Rogue Farms Single Malt Ale

A solid, but not overly aggressive pour into my 25cl tulip glass still produces four-fingers of lightly tanned froth that leaves a touch of lacing on the sides of my glass. The beer is a bright, dark copper / red color that shows a brilliantly clear, red-stained, copper hue when held up to the light. The aroma smells of grapefruit zest and a hint of pine (much like Cascade hops), but finishes with a touch of soapy malt and grassy grain. The hop notes seem to have a touch of juniper to it at times, but the nose on this is fairly clean and perhaps a touch simplistic, but certainly enjoyable.

Again a Cascade hop like flavor is found here in my first sip. The beer is a touch warmer than cool and has a bit of a fizzy texture to it, but has a lightish body overall and is fairly quaffable. The finish has a light’ish, but still slightly biting, smooth bitterness to it and there is also a touch of menthol and pine like hop flavors mixed in that linger on the tongue as well. A touch of menthol adds some interest and there is a fair amount of biscuit like malt character underlying the more dominant hop character. More specifically the dominant character here is definitely the fruit hop character; it is most like Cascade, but does have a few more touches of lychee and perhaps some tangelo notes that Cascade doesn’t have and it is quite a bit smoother without the cattiness that Cascade often has.

A fairly simple beer in some respects, but this is actually a very nice drinking Pale Ale. I almost wish it was a bit bigger so that I could better zero in on the Dare(TM) Malt and the Revolution hops. I could see myself enjoying quite a few pints of this brew. My biggest gripe is that it is a bit over-carbonated, but luckily a few swirls of my glass can get rid of the excess carbonation.