REVIEW: Rogue Chocolate Stout

I'm surprised it's taken me almost two months to get to a beer from Rogue. Their Dead Guy maibock is one of my all time favorite beers. It's a bit surprising though, that as ubiquitous as Dead Guy has become, that you don't see more Rogue beers at bars and liquor stores. Dead Guy is a staple at bars around here, but other offerings from Rogue seem to be much more rare. Also, it's kind of odd and cool that their flagship beer is a maibock. Enough of my rambling observations. To the beer!

This is a seriously dark beer. It pours a nearly opaque black. I can't even discern any highlights around the edges when held to light. It's capped by a dense, tall, tan head that recedes to a thin layer atop the beer and leaves beautiful lacing down the sides of the glass

The aromas of this beer really live up to the name. Roasted coffee notes backed by milk and dark chocolate notes.

This beer is surprisingly medium to light bodied. I was expecting a much heartier heavier beer from the appearance and aroma. The first flavors to come to the front are, appropriately, big roasted chocolate notes. The chocolate is backed by some very nice roast coffee flavors. This beer has a really enjoyable oatmeal smoothness and finishes very clean. The bottle says this beer clocks in at 69 IBUs, which is pretty high. But I'm really not seeing it. There's a little bit of hop bitterness at the beginning but it goes pretty quickly. There's no lingering hop bitterness. I can forgive that though. The focus of this beer is the chocolate flavors and everything should serve that end. A big bitter hop presence would've likely muddled the chocolate flavors.

As a chocolate beer, this beer gets it done in spades. Probably my favorite chocolate beer that I've had to date. But chocolate beers aren't really my favorite thing in the world. This is a great once in a while beer. It's not one I'd want in my fridge all the time. It's definitely not a day-drinking baseball-watching beer. But as an after dinner dessert sipper? You couldn't do much better.