Top 100 Beers of 2015 (Issue 22)

World Class (100 to 96)

9.
96
by S.J. Klein
Mocha Porter
Rogue Ales & Spirits

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Brewer Q & A

Judge's Second Opinion
from S.J. Klein

In the fall of 1994, I started taking courses at the Siebel Institute for Brewing Technology. As an aspiring craft brewer, they didn't have a program specifically geared towards microbreweries and so I was in classes with brewers from Coors, Miller, Anheuser-Busch, Modelo, Asahi, Brown Forman (maker of Jack Daniels) and Heineken. We also had brewers from Old Dominion, Goose Island and a bunch of folks who would go on to work for breweries all over the country and world. Back then, the world of possibilities in beer were only limited by our imaginations… which, quite frankly, were very limited back then. Many of us cared more about the Reinheitsgebot and a clean flavor profile than anything else.

I had a friend from Louisiana that I fought forest fires with. While not a brewer, he loved his food and his beer, and always had a quip about either, whether he was extoling the virtues of Tobasco sauce ("It’s got just the right tang without too much twang.") or talking about his least favorite style of beer, American Wheat Beer ("you keep your fruit out of my beer, and I won't put no hops in your gumbo").

To get to the point: there are lots of people out there who believe that beer should have nothing in it but yeast, hops, malt and water.

Someone squarely not part of that group is John Maier, head brewer of Rogue Ales & Spirits. While I've never met the guy, I'd like to think our paths have crossed somehow. He was on the staff at Alaskan Brewing Co. in Juneau during its early days. Despite his day job, he couldn't stop brewing after his shift. In fact, I remember looking at a homebrew recipe that helped him win "Homebrewer of the Year" from the American Homebrewers Association in the late 80s. The man has been obsessed with pushing the envelope for a long time.

Quite frankly, not all of the results are amazing. If anyone has ever had the Voodoo Doughnut Maple Bacon Ale you know what I'm talking about. 

However, I discovered a real treat in 2000: Rogue’s Chocolate Stout. It became a favorite – perfectly blending sweet and bitter without being overpowering with either. Young’s Double Chocolate Stout has long been the industry standard for chocolate in beer, but with less distance to travel and hands to go through, I found the Rogue stout to be more drinkable.
I had never considered their Mocha Porter as a distinctly different beer from Chocolate Stout. If given the choice between Mocha Porter and Chocolate Stout, I found myself reaching for the Chocolate Stout every time. It’s not that I didn't enjoy the Mocha Porter, but rather that I’d never considered it after having had the Chocolate Stout first.

That all changed when my partner served the Mocha Porter to me. As an expert reviewer for The Beer Connoisseur, I never get to know what I'm drinking until after I've reviewed it. When drinking the Mocha Porter, I compared it favorably to the Chocolate Stout, finding it less sweet, more balanced and ultimately more drinkable. The nose is rich and interesting. The coffee and chocolate are well-considered elements of a nicely crafted beer. There's no gimmick to it. The coffee provides a nice acidity and the chocolate gives a round, sweet back end. It's a light-bodied porter, with a totally appropriate dry bite that leaves you wishing you had more.

You have to respect a brewery that pushes the edges of expectations in beer. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and sometimes, as is the case for Rogue Mocha Porter, you hit one right out of the park.

Brewer's Thoughts
from John Maier

Rogue Ales & Spirits has a roguish streak. Many of their beers have off-kilter names (Yellow Snow IPA, New Crustacean Barleywineish Imperial IPA Sorta) or crazy ingredients, like a yeast strain cultivated in founder and brewmaster John Maier’s beard. One thing is certain though: Rogue is one of Oregon’s most popular and longstanding craft breweries, with numerous accolades to its name.

Adding to that laundry list of awards and commendations is the brewery’s Mocha Porter rating of 96 in our 2015 fall issue. We spoke to the man with the beard, John Maier (founder of Rogue Ales), and got a few answers about the brewery’s beautiful coffee-themed porter.

Being an American Porter, the malt bill is the star of this beer. John had a funny story regarding it as well: “The ingredients for Mocha started as an accident. We received a pallet of chocolate malt that we were milling when we discovered that a couple of odd bags got mixed in and milled by mistake. I decided to go with it and brew with this new ‘blend.’ It was this mix that created Mocha Porter – the same recipe we've used for the last 20 years.”

Despite what its name might suggest, Mocha Porter does not contain any coffee – its rich, roasty flavor and aroma are both born of the complex blend of malts used during brewing. The name of the beer was changed from “New Porter to Mocha Porter to reflect its ruddy brown mocha color instead of a riff on the location of our brewery’s sleepy fishing town of Newport, Oregon.”

John is quite proud of Mocha Porter, and he’s certain that the beer is an exemplar of “the Rogue way: The path to Mocha Porter was formed by innovation and rebellion. We started out by making flavorful beers, even though we were told no one would drink them. We made Mocha Porter as a way to offer a wide range of beer styles despite the common belief at the time that no one wanted variety. We take the road less traveled when we make our beers – from starting a farm to aging beer in barrels that we make ourselves – this is the Rogue way.”

Enjoy Mocha Porter with a steak covered in blue cheese crumbles and finish it off with a figgy pudding (three things that John recommends to pair with Mocha Porter). We’ll bring the beer.