Quote:
Originally Posted by Atomic_Wedgy
I felt a little jealous after NWO's post, so I went to the beer store! Picked up the following:
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Hopefully I didn't drive you into the poor house.
Well I tried that Bacon Maple Ale from Rogue with dinner(sorta), and I rather liked it. No way I'd want it everyday, heck I wouldn't even want it more than once a year, but for what it is, a novelty beer, it was very good.
A few things to bear in mind if you decide to give it a go. First up, as you would expect, it's very very sweet. Rogue recommends doughnuts as a food pairing, but I would preach caution with that. A lot depends on your stomach's tolerance for sweets, and just how much of that bottle your going to be downing.
That brings us to the second consideration. It's only available in a 750ml bottle, so that factors heavily into how to approach this one. It's not very alcoholic, just under 6%, so that's not really going to cause problems even if you knock back the whole bottle solo. It's back to point #1, that sweetness.
Price is the third point to consider. That bottle set me back almost $12(US), for a novelty beer. At that price I wanted to make sure I gave the beer every chance to win me over. Given that it's such a weird flavor combo I had to use a bit of psychology to get my brain wrapped around this.
My thinking was the brain associates maple with breakfast, but since it's so sweet I wanted to pair it with salty and savory foods. So I whipped up one of my favorite meaty breakfast dishes, a hashbrown, sausage, egg, and cheese skillet scramble. That was the perfect contrast to the beer.
Now that I got all that out there on to the beer itself. Goes without saying, but you've never encountered anything like it in a beer. That's the elephant in the room. Forget balance among the flavors. It's maple heavy in the nose and in the mouth, with some smokiness from the bacon underlying that.
Rogue lists the IBU on it at ~30. I don't know about that, I mean there's really no hop to speak of, at least that my palate could detect. In that regard it has a Maudite or Trois Pistoles vibe, malty and sweet, with a faint trace of hops. The smoke flavor is good, nothing heavy handed, and while not balanced in comparison to the sweet, it works well overall. Medium body with decent carbonation finishes it off.
I liked it overall, and at some point down the road I would entertain the idea of getting another bottle, but not anyway soon. If you want to roll the dice on a novelty I'd recommend this one. To sum it all up in three words...Delicious liquid lunacy.
