KCCO Black Lager Review

Name: KCCO Black Lager
Brewed By: Red Hook Brewing for Resignation Brewing
Style: Schwarzbier
ABV: 5.1%

When I first saw the letters KCCO in big, bold white letters on the bottle, I literally had to do a double take. Sure enough, The Chive has it's very own beer courtesy of Resignation Brewing and Red Hook Brewing: KCCO Black Lager, which is a Schwarzbier-style beer.

According to the Resignation Brewery website, it is one of four beers planned and each one is based on a homebrew recipe from one of the staffers at The Chive. In fact, it seems like Resignation Brewery at this time is the brainchild of the people working at The Chive as they appear to lack a physical location, which explains why it's being brewed at Red Hook.

For those of you not familiar with The Chive, it's a humor/eye-candy/random subject matter website that is quite popular on the internet. It's kind of like Buzzfeed except funny. Even if you never heard of The Chive, you probably have seen their merchandise. Those green t-shirts with the words ”Keep Calm and Chive On” (Which is where the name of the beer comes from) on the front? The black t-shirt with Bill Murray on the front staring at you? Yup, it's from there!

KCCO Black Lager pours a dark brown color with a crimson red tinge. A foamy head tops off the beer and there is some pretty good lacing here as well.

The nose is fairly roasted malt forward, providing a solid base for some chocolate notes, mild smokiness, coffee ground and a light yeasty touch.

The flavor is more cocoa/coffee forward with roasted malts and some mild smokiness. The aftertaste has a fairly dry, but has a mild roasty flavor. The palate is pretty light and is pretty mild in carbonation.

I'll be honest, I didn't exactly have high expectations for this beer, but I found this to be surprisingly good! Novelty (and brand name) value aside, this is a solid and fairly well put-together beer. Check it out if you're able to get it in your area.

KCCO Black Lager - 8/10

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