Brew Review - Rogue Dead Guy Ale

It's Spring and a man's attention turns to lighter springtime beers. And so it figures that it snowed this morning here in the Colorado low lands just to remind me that although it's Spring, it's still one of the snowiest months of the year. Time to step away from dark beers and Belgians and pick up a new beer style for me. This time, it's a Maibock beer named Dead Guy Ale from Rogue Ales of Newport, Oregon. For this beer enthusiast, this is my first taste of Rogue ales and I think I made a good first choice from their offerings.

This beer pours a hazy orange with a small 1 finger off white head that quickly melted down to nothing. There seems to be a fair amount of carbonation coming out of this cold 22oz bottle. The initial aroma smelled sweet and with a pleasant floral hop smell. As the beer warmed up I could smell more of the rich malts in this beer. Rogue put in a shopping basket full of malts into this Maibock including NW Harrington, Klages, Mairer Munich and Carastan. The hop aroma comes from the Saaz and Perle hops. This beer is no session beer as it is measured in at 6.5% ABV.

I wondered how hoppy this beer would be as the style dictates a significant hop character, but upon first taste, it wasn't the hops that were dominant here but rather the malts. The IBU rating came in at 40. It had a slightly sweet taste with a slight hop hit. Perhaps I'm becoming less sensitive to hops as I go along or else I'm still tasting the asian chicken dish I had earlier for dinner. This beer is creamy smooth and not as dry as other beers I've had. I liked this beer from the first taste. I could swear that I detect some honey in this beer but I don't think there is any. It's not overly sweet but you can tell it's got a good amount of maltiness here.

This seems to be a decently ranked beer by the masses. Beeradvocate gave it a B+, while Ratebeer puts it in the 83rd percentile and a 3.47/5 rating. Not too bad for a Maibock style. I really enjoyed this beer. It had just enough kick to it that I felt a nice glow after this bottle was gone. I wish it would have kept a better head on this beer, but that's the only downside I have to it. It's sweet enough that I felt that 2 beers would be the most I would want of this brew. I'd definitely buy this again. I'm going to give this a 3.6 out of 5 rating. Luckily, I still have some of this left and I'll going to drink it while I watch the NCAA Final tonight.