Boulevard Brewing Collaboration No. 6 w/Firestone Walker (July 2016)

From Boulevard & Firestone Walker Brewing:

Our collaboration series of beers has allowed us to work (and drink) with some of our favorite people in the beer industry who brew fantastic beers. We’ve been lucky enough to brew with Jean-Marie Rock from Orval, Larry Sidor and Deschutes Brewing Company, Dann and Martha of Pretty Things Beer & Ale Project, our sister brewery, Phil Leinhart and Brewery Ommegang and most recently with Cigar City Brewing’s Wayne Wambles.

We’ve held the beers of Firestone Walker’s Brewmaster Matt Brynildson in very high regard for many years. When we learned that Firestone Walker would be joining the Duvel Moortgat family of breweries, we immediately knew who we wanted our Collaboration No. 6 partner to be.

Firestone Walker has a tradition of inviting local winemaking friends into their breweryeach year to collaborate on a blending project that results in their anniversary ale. Pulling from several barrel-aged beers, they tinker with different blending percentages to create an incredibly complex, yet unique beer. In this spirit, we invited Matt Brynildson into our barrel-aging cave to taste beers with Boulevard Brewmaster Steven Pauwels. Armed with their palates, some graduated cylinders, nearly two dozen tulip glasses and a few bottles of Firestone Walker’s barrel-aged beers, they spent the afternoon tinkering with different blending percentages before finally deciding on just the right blend.

We’re not quite ready to unveil the final construction of the beer, but we will share that in the coming weeks. In addition to pulling beer from our cave, we’re going to brew, ferment and age Firestone Walker beers at Boulevard in Kansas City using recipes created by Matt and his team in Paso Robles to complete the final blend.

Late last week, we announced that our sixth collaboration beer would be a blended project overseen by Boulevard Brewmaster Steven Pauwels and Firestone Walker’s Brewmaster Matt Brynildson. Inspired by Firestone’s annual tradition of inviting local winemakers in to create a blend of barrel aged beers to serve as their anniversary beer, we invited Matt in to taste through our library of barrel-aged beer in our aging cave. Following an afternoon of tasting, it was determined that Collaboration No. 6 would be composed of a blend of Boulevard’s barrel aged beers as well as Firestone Walker recipes that would be brewed, fermented and aged at Boulevard Brewing Company.

Our original announcement stated that we were targeting an October release of both 750 ml bottles and 1/6 bbl kegs. Following further discussion between the brewmasters, it was determined that an October release was a bit aggressive of a timeline to produce the fantastic barrel-aged beers we’d planned. For the sake of the quality of the beer, we’ve shifted the release date to December 2016. Those extra couple of months in the barrels will allow the Firestone Walker recipes that will be executed in Kansas City to live up to the high standards established by Matt and his brewing team in Paso Robles. We apologize for the shift in the release date, but feel that the quality of the beer is most important.
Stay tuned as we share updates regarding the brewing, fermentation and aging of the Firestone Walker recipes that will be blended into Collaboration No. 6.