Sunday Night Suds - Boulevard Brewery Last Splash Wet Hopped Ale

This week's Sunday Night Suds explores one of Boulevard Brewery's "Backroads" series - the Last Splash Wet Hopped Ale.

The Boulevard Brewery website explains that the Last Splash Wet Hopped Ale uses Nugget hops which were delivered to the brewery within hours of being harvested. The significance of this is explained by BB as:

Most beers we brew are hopped using pelletized hops. The pellets are formed from hop cones that have been picked, kilned and cooled. The kilning process typically reduces the moisture content of the hop cone from 70% to 10-12%. Hops that have not undergone this kilning or drying process that are shipped straight to breweries for use (typically) within 36 hours are referred to as wet hops. We receive these wet hops and immediately incorporate them into finished beer by stuffing them into giant bags before hanging them in fermentation vessels. Once the bags are in position, we transfer beer onto the hops to extract the beautiful flavor and aroma oils present in the wet hops.

The Last Splash poured a rich copper color and had decent carbonation. There is a fair amount of citrus and some bite, but nothing approaching IPA status. Instead, the beer resembles an American Pale Ale (this classification was also used by the BA gurus) but with a significantly higher alcohol content (7.0% abv). Although the bottle had a best before date of March 2015 (which I did not see when I purchased it this morning at the Total Wine and Liquor store in Laurel, MD), the beer was not skunky and I found myself wishing I had bought a few more of these.

Boulevard Last Splash Wet Hopped Ale is under the Kosher Supervision of the Va'ad of Kansas City, but the bottle I purchased did not have the certification mark on the label. I subsequently spoke with a representative of the Va'ad who confirmed that the beer is in fact kosher.

To see what the experts on Beer Advocate think about this brew, please follow this link -http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/423/146253.

As always, please remember to drink responsibly and to never waste good beer unless there is no designated driver.

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