Boss Tom's Golden Bock - Boulevard Brewing Co., Kansas City

If you're from the Kansas City area you know all about Tom Pendergast, the Democratic party boss who ran Kansas City during the Great Depression. Pendergast, though corrupt, is remembered affectionately a Robin Hood type who fed the poor, indirectly gave rise to the Kansas City jazz scene and was responsible for putting Harry S. Truman on the national political stage. What's this all have to do with beer? Well, Pendergast's faction was referred to as goats... an animal often associated with the Bock style. Bock being the German word for a "buck" or any large male animal. The correlation is tenuous at best...

That doesn't mean it isn't cool... I'm a sucker for historic references and this is a good one. The biggest brewery in Kansas City makes a beer named in a honor of one of its more nefarious citizens. That's enough to get me to buy a six pack. Now that I've got a glass full of this beer in front of me this stops being about historical figures and I have to judge this beer like I would any other, and that's where Boulevard's Boss Tom's Golden Bock becomes far less endearing.

From all outward appearances the Boss Tom's looks like a slightly darker macro brew. This beer is crystal clear and quite carbonated at first. The head is practically none existent. Going in closer to take in the aroma I'm hit with a more than generous wallop of pale malt. There isn't much else I can pick out of the aroma. So far I'm not finding much about the Boss Tom's to like, so I move on to take a drink.

The flavor of this beer is quite mild yet far more pale than I was hoping for. You definitely get the sense that this is, or was, a macro brew Pilsner that was made with much heftier ingredients and then it was lagered for a little too long... That being said, the flavor wasn't actually that bad. Once you get past the pale malt you'll notice some hidden sweetness mid palate. I got a little honey and maybe a squeeze of over-ripened orange. The finish is a little bitter, not in a hoppy sense but because all that malt comes rushing back as you swallow.

I wanted to like this beer much more than I did. The story behind the beer is great but the beer itself wasn't what I was looking for. If this lighter version of the Maibock were richer in flavor, not so pale, I think I would have enjoyed it much more.