Rogue Black Brutal

Brewed by Rogue Ales
Style: Schwarzbier
Newport, Oregon USA

Poured amber with a white head. Aroma of pine. Some chocolate and citrus flavors. Different.

On tap at 1702 during Rogue night - Pours a dark brown color with a small tan head. Light lacing. Aroma is roasted malt and coffee. Flavor is a bitter roasted malt. Palate is left bitter and a tad dry. Seems a little thin. A decent beer.

Comes out of the tap a rich, opaque chocolaty brown, almost black, with a thick and fine-bubbled dark tan head. Aroma is quite strong, like roast coffee with a strong chocolate undertone. Mouth-filling flavor has strong coffee and chocolate components along with nutty and smoky hints and a molasses undertone. Texture is thick and smooth. A must for all dark beer fanatics!

Black with a mocha head. Aroma is roasty with chocolate, and caramel. Taste is roasty, chocolate, caramel, and very roasty if I haven’t said that already.

On tap at the Tap and Mallet (Rochester), graciously shared by Lubiere. AU15/08.

App.: Black with remnants of a tan head. Aroma: Lots of C-hops, a bit of dark malt, some coffee and dark chocolate, quite a lot of pine and grapefruit. Palate: Medium+ body, fairly full carbonation. Flav.: Lots more C-hops, some malt but less than the nose, kinda fruity, dry with good bitterness.

An enjoyable twist on the normal BB.

Brown-black with a very creamy brown head. Strong aroma of hops and to a lesser extent roasty malt. Taste is extremely bitter, as the name (which I did not know at the time of tasting) now suggests. It’s like a black IIPA with an underlying sweetness that borders on cloying. $6.5/pint

2008 version. Tasty. Cola-colored brew with a khaki top. Roasty malts give way to a citrus hop character. Tetter-totters between roasty porter and a heavy pale ale; close your eyes and every other sip will seem to be one of the two styles. Hoppy schwarz/porter.

Sampled on Tap at 1702, Tucson AZ
This beer arrives with a brown tinged, tan colored, creamy textured, one-finger thick head. The beer is a very dark brown color and quite clear. The aroma smells of chocolate / cocoa and toasted malt up front and once you start to dig around, some notes of pine and citrus. As the beer warms up a bit the hop character becomes much more noticeable in the nose and actually ends up on equal footing with the malt in the aroma.

The flavor is so much more hop focused than I expected (based on the aroma at least); there is a ton of bitterness, lots of pine flavors and notes of candied citrus peel. This is definitely a bit green in its hop intensity, a bit astringent, but still nicely balanced for a very hoppy beer (e.g. it doesn’t get too harsh). This is really an super hoppy IPA that was brewed with dark malts. There is a touch of roasted, toasty grain and maybe a touch of chocolate that struggles to be noticed through all of the hop character. This is quite quaffable with a light-medium fullness that is just enough to carry the hops.

Quite a tasty beer, enjoyable if you have a hop-hankering and the dark malt adds a light, other-dimensioned note to what is otherwise a hoppy IPA.