Rogue Dads Little Helper

Brewed by Rogue Ales
Style: Malt Liquor
Newport, Oregon USA

Pours a hazy orange yellow with little white head. Smells like sweet corn. It is carbonated, metallic and sweet. After this initial tasting there is a long bitter aftertaste provided by the finish.

Pours golden with a white head. The aroma has notes of corn. Flavor is grainy with corn and some light bitterness and a weak finish.

Deep gold body with a vaguely green tint, abundant carbonation, and a soapy, white head. Stonefruit, melon, and apple aromas, plus some notable corn and honey tones. Subtle woody hop characters also come through. Medium sweet, fruity flavor with a spicy finish. Lacks balancing bitterness (by design) and quickly becomes cloying. A fair strong lager. Not in league with your standard malt liquors. And that’s a good thing.

22oz bomber. Filtered golden hue. Quickly dissipating white head. Caramel and toffee. Bready cookie malt aroma. Medium and sweet. Smooth and malty. Alcohol burn is nice and mild. Little corny flavors. Hops are mild and spicy. Sugary sweet caramel malts shine as the beer warms. Malty all over. Toffee. All good! Sugary, pruney Dr. Pepper flavor. Nice. The "16" % throws me?

Bottle. Pale copper color with a white head. Sweet, malt nose with tons of fruit. Nice, understated and malty balance. Clean flavor and finish.

Perfectly clear spotlight yellow. Soft, fading white cap of firm foam. A skimming of bubbles hangs around for most of its time in the glass. Some lacing is distributed along the edge closer to the liquid in rounded patches and sheets. Aroma is nearly non existent as it kinda stymies itself in a hovering pale sweetness of malt grain thats soft and bready and hard to get in the nose unless you wiff in big. Taste is all solid malty smoothness, but not a whole lot of flavor really. Dulled...dulled some more and semi, lightly tanged and cloying malty breadish tones with a heavy buttered corn accent topping off the middle into the finish. Finish is quick but soft and creamy with a malty body and clean Maibock-like cloying sweetness that coats the mouth well. The Harrington malts are quite evident with that certain bready, doughy centeredness of paled, dull tang and soaking. Feel is quite nice. Malt is king of this throne. Ruling with a steady hand of Harrington malt coating ever so smoothly with bready softness and sticky, cloying thickness thats not overbearing but definately pushing its borders with a clean slice of medium body and a fairly long rule of semi sweet, bready, tangaifingly broad scape of malty clean soothingness. I could drink this into oblivion, but would easily get bored of its paled, uninteresting flavor. The body of the beer is great, but beyong that its not much; yet it could be everything to the right person. Leave it to Rogue to make a Malt Liquor that almost makes you wish there were more like it. Dad’s Little Helper could be just that, depending on the Dad of course...

This is a Rogue that didn’t seem like a Rogue. All the normal characteristics of a traditional Rogue ale are gone. What’s left is this sticky, sweet, yellow, fizzy, barely hoppy drink. Terrible? No. Good? Perhaps not. Drink it again? Wouldn’t go out of my way, but I feel that way about most Rogue beers: you’ve had one you’ve had them all. As malt liquors go this is probably the better of the lot. As for a craft "malt beer" beer I’d say this has a long way to go to meet respectability. I guess if I had my choice of malt liquors that are readily available it would be this.

Poured a golden yellow with copper hues with almost no white head from the bomber. Smelled like candy, which I found suspicious. Thick mouth feel, sweet but not very complex. The sugar hides the alcohol, which warms the cheeks later. You can taste the corn in the mix. This ain’t no Colt .45, but it sure is malt liquor.