Boulevard has a new valentine this season: the Roasterie

Boulevard Brewing’s Elizabeth Belden tips back a glass of reddish liquid inside the company’s Front Street bottling plant. “It’s a little bit more creamy than I expected,” she says.

“I get berry notes on the end,” says Paul Massard, the green-coffee buyer for the Roasterie. “This is a nice color. It doesn’t scream coffee.”

Early on this January morning, Belden and Massard are tasting the latest batch of Coffee Ale, the Boulevard and Roasterie alliance that hits shelves and taps in early March. It replaces another collaboration, Chocolate Ale, in the seasonal-release schedule for the Smokestack Series. After two years of making a chocolate brew with Christopher Elbow — which led to a wash of criticism over shortages the first year, due to unexpected demand, and a refund the second year, over an unwanted flavor in bottles — Boulevard decided to attempt something different in 2013.

“The Coffee Ale is being released when Chocolate Ale would be released,” says Jeremy Ragonese, Boulevard’s marketing director. “We wanted to offer folks something interesting with another local partner.”

Early on, Belden and Massard agreed that this beer wouldn’t be a stout or a porter. In those varieties, the malt drives the flavor of the beer, and the results can sometimes taste burnt.

“When the coffee is overextracted, you get an astringent taste,” Massard says. “And that’s all you get.”

“That was the challenge,” Belden adds. “How do you impart coffee into the beer without overpowering it?”

Massard identified six single-origin coffee beans, and Boulevard picked three potential base beers: a hoppy wheat, an amber and a lager. The experiments took on a certain Goldilocks quality.

“The Sumatra [coffee] was like hot peppers — we made a chili pepper beer,” Massard says.

While the Indonesian coffee was too spicy, a Kenyan varietal fared no better when combined with Boulevard’s Tank 7.

“They are two really nice worlds that didn’t work together,” Belden says.

Eventually, they discovered that the softness and citrus notes of an Ethiopian Sidamo produced a smooth coffee brew — and required close to 1,000 pounds of freshly ground coffee, which was steeped in the fermenter.

“It was like dry hopping but with coffee,” Belden says. “We made a gigantic toddy but with beer instead of water.”

Despite all of that coffee, though, the ale has only a muted caffeine profile, with the 750 ml bottle containing the caffeine equivalent of 1.5 ounces of drip coffee. The brew delivers a different kind of morning buzz: 9 percent alcohol by volume.

The clank and whirr of the bottling line a dozen feet away is the only sound for a few seconds as the two enjoy what they’ve spent the past six months trying to perfect. As Massard sips from his glass, he’s asked if he has any recommendations for pairings. “Breakfast,” he answers. “I want to have it for breakfast.”