I will give you a moment to pick yourself up after falling out of that time machine to dust the pacman yeast off of your JNCO jeans. What a god damn ancient oddity we have here. Rogue’s flagship beer for 3 decades, a Maibock, now pivots to…a west coast IPA.

We can dunk on Rogue donut beers, or wince-inducing Sriracha Stout, but there’s something enduing about picking an obscure style as your flagship beer and sticking to it for 30 years. The IPA oddly merges the old caramel backbone days of the Bush administration with the dystopian Citra, Mosaic, and Belma present. Scooby Doo rhizome tones.

I do love their refusal to bow to customer demands. Having a Maibock as a flagship beer is amazing and that’s why I enjoy the OG Dead Guy Ale. $14 a six pack, old school west coast IPA in the modern era is bold in a world of RTD cocktail domination. This has that resinous aserose aspect, tangelo pith, Duraflame log and Green Polo cologne thing, with a sweetness underlying to add balance.

This pivot is fascinating and I love this Glass Onion disruption. Give us more Dead Guy styles from the crypt. Zombie Roggenbiers in 2023. This beer rolls over and asks “SO WHAT ARE WE?”

It’s for people just getting along in their day who have a bit of mental bandwidth to seek out a moment of peace. It’s not their entire life. It’s a danky cord of firewood and Tom Selleck in Blue Bloods. I like how Rogue is zfg, doesn’t date its beers, doesn’t price them to try to undercut anyone else and still sells insane volume. They sent me a single can in a tiny coffin filled with dirt. Insane decadence.

The smell is a Dead Guy callback, little earthy meet pepper flakes hop presence, taste leads with a McDonalds biscuit meets McGriddle grist, middle body is stripped like its watching its macros, grapefruit pith, the hop presence feels more spice/pine driven to allow the malty midswallow to shine.

It’s for people who say “im entering my villain era” and then just play Draft Kings and order Wingstop. Don’t think, it’s just thin crisp malt and warming hops. It’s the FF9 Tropical armor that lowers your stats, but you still seek it out.

Happy Dead Guy Day, Manny Calavera.