Rogue Chipotle Ale

Beer can be made from many different ingredients, but chipotle, that is, smoked jalapeños, has to be among the more unusual. It's brewed by the Rogue brewery in Portland, Oregon, which is one of those breweries which make almost nothing but really good beers. I was surprised to see that they'd brewed a beer using chipotle, called Rogue Chipotle Ale, which we tasted at an Ontopia beer tasting evening at work today, courtesy of Geir Ove. (That is, at work, after work.)

I had very low expectations for this beer; I couldn't really believe that a beer with chili in it could be any good, even if it was made by Rogue. I imagined a hot, spicy aftertaste and couldn't see how this could possibly be successful. However, out of the four people who tried it, at least three, maybe four, tasters really liked it. The rating kind of speaks for itself.

4.1	Aroma	Appearance	Flavour	Palate	Overall
	8/10	4/5	7/10	5/5	17/20
Smallish offwhite coarse head, deep hazy chestnut body. Dried meat and tobacco aroma with a kind of sweetish fruity background. Not quite as weird as this sounds, but definitely strange. Also other strange, unidentifiable odours. Taste is again smoked meat and faintly sweetish malt background, somewhat dry. The beer is hot (as in spicy) throughout. In fact, it made me sneeze, and the palate goes nicely warm. It's a shame palate can only be rated from 1-5. Bitter, spicy taste lingers. An excellent beer, and one of the most interesting I've ever tried. (0.65l bottle.)