The selection for DIPA of the Year (DOY) 2020, chosen from the 4PAX “Must Try Before You Die” category of superior tasting double IPA beers, is:
PHANTOM HAZE. Boulevard Brewing Company, Kansas City, Missouri crafted this truly outstanding Double IPA. Weighing in at 7.5% ABV and 30 IBUs, this supernaturally delicious beer is big, bold and beautifully balanced, bursting with luscious tropical hop flavors. Pouring an inviting shade of orange, PHANTOM HAZE combines 10 different hops with an oat and wheat malt bill to give this DIPA a juicy, hop-forward taste with a pillowy mouthfeel. Malt: Pale Malt, Wheat Malt, and Naked Oats. Hops: Citra, Idaho 7, Amarillo, Strata, Calypso, Cascade, El Dorado, Galaxy, Mosaic, and Ekuanot. The taste is clean, sweet tropical citrus, and geranium. The Malt is moderately sweet, pillowy, and subtle. The Hops are juicy with mild bitterness.
After art school John McDonald, Boulevard’s creator/owner made his living as a carpenter, always fascinated by the creative process. He started homebrewing. He visited breweries. He put together a business plan, sold his house to raise money, and set out to find the rest of the resources he would need to start a brewery. His original business plan called for someday selling 6,000 barrels a year. By the third-year sales passed 7,000 barrels, and continued to climb. Boulevard began selling its beers in neighboring cities and states. The original Bavarian brewhouse, designed to produce only a few thousand barrels a year, was approaching 100,000 barrels by 2004, turning out a dozen 1,000-gallon brews each and every day. In 2006 John was able to invest in a $25 million expansion project that brought a new building with a 150-barrel brewhouse, packaging halls, offices and hospitality spaces. With a new brewhouse, his brew team’s creative energies were unleashed. The Smokestack Series was launched, featuring an ever-evolving array of even bigger, bolder beers. Not finished, in 2016 he commissioned “Cellar Five,” a 3,600 square foot building home to six 1,000-barrel fermentation tanks, increasing Boulevard’s fermentation capacity by 40%. But he didn’t stop there. In 2018 Boulevard completed construction and installation of a brand new 24,000 square foot Canning Hall, housing a high-speed canning line capable of filling up to 350 12-ounce cans per minute.
TASTE QUALITY ANALYSIS
To illustrate the difference in the overall taste quality between the selected DIPA of the Year (DOY) and that of the other samples in the 4PAX data base, we generated the following figure. It shows the average grades (solid dots) for each of the four taste parameters for the selected DIPA of the Year versus the dispersion in the average grades for the remaining 4PAX data samples.
LEGEND:
- RED Dot ( Solid ) – average APPEARANCE;
- GREEN Dot ( Solid ) – average AROMA;
- BLUE Dot ( Solid ) – average MOUTHFEEL;
- BLACK Dot ( Solid ) – average FLAVOR;
- ‘X—X’ – measured spread, [ MEAN, +/- 1 SIGMA ].
TAKEAWAY
In terms of which taste characteristics influenced our selection of PHANTOM HAZE as the 2020 DIPA of the Year (DOY), measurements show that Aroma and Flavor, followed by Mouthfeel and Appearance, combined to produce the superb taste quality characteristic of this year’s DOY.