Chocolate Ale Mania Hits Kansas City for Second Year
KANSAS CITY, MO– The Well was one of a handful of bars to tap Chocolate Ale on Monday and the beer has been flowing ever since. Chocolate Ale, Boulevard Brewery’s creation with local artisan chocolatier Christopher Elbow is, for the second year in a row, creating quite the frenzy.
“Beer and Chocolate is a match made in heaven” says Laura Reynolds who skipped her healthy meal for a cold brew Monday afternoon.
Andy Lewellen owns The Well and is lucky enough to receive his beer deliveries on Monday mornings. Meaning The Well was one of the first bar’s to have it on tap.
“I think those two together have made magic.” he adds.
The beer, described by Reynolds as cold hot chocolate with a hint of beer is getting more buzz in Kansas City than this weekends Superbowl or Border War basketball game. The reason says Reynolds, “St. Louis can’t boast this. Chicago can’t boast this, it’s a hometown thing.”
Social media sites were buzzing on Monday with where you could find the beer on tap, and where it flowed, customers followed.
“Right at 11 a.m. we probably had a line of eight people coming in just for Chocolate Ale,” Lewellen said. “I’ve never seen any product of anything. It almost reminded me of the apple products where people will camp out overnight. There’s a little bit of that with this I feel like.”
The Well staffed five extra servers to handle the larger than usual Monday crowd, something Lewellen wishes would be the case more often.
“We were really happy to have it. It really helped out business,” he said.
Last year’s limited quantity of 1900 cases barely had time to hit the shelves before selling out leaving customers like Reynolds on the hunt.
“The bottles sold out so quickly so he called Omaha, he called St. Louis and my folks happen to live in Springfield and found three bottles at a health food store,” said Laura Reynolds.
So, this year Boulevard more than doubled its production, but customers like Josh Fey aren’t taking any chances.
“I may or may not have broken a traffic law or two on the way to get here,” Fey said.
Chocolate Ale hits stores on Tuesday.
