Chatoe Rogue First Growth Single Malt Ale

Brewed By: Rogue Brewery
Brewed In: Newport, OR
Type: Ale
ABV: ~5%
Brewed With: Malts: Rogue Barley Farm first growth Dare™ malts; Hops: Rogue Hopyard first growth Revolution Hops; Pacman yeast.

What they say:

Website: “Single Malt Ale and all Chatoe Rogue brews are all GYO Certified, First Growth, Appellation products made with hops and malt from our Department of Agriculture’s Hopyard and Barley Bench.”

Bottle: “GYO is a Rogue Ales term for Grow Your Own. We made this beer with our own hops and barley. Malty aroma, deep golden in color with a dense creamy head. Medium bodied with a lush rich maltiness from the Dare™ malt.”

Website: Here it is again; both Tom and I have waxed ecstatic about Rogue’s great site.

Why this one, Show? It’s another beer in the Rogue GYO series, this time using only one grain for the malt and one hop variety for the flavor and bitterness. Just about all the other beers I can think of (including the mass-produced macros) use some combination of malted grains for the wort. To give you a point of comparison, the previous GYO beer—Dirtoir Black Lager–used five different malts. This beer is 100% Rogue-grown and Rogue-brewed.

First Thoughts:
Head: Big white head with good cling and fairly large bubbles.
Nose: Subtle citrus, field-y notes.
Color: Golden.

Presentation (5): The bottle is identical to the Dirtoir Black Lager, with the only difference being the blue tint to the naming font. Rogue’s raised fist motif is represented with only a blocky fist holding a hop vine and some barley stalks. It’s different, but similar enough that you can recognize the brewer if you saw this on a shelf. The beer pours out slightly cloudy with a good head. 5

Originality (5): A single-malt beer that also happens to be a single-hop beer? Like I said, I don’t think I’ve seen something like this before. While this isn’t something super-crazy like a beer made with 300-year-old honey or 50,000 lbs of hops, it’s originality is in its simplicity. 5

Body (10): The body is nice and light, with good carbonation tingling the tongue. This feels like something you want to drink more of with each sip, and I can see this being especially refreshing on a hot day. The weather must have known I’d be reviewing this over the weekend, as we had one of the hottest days so far on Saturday. 8

Taste (10): The beer tastes like a crisp pale ale: that is, there’s notes of citrus, straw, and “clean,” if I may be allowed the artistic license. There’s not a ton of sweetness, but not a lot of bitterness either. The finish drops out from under you, leaving a quick and lingering dryness to the sip. It tastes like beer, not like coffee-beer or chocolate-beer or maple-beer. 8

Efficiency (10): Since this is a Rogue beer, we’ll go back to our inexact ABV calculation by dividing the PLATO number by 2.5. That gives this beer an approximate ABV of 5%, which puts it squarely in macro territory. That’s not going to do it any favors, as the price point is too high to merit buying, shall we say, “enough to do the job.” However, I can see this bomber going down quickly, paired with food or by itself out on the patio. 5

Versatility (10): Pretty limitless. The refreshing quality of the beer makes it ideal for bringing to summer parties or just enjoying in your own backyard. Rogue suggests pairing the beer with seafood or grilled food—I could not agree more. The bright flavors and medium bitterness also make this a good conversion beer to give your late-to-the-party-but-there’s-still-room non-craft-beer-drinking friends. Whew. 9

Final Score: 40 – Really Good Beer

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