On Tap: Going Rogue

Hello fellow beer lovers, welcome to another edition of On Tap.  Though this post is a day late, I promise the wait was worth it.  Monday allowed me the time to go out and add several new beers to my repertoire, in addition to the ones I sampled throughout last week.  Let’s not waste any time, shall we.

We’ll start with this week’s “winners”.  Yesterday was trivia night at the Market Cross Pub in Carlisle and in addition to schooling some of the locals (I’m really bad at it), yours truly enjoyed some tasty new brews.  First, I perused the draught list and sampled Rogue’s Chocolate Stout.  I was very excited because I had been wanting to try a chocolate stout for awhile now and I finally got my chance.  I must say, it wasn’t quite as good as I was hoping but was still a very good beer.  Overall, the stout was smooth, creamy and had a slight coffee aftertaste.  The only thing I didn’t like about it was that it was fairly bitter at first blush, but that quickly melted away so I am willing to overlook that fact.

The second winner of the week is another from the Rogue family, Rogue Dead Guy Ale.  After my first success with the Chocolate Stout, I figured, “Why stop there?”  If you like that natural, smooth beer flavor without all the hoppiness, then this beer is for you.  This beer was, in a word: delicious.  I did however, seem to be able to taste the alcohol content more and more as I got closer to the bottom of the bottle; not sure what that’s about.  Regardless, Monday was a good night.

Now, on to the losers.  Last week I paired a couple of my favorite shows with the last of my second Wegman’s create-your-own six-pack.  Well, all I can say is thank God for How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory.  The two beers in question were Yuengling Bock Beer and Leinenkugel’s Red Lager.  The Bock was very bitter and metallic tasting and was in general, a huge let down.  It was my first bock and I think the fact that it was Yuengling may have had something to do with my bad experience.  The Red Lager actually wasn’t too bad, but it was far below the high standards of some of the other Leinenkugel beers I’ve had; it doesn’t hold a candle to Sunset Wheat.

Well, that’s all for this week’s edition of On Tap.  Join me next week when I hope to discuss some of the following beers:

Fuller’s London Porter

Blue Moon Spring Blonde Wheat

Magic Hat Vinyl

Lost Coast Indica