Grizzly Growler

Dead Guy Whiskey

Rogue Brewery’s foray into liquors was an industry wake up call. Not only did a major American craft brewery start producing gins and vodkas with every flavor under the rainbow, they distilled and aged a whiskey made from the same grain base as one of their flagship beers.

In the late 90s, I got the sense that some northwest microbreweries might actually get the distillation bug. I’d seen small distilleries open up in Bend and around the state, and it just made sense, what with all the similar equipment and cleaning standards of breweries and distilleries. Still, many breweries didn’t see distilling as an easy transition, and though a few tried small batch distilling, very few committed to it.

Then Rogue, owned by a fairly ambitious risk taker, who hired none other than John “More Hops” Maier to brew his pirate-worthy beer, decided to go all out with some very pirate-like liquor, including rum, gin and vodka. Thus, Rogue Distillery was born.

But it was the Rogue Dead Guy Whiskey that I’ve been intrigued with since I first bought a $10 shot of it at a Seattle pub a few months back.

Make no mistake, Rogue’s Dead Guy Whiskey is young and immature, but in a world of micro distilleries opening across the country like spring wildflowers, well, you have to be able to look at it a little differently. We ain’t in Scotland anymore, folks.

Of course this whiskey isn’t going to stand up against those aged for years in charred oak barrels. It’s a young whiskey and advertised as such. It says Ocean Aged for One Month right on the bottle.

One reviewer said this whiskey is one-dimensional, but I think, just like Rogue’s Dead Guy Ale, it has a few layers that make it interesting enough to put in the old liquor cabinet. After all, you might find yourself without anything festive to drink on dia de los muertos, that holiday where the living celebrate the dead.

Here’s what I found: Rogue’s Dead Guy Whiskey is young with just a touch of heat on the nose and tongue. Sipped out of a Riedel Scotch glasses, the fine malt nose came forward with some sweet notes that just hinted at the residue in freshly consumed pint of Dead Guy Ale. I found that this whiskey behaved best in the Riedel Scotch glasses, as the other whiskey glasses tended to mask the flavors more. As the whiskey opens up, it releases more mellowed flavors that seem to hide its age a little.

Some vanilla and caramel hints played delicately around the alcohol heat, though they require a little work to detect. After all, a month-old whiskey is not going to just give you everything that a 12-year-old whiskey would at no cost. The finish, as described on Rogue’s distillery site, is that of coarsely ground Malabar pepper.

That said, Rogue’s Dead Guy Whiskey is a bit of a novelty in an of itself. It’s good enough to sell as young whiskey, and at prices as low as $35 on the Internet, it’s not overpriced for what it is. On the other hand, I will be excited to try some Rogue Dead Guy Whiskey that has been aged a few years, as I know that the good qualities in it now will get even better with age.

Rogue’s Dead Guy Whiskey and other hard-t0-find, small-batch whiskeys are available, as always at Grizzly Liquor in downtown Missoula. Tell them the Grizzly Growler sent you.

Prost,

GG

Perhaps the perfect Dia de los muertos drink