Miss at the Hordeum Ranch. A 750ml corked and caged bottle poured into a pair of snifters
STYLE: Dopplebock (Cedar Aged)
ABV: 8.5%
APPEARANCE: Pours wonderful mahogany brown
HEAD: Two fingers of rich tan head that dissipates quickly
LACING: When it head disappears, it leaves nothing
NOSE: Very light, almost nothing. I kept thinking I was missing something until I put my nose into the beer trying to get some smell. Thirty seconds later I did it again. Brilliant. Where is the cedar??
TASTE: Rich, sweet, and malty. A little bit of banana. Really not a whole lot of complexity, but what is there is tasty enough. Very mild on the hops, the cedar does as much to balance out the malt as the hops. A little bit of bitterness at the end, finishes pretty clean.
DRINKABILITY: Decent. A fair bit of warming alcohol that isn’t particularly well hidden, which I found kind of odd. At 8.5% ABV, its not like this is a huge beer. The first glass went down rather quickly on a night when we are expecting a three-day ice storm.
RATING: Two hops. Perhaps its just because I’m not a huge Dopplebock fan, but this beer just doesn’t slap the taste buds like the rest of the smokestack series. I really wanted to like this beer, but in the end I found it quite mediocre.
Saw that Zane Lamprey (Of “Three Sheets” fame) visited Boulevard on the very difficult to find “Drinking Made Easy”. Looked pretty cool. – http://bit.ly/hDz1hZ