Rogue Farms Dirtoir Black Lager Review

Name: Rogue Farms Dirtoir Black Lager
Style: Schwarzbier
ABV: 5%

After passing this by on the shelves for the past year or so, I decided last week to try out a beer from the Rogue Farms lineup from Rogue Brewing. What makes this lineup unique is that every ingredient used in this beer is grown by the brewery themselves on the farm which they own. Tonight I have Dirtoir Black Lager, which is a Schwarzbier style beer. For those of you who enjoy random tidbits of trivia, the word Schwarz in German means "Black." I've always regarded the Schwarzbier-style as a cousin of the Rauchbier-style, mainly because of it's smokey characteristics.

Dirtoir pours a black color with a very foamy dark brown head. Interestingly enough, I'm not picking up any signs of lacing.

The nose starts out with a distinct smoked malt scent, followed by chocolate, roasted barley, yeasts and mild floral hops.

Flavor-wise, it's pretty identical to nose. You have smoked malts, roasted barley, chocolate, yeasts and that mild hoppiness at the very end. The only big difference here is that it's way more roasty than the aroma leaves you to believe.

The carbonation is quite mild and the overall body is pretty light. With that said, it's very easy to drink.

After having I think I'll be looking at this lineup a little closer because I found this to be pretty good. While it doesn't do anything extraordinary, it's a solid beer with a very reasonable price tag and worth checking out since I feel it's an under-recognized beer style.

Rogue Farms Dirtoir Black Lager - 8/10