Hair of the Dog Rose Cassis

Formerly brewed at Hair of the Dog Brewing Company
Style: Fruit Beer
Portland, Oregon USA

Pours a murkey reddish brown. Glubbed out. Thick gross hazy goodness. Smells malty, sour, cherries, Figs, fruity booze. Flavor is fresh fruit, sour unripe grapes, sour cherries, fig, vinegar and tart apple peel. Awesome!

Pours milky brown like no other with an off-white head. The aroma has a bit of cassis, some veggie, tart cherryies and some oxidized malt. Medium muddied body with mild carbonation. The flavor begins with some very muddled tastes and some undescript fruit, oxidation and not really a whole lot else. This way okay at best and I expected a lot more. Wish I would have like this one more - oh well, can’t win them all.

Aroma is of farty pants and DMS. Pours like chalk and raspberries that had sex with each other. WTF. Seriously, this is all hazy and crap, even though it has been in the cellar, still, for years. Taste is dulled red fruit, farty pants, dms, and weirdness. This beer makes me sad.

2005 bottle courtesy of STLWill. Thanks! Pours a very hazy, almost murky, orange-tinted pink. Small head with poor head retention and lacing. Godawful looking beer. Aroma is big bread notes with some berry and nutty/sesame notes as well. Taste is tart currant and berry notes with stale moldy bread and nutty notes. Medium bodied. Fairly strong alcohol notes. Seems a bit past its prime.

2005 bottle. Only vintage? Hey, brewed on my wife’s 28th birthday! Oh damn. Pours murky, sandy, looks gritty, had to agitate the crap out of the bottle to get that thick stubborn sludge loosened and out of the bottle. Stemmy fresh aroma of juicy raspberry, currant, blueberry and marionbery. Light bodied, more stems and leaves, hot with alcohol. Some juicy fruit pops up in the finish, but more alcohol is there to knock it down. Creamy body, coats my mouth.

12oz bottle courtesy of josephselander poured into a tulip. Pours a bizarre-looking opaque milky brown with hints purple and a pinkish white head that hangs around as a solid collar for a while and leaves no lacing. Looks like grapefruit juice with a shot of coffee added - seriously. The smell is dominated by currants - a big sweetness with additional fruits thrown in, maybe blackberries and cherries. There is also a bit of dry woodiness and hints of tartness. The taste is extremely powerful and has a heavy black currant sweetness with lots of sugar in the background and the finish has a slight tart fruity character. There is a solid yeast presence in the middle before the vinous finish. The mouthfeel is also extremely interesting as it feels almost like pureed fruit, with a thickness that I’m not accustomed to. It’s not a heavy mouthfeel, but it’s like there’s sediment coming through on every sip. The carbonation is very subtle and soft. This is one of the more unique beers I’ve ever tasted. I’m not going to say it’s a great beer, but it’s not like I’ve got a lot to compare it to. The sweetness definitely starts to build up over time and I wouldn’t want to drink more than one bottle of it. That said, a tasty experiment from HotD.

Bottle thanks to ditmier!
Opaque coffee with a pink-beige head... one of the weirdest looking beers I’ve seen. Nose of heavy currant, caramel, some cookie/fig notes. Flavor with more current and cookie. An alcohol note makes it rather harsh. Thin body, biting. Too one-dimensional to really enjoy, and the alcohol is a real problem when trying to enjoy the fruit.

12 oz bottle. Pours a very cloudy and murky brownish body with virtually zero head. This might be the most unappetizing looking beer that I have ever come across. It almost looks more like YooHoo than beer. The nose is lightly sour with a spice and berry overtone. Lots of yeastiness and a bit of caramel. The flavor is equally murky as the appearance is. A mix of current jam and berry flavors with lots of yeast, some dark malts and maybe a little earthy wheat. Finishes with a touch of sour berries and moderate oxidation. Mouthfeel is medium bodied with a thick yeast slurry texture. Moderate fizzy carbonation. Overall, I think that this guy is just a little over the hill. As good as some HotD beers age, this has to be among the worst. A very weird beer, even after sitting completely still for several weeks on a shelf it manages to be among the cloudiest beers I’ve ever seen. Drink these up if you’re still holding, they aren’t going to be getting better.