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The I-70 Series: Schlafly vs. Boulevard

Continued from page 3

As a half-dozen tan and trim patrons gather around him, Oliver pulls twelve-ounce beer bottles from a plastic tub of ice. He pours nips into the glasses. Above him an inflatable Chiefs helmet hangs from the ceiling. A blown-up racecar beside him advertises Winston cigarettes.

He begins the tasting by noting that one brew, Demolition, is a Belgian strong ale from Chicago's Goose Island Brewery, which is owned in part by Anheuser-Busch. The patrons pick up their samples, sniff, sip and swirl.

"What an aroma!" proclaims Roy Williams, a bespectacled man who baked a loaf of multigrain bread for everyone to munch on.

"It looks real dark, but it's not that heavy," adds a sunburned guy with a mane of long hair tucked behind his ears and who's wearing a T-shirt from a gardening service.

"I'll pick up a six-pack," one patron says before stomping off to the cooler.

Two and a half years ago, Oliver noticed a conundrum facing consumers. Liquor store shelves were filled with niche brands not available in most bars. But customers balked at spending $10 for a six-pack of untested ale. So Oliver started invite-only beer tastings by sending out e-mail blasts to customers who used store discount cards to buy microbrews. News spread by word of mouth. Today Oliver offers tastes of five beers. Over the next few hours, 125 people will stop by.

"I just want to expand people's beer," Oliver says.

These beer tastings, which are becoming increasingly popular, are aimed directly at Boulevard's key buyer, a group that liquor-store owners say constantly demands to try new things. Oliver says there's high demand for two other local products — Flying Monkey and O'Malley's Irish Cream Ale — as well as for Wheach, a wheat and peach beer made by O'Fallon Brewery.

"We have repeat customers for them. We have people coming in looking for them. There's times when we've been out of all of them," Oliver says.

Oliver offered Lunar at a tasting in April and says it's still hot among his cultured crowd. "In the last couple months it's slacked off a little bit, but all in all it's one of their better-selling ones, right behind the Wheat."

And Lunar has been selling so well at the Cellar Rat, another KC wine and beer shop, that owners there recently wheeled a flatbed cart loaded with cases to the front of the store so customers wouldn't have to wander far to find it. "We just bring it in and sell it," says Ryan Sciara, Cellar Rat's managing partner. "It blows [other beer sales] away. I sell more Lunar than probably anything right now."

This is exactly the sort of crowd John McDonald would like to tap. So Boulevard recently pushed its own retail-store party.

On July 12 a Boulevard rep pushed Boulevard products at a Gomer's outpost. Taylor Little, a summer marketing intern from the University of Missouri-Columbia, stood in front of a card table set with Boulevard pint glasses, promotional posters, catalogs and seven different styles, including Lunar.

Little proudly proclaimed Lunar his favorite. "The first time I tried it, I didn't like it at all. It kind of grew on me."

With the zeal of a street proselytizer, Little tried to encourage even the most unlikely store patrons to try Boulevard.

"What is that, a German beer?" screeched a tottering old woman who passed Little's table on her way to grab some Michelob. "I'm a Bud Light man," added a man in a security uniform. "What's your response to a low-carb beer?" asked another elderly woman with a sweater tied around her neck.

Kenneth Hill, a middle-aged guy in a camouflage T-shit and khaki shorts, stopped to try a sip of Pale Ale. "Shit don't taste like Miller," he said. "Is this an import? Which one tastes like American beer?"

Hill made a face like he might throw up. "Let me come back when I can get that taste out of my mouth. He moved on, scanning far aisles for a bottle of white zinfandel. "Ack! It's still there!" he shouted.

Ignoring the unenlightened, Boulevard is about to go even more gourmet. This fall the brewery will release the Smokestack Series, a line of four strong specialty brews. Symbolic of Boulevard's effort to target highbrow consumers, the new beers will come in 25.4-ounce, champagne-style bottles.

About 30 lawyers surround high-top tables in the wood-paneled, clubhouse-style back room of Kansas Citys Granfalloon Bar & Grill for a monthly meeting of the Kansas City chapter of the National Employment Lawyers Association. Among them is Patrick Reavey, an Anderson Cooper look-alike. A self-proclaimed beer snob, Reavey is the kind of guy who would rather drink water than Miller Lite. When the waitress arrives, he is eager to order the same thing waiting for him in a six-pack at home, a Boulevard Pale Ale.

The waitress stops him. "We don't have Boulevard Pale Ale," says she.

He could have sworn he'd seen a waitresses float past with a few pints of the stuff on her serving tray, so Reavey tromps to the bar to investigate.

Sure enough, the only pale ale tap at the bar belongs to Schlafly. In late March Boulevard lost its Pale Ale handle at the bar to its cross-state rival.

But Boulevard will soon have a chance to win it back. On August 1 the Granfalloon will kick off a kind of I-70 series: Schlafly versus Boulevard.

The event will be held at the bar's two locations. Throughout the month patrons will compete in head-to-head drink-offs to see which brand's pale ale is more popular. Boulevard's distributor, Central States, will help provide I-70 Series banners, table tents and T-shirts for the bar staff.

David Colgan plans to bring in a new weapon for the brewery: Boulevard girls. The women, courtesy of their distributor, will offer free samples and Napoleon Dynamite-riffing "Vote for Pale Ale" stickers to sway the crowd.

Granfalloon manager Tim Caniglia hasn't promised which brewery will get the tap handle afterward. It's a win-win for his bar, whatever happens.

But Boulevard rep Colgan wonders if it's really good for his business. "It's a double-edged sword, a little bit, because we're going to promote their brand, too."

At the meeting of lawyers in July, Reavey decides he might as well order a Schlafly.

"I like the taste," he tells the guys around him. "It's good. Really good."

"Don't you want to support the local economy?" someone shouts over the laughter and clinking bar glasses. But Reavey reasons that his beer is a luxury good purchased on one standard: quality.

"If it tastes good, that's what I'm gonna buy," he concludes.

That sixer in the fridge back home? He's already thinking of replacing it.

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