Rogue FestiveAle

Brewed by Rogue Ales
Style: Saison
Newport, Oregon USA

Serve in Tulip

UPDATED: OCT 9, 2006 Cold 22oz bottle: Pours cloudy orange amber with moderately fluffy alabaster head that dissolves quickly. Aroma is of sweet malt, grass, spice and citrus. Taste is of sweet malt, yeast, citrus and spice. Well carbonated. Mildly bittersweet ending.

22oz. bottle. Orange amber in color. Almond colored, foamy head. Belgian aroma, that’s all I get. Flavor of crisp malt with bitter hops and lots of orange zest.

(bottle) Cloudy amber with big off-white head that quickly dissipates. Aroma is sweet with pine and citrus. The flavor is the same with quite a dry bite on the back. Different elements are present, but it seems a little off balance.

Bottled. Ginormous head, I mean ridiculously huge. Light brown, honey colored, cloudy and opaque body topped with an offwhite head that leaves behind sticky splotches of lace. Aroma is musky sour like sweat and an earthy, old cellar with some spiciness Honey, fruit, musk.. Mouth is medium with light, foamy carbonation and a semi-dry finish. Flavor is sour, musky like sweat, touch of alcohol. It’s pretty foul. Malts are sugar sweet, there are fruity notes. A certain roastiness is there that reminds me of a porter or stout and it’s the strong grain presence. Caramelly. Doughy. Powerful generic beer flavor. This stuff makes me a little gaggy.

Draft at Frisco’s. Slight haze, pale body no head. The aroma is floral, pepper with light bread. The flavor is very herbal, spicey, moderate sweetness with some pepper coming through at the end. Medium body with soft carbonation.

Wow. I was adventitiously surprised by this one. I stopped off at the Rogue brewery after visiting my uncle and cousin in Portland, and I ordered this by bottle since it was out on tap. Hands down, it’s the best, creative, US-made excursion into Belgian territory I’ve sampled. Despite its complex ingredients (ginger and orange?!), it simply works, automagically (sic). Top-grade effervescence, generally successful creative blending of spices, and all around scintillating. (If you have distributed sediment, by the way, you haven’t let it rest long enough before serving--you can’t drink this with the bottle conditioning additives diffusely dispersed throughout the beer. That changes the flavor completely, as it does with any bottle conditioned ale. Try again, if this happened.)

Bottle. Pours cloudy golden orange, thick and fluffy white head. Very faint aroma of sour apples and funky yeast. Taste is kind of funky. Starts with some kind of weird orange taste and finishes with apple peel. Very dry finish, unpleasantly dry. Flavor seems off in some way.

Drain pour? Almost. Had this on tap at Monk’s and it looked like apple cider, tasted like sour fruit and smelled like nothing. That was the best part.