Retro 2000s Boulevard Brewing Co. Beer Coaster 🍺 Kansas City Southwest Boulevard Craft Brewery Since 1989

Did Boulevard Brewing Start With One Keg and One Pickup Truck? 🍺 A Retro 2000s Boulevard Brewing Co. Beer Coaster, Kansas City, Since 1989

Size: 4"

A round pulpboard coaster printed on both sides. One face rings a line drawing of the brewery and its BOULEVARD tower with BOULEVARD BREWING CO, KANSAS CITY, SINCE 1989. The other has the green street-sign BOULEVARD BREWING CO logo on its diamond, Call (816) 474-7095 For Tour Information and www.boulevard.com, and around the rim the beer lineup: PALE ALE, UNFILTERED WHEAT BEER, DRY STOUT, BULLY! PORTER, IRISH ALE, ZŌN, BOB'S '47 and NUTCRACKER ALE. Never been under a glass.

🍺 How Boulevard started

John McDonald grew up on a farm in Osborne County, in north-central Kansas - and the local legend is he was homebrewing at twelve. He earned a fine arts degree at the University of Kansas, traveled through Central and South America, and settled in Kansas City as a carpenter and cabinetmaker. In 1988 he started turning a turn-of-the-century brick building on Southwest Boulevard into a brewery, with a used brewhouse shipped over from Bavaria. By some accounts the same building had once held his father's industrial supply business, and his own son lived there as a toddler in the early years.

The first beer came off that brewhouse in the fall of 1989. On November 17, 1989, with the first keg capped by Kansas City mayor Richard Berkley, McDonald loaded it into the back of his pickup and drove it down the street to Ponak's, a Mexican restaurant that became Boulevard's first account. Old-timers around Kansas City still point at that stretch of road and say that's where it all started. That first year was about 1,800 barrels, all of it Pale Ale.

🌾 The beers on the rim

The list on this coaster is the history. Wheat beer came in 1990; Bully! Porter and Irish Ale joined by 1991; and in 1994 McDonald took a chance on an unfiltered wheat on draft, which became the beer Kansas City knows Boulevard for. Bob's '47 came in 1993 as Boulevard's first lager, and the story goes it was named for Bob Werkowitch, an old brewmaster from Kansas City's Muehlebach brewery who handed McDonald the recipe he'd brewed for the U.S. Brewmaster's Academy back in 1947. ZŌN, the Belgian-style witbier, was the first Belgian recipe Boulevard's Flemish-born brewmaster, Steven Pauwels, brewed in Kansas City, in 2001. Boulevard grew into the largest craft brewery in the Midwest, and in 2013 the Belgian brewers Duvel Moortgat bought it.

📅 How old is it?

ZŌN on the rim means 2001 or later, and a later printing of this coaster adds Lunar Ale and Single-Wide IPA, which came along around 2008 - so this one belongs to the 2000s. An earlier printing had Tenpenny Ale and the old www.blvdbeer.com address instead.

🍺 About these

Every one I have is this same double-sided coaster, about 4 inches across. It's a fun one for a Kansas City kid, a KU grad, a home bar or a craft beer collection. The supply is finite - nobody's printing this coaster again, and once these last ones are gone, they'll be very difficult to acquire.