After Irish Ale in 1992, Boulevard’s second sea­sonal beer, intro­duced in 1993, was Bob’s 47, a lager, named for Bob Werkowitch a former brew­mas­ter for Muehlebach and mentor to John McDonald. Bob started at Muehlebach as an appren­tice brewer in 1938, working with his father a cellar master. In 1947 at the U.S. Brewer’s Academy he made up a recipe for a beer that he pro­claimed “one of the best beers he had ever drunk.” It is a rich, malty Munich-style Octoberfest lager. Bob gave the recipe to John and each year when the beer is released Boulevard employ­ees have a toast to honor their friend, Bob who died in 1996.

On November 17, 1989, the first keg of Boulevard beer was sold to Ponak’s Mexican Kitchen just a few blocks from the brewery. John McDonald deliv­ered that half-barrel of Pale Ale in his pickup truck. A handful of reg­u­lars looked on in amuse­ment as the young upstart tapped the strange new brew.

John’s dream of a brewery started on his trips to Paris to visit his future wife. There he tasted great beers and noticed that the beers were locally made and had a local fol­low­ing. Unlike American beers, each one tasted dif­fer­ent. Belgian beers became his favorite.

In 1988, John started con­struc­tion of the brewery in a turn-of-the-century brick build­ing on Kansas City’s his­toric Southwest Boulevard. A vintage Bavarian brew­house was installed, and the first batches of beer were pro­duced in the fall of 1989.

The timing was perfect. Boulevard was at the fore­front of America’s taste switch­ing from homogenous-tasting nation­ally dis­trib­uted brews to Pre-prohibition style craft beers with a local identity.

In 2006, a major expan­sion adja­cent to the orig­i­nal brewery raised Boulevard’s brewing capac­ity to approx­i­mately 600,000 barrels per year—a sizable increase from the 6,000 barrels con­tem­plated in John’s orig­i­nal busi­ness plan. The new brewing and pack­ag­ing facil­ity is a model of sus­tain­able urban archi­tec­ture and engi­neer­ing; a three-story, 70,000 square foot build­ing housing a new, state-of-the-art 150-barrel brew­house, pack­ag­ing lines, admin­is­tra­tive offices, and hos­pi­tal­ity rooms.

Boulevard Brewing Company has grown to become the largest spe­cialty brewer in the Midwest. Our mission is simple: to produce fresh, fla­vor­ful beers using the finest tra­di­tional ingre­di­ents and the best of both old and new brewing tech­niques. Boulevard beers, known for their full flavor, dis­tinc­tive char­ac­ter, and unsur­passed quality, are cur­rently avail­able through­out [the midwest, south and western U.S.]”