Rogue Dead Guy Ale
Merry Christmas to me. This beer was a gift from my parents. They purchased it based solely off the label alone. I don’t think they were aware of the reputation Rogue Brewery has among those who love beer. I had heard of the Dead Guy but I certainly didn’t know much other than the name. The Rogue Dead Guy Ale is a Maibock from Oregon. The one thing I just realized… this is a spring offering from Rogue that they must have had stashed in the closet all these months. 6.5% ABV
Appearance - Poured into a clean pint glass. At first, I completely missed what color the head ended up as – it dropped so fast. No lacing remained, only a thin halo of white lined the edge of the glass.
Since this was a bomber bottle, I was able to top off the glass after some initial sips. A far from off-white head again falls quickly. Well defined bubbles mark the underside of the head.Cloudy and coppery, this beer is only average looking at best.
Smell - The aroma is sweet. Caramels. Faint toast notes from the malt. Slightly bready as well.
Taste - Minimal carbonation makes the sweetness slightly off-putting at first. It tastes just like you’d expect based on the smell alone. The alcohol manages to cut some of the sweet, and Nicole finds the soft and slight hop bitterness a welcome addition – keeping the beer from being overly sweet. After awhile, the beer mellows out and I find myself suddenly understanding the principle of “well-balanced” much more than before.
Mouthfeel - Fills the mouth nicely, with only a bare chewiness. The hop bite fades quickly – more showing up to say hello and not over staying its welcome.
Drinkability - Very pleasant to to drink. It grows on me more and more as I get deeper into the bottle. Glad to have a large bomber. The alcohol was well in balance making certainly drinkable over the course of a night. Three or more might get to be too much though…
Bottomline - Gifted to me as a gag, it turns out that I rather enjoyed it. This beer will definitely make me turn my eye towards other Rogue Brewery offerings in the future.
** To go off on a slight design-related tangent – Rogue does an exceptional job at their labels font to back. The skeleton on the front is most liekly the thing that caught my parents eye. Sometimes, that’s what design is intended to do. I foudn the ribboned banner layered well with the colored wood-block background. Two intriguing icons on the back label caught my eye. One was a pig and the other a campfire. Food pairing suggestions perhaps… this brings the final grade up a notch to…
B+
Holy spelling errors Batman
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