Dead Guy Ale by Rogue Ales
This blog focuses almost exclusively on Australian (with the occasional Kiwi) craft beer. However, what with the recent 4th of July holiday in the States and their over abundance of good craft breweries, I thought I’d write about another of my favourite American beers. I did this last year as well with Arrogant Bastard Ale. This year, my American beer of choice is Dead Guy Ale from Rogue Ales in Oregon.
I’ll start by saying Dead Guy Ale is not of a genre of beer that I tend to like. It doesn’t have a ton in the way of hoppiness. In fact, it’s almost completely malts. I don’t necessarily dislike a malty beer. But sometimes they can be a little too subtle for me. That and I still just love a big bitter hoppy smack in the face from my beers. So that’s the direction I tend to err on with my beer selections.
But Dead Guy Ale is unique. It’s got almost an extreme maltiness happening. As I alluded to earlier, typically in my beer drinking experience, ‘maltiness’ often equates to ‘subtlety’. So that ‘extreme maltiness’ (extreme subtlety) feels a bit nonsensical. Yet here we are.
Dead Guy Ale does clock in at 6.8% so I’m sure the booziness has some part in the ‘extreme’ description. But that’s definitely not all that’s happening in this brew. Dead Guy Ale just has a ton going on. And very little of it is hop related. The can describes it as a maibock. That’s not a style of beer I’m terribly familiar with. But I can only assume that this is an excellent example.
I’ll freely admit that my first purchase of Dead Guy Ale was completely a function of the branding. It had a cool bottle (it’s since transitioned to cool cans) and a cool name. It also happened to be my first introduction to Rogue Ales who are a big name in craft beer in America’s Pacific Northwest. The good bit about that is it’s not too terribly difficult to find in a good craft bottle shop.
While my initial introduction may have been marketing-based, I’ve gone back time and time again because it’s a unique beer that’s a bit out of step from what I usually like. But more importantly, it’s just a delicious beer.