Ode to Rogue

Rogue makes some of my all time favorite beers. They're located up in lovely Newport, Oregon and have two brewery locations. They are an awesome brewery with equally awesome beers. They're also quite good at coming up with nifty names for their beers (Dead Guy Ale is one of my favorites) and giving them funny labels with some random bearded bespectacled back woods dude holding a pint and a lobster or something. I'll start this post off by noting that I'm listening to my dad's old Talking heads album on repeat for some unknown reason. I've always be into Psycho Killer but Burning Down the House is the jam.

The first beer is an oldie but goodie. Our favorite bald bartender at the local Yard House recommended this sweet and nutty brew to us one day, and coincidentally my favorite local dive has it on tap so we got a pitcher later that night. It's still top of my list when I go out beer hunting. This one is called Rogue Hazelnut Brown Nectar. It's an American Brown Ale coming in strong at 6.2% ABV. I'd also like to note that BeerAdvocate gave this one a 91 (out of 100) rating so you might as well just be drinking liquid gold or something because they just don't throw around A's to any old beer. They used to only sell these (at least that I could find) in the taller bottles, but this week my local Total Wine started stocking them in little ones, which I guess was sort of neat.

This guy...

Dedicated to the Rogue in each of us.

This next one I'm a little too excited about. I have a small weird obsession with neat bottles, and Rogue did a special seasonal release of a new IPA and it comes in this rad ceramic pop top bottle. So I've been swooning over it for the past month or so since Total Wine opened, but I never purchased it because the 750 ml will run you a pretty penny at the store (15 bucks a pop to be exact). Vinnie brought some over the other day to surprise me and it might actually be worth the 12 dollars. Okay, maybe not that much but it was really really good. This one is an American Double/ Imperial IPA and comes in at 9.50% ABV. It's perfectly hoppy and not too heavy and really refreshing. I'm not really usually into drinking the head/foam of the beer but this was delicious. The XS Imperial IPA rates 92 on BeerAdvocate by the way. If you've got the cash I seriously recommend that you go pick one of these suckers up.

mmmmmmmmmmm

Happy Drinking!