Why Do So Many People Hate Rogue Ales?

http://www.nwlaborpress.org/2011/0617/6-17-11IBT.html

union busting, various shit employee stories, mediocre beer sold at high prices.

also, i think there's kind of a bitterness for people who were into beer between 2005~2008 because dead guy was so often the only craft on the menu, and it sucks.

that said, some of their beers are great. i liked that barrel aged "john john's" or whatever the hell it was. lot of other companies i'd rather support though, and more importantly most places make better beer. their barleywine tastes like it could be awesome with some age on it, but that's one of the few standout things i can think of positive-wise. i don't know if it's firefox or opensuse capitalizing my 'i's for me, but that needs to be stopped. i know how to use the shift key! if i wanted the letter to be capitalized, i would have pressed shift.

edit: and yeah, they lost a lot of points with the beard beer (gross) theatrics and all the voodoo donut bullshit. lame.

 

I hate them because any brewery that can make beer as bad as the Voodoo Abominations deserves all the hate I can muster.

Also, expensive mediocre beer and douchebag management/ownership.

 

I've had several of their beers over the years--apparently not enough to keep me from buying the Sriracha Stout over the weekend. Had it tonight. I love Sriracha and I nearly squirted some of the real thing into my glass to make the beer taste better. I'll try anything once, but this is probably my last Rogue for a good while.

 

a brewery has to have good beers in order for me to like them, rogue fails in that department

 

They treat their employees like garbage and their beers aren't right for the price. Also they made those horrid voodoo doughnut beers.

 

I keep giving them chance after chance and am dissapointed every time.

 

I rarely see their beer in Boston, always wondered why it was sent out here but back in the day I drank a good amount of it. Can't remember the last time I bought a bottle of it ... had a few on tap from leftovers of a tap takeover back in Feb. Sort of a whatever moment.

Their core beers, when fresh and very reasonably priced, are great IMO.

Hoping to drink some in Portland during the CBC ... not so much out this way, there has been such a disconnect / lack of support to get the word out and freshness concerns.

 

$7-$8 a bomber around here. That normal for my area. Cheaper even. Myself couldn't drink a chocolate hazelnut six pack. Too sweet for more than one regardless. Especially for $14. I'd stick with the cheaper bomber. Ive had their marionberry braggot and it was so tasty and unique. I love the crazy experimentation.

 

I'm not a huge Rogue fan or anything, but I don't get the complaint about them being overpriced. I often hear about people in Illinois and New York (among other places) routinely paying $12 or $14 for 22oz IPAs, $16-$20 for a 6-pack of Hopslam or Sculpin or whatever ... as far as I know (although I haven't checked recently) Rogue bombers are priced around $7 or $8. The bigger bottles (750s) like Maple Bacon Corn Dog Taco are more expensive, but they also contain maple bacon corn dog tacos. The regular beers certainly are not way out of line with standard bomber pricing, and they may actually be more affordable than a lot of beers.

I just wish better Oregon beers were distributed more widely, as Rogue doesn't represent anything near the best the Northwest has to offer.

 

Rogue make a great beer. Who cares if they make all these weird different styles. You don't have to go for their gimmick beers.

Their chocolate stout, double chocolate stout, oatmeal stout, and Hazelnut brown ale are all fantastic beers.

 

You're well represented. We get Deschutes now and at a very reasonable price. Locally, Rogue 6 packs are $12 and Deschutes are $9. No idea how Rogue thinks their amber ale is worth $3 more a sixer than the Deschutes line-up.

 

Here in Oregon, the prices aren't bad. And while they've made a couple of beers that are honest-to-god-crimes-against-humanity, I like most of their beers. Hell, I even liked the Sriracha Stout. I hadn't heard about the work stories until recently, and they're certainly troubling, but I'm not going to pretend that everything they make is crap, or even most of it; their ratio of hits-verus-misses is way higher than people on this forum make it seem. Maybe people were just really burned by the Voodoo Doughnut beers, which I admit are both terrible and expensive. Maybe it's just a side effect of internet forum culture's inherent love of bitching and moaning about stuff. Maybe it's both of those things.

And you can make fun of me for this, but I like the Mocha Porter a lot more than Deschutes' Black Butte Porter.

 

I used to buy a lot more Deschutes than I do now. I'd consider them pretty middle of the road for the Northwest. Just between Washington and Oregon we have ~450 breweries (about the same as Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio combined but for 1/3 the population), but a vast majority of it is almost exclusively for local consumption. Fine with me, but I don't think many people appreciate the breadth and depth of what's been happening here, and a lot longer than in most other parts of the country. Just doesn't help when people associate PNW beer with Rogue...

 

Really enjoy their Dead Guy Ale, Brutal Bitter Ale, Santa's Private Reserve, and Yellow Snow IPA. So, I guess I'm not a hater.

 

Wow! Really? If this is all you did ( and I don't doubt you in the least ) I would be chiming in with the F#&* Rogue too. I think that is horrible. Good companies embrace any customer issues and aren't afraid of making them public because good companies want the input to make things better. This is something we obviously all know. I am on the fence with Rogue, as there are a couple of beers I still will buy. However my attitude is increasingly become "meh"...

 

I agree with this. These are two beers that I also like and the cost is not prohibitive. I think the chocolate stout is very solid, although far from the best in it's class, but I think that the Hazelnut is kind of underrated. I find myself getting them more often than I ever thought I would buy a Rogue product.

 

I like Rogue beers because they are different. They can get a little crazy with some of the stuff they come up with (Maple Bacon Voodoo Donut?), but if they make good beer I will drink it. Their prices are on par with other craft beers in my area, so that's no problem. I don't care about the politics either.

 

Never really gave it much thought but looking back I haven't bought a Rogue beer in a long time. With so many options, they usually get passed over because of price and middling quality like most people are saying. Now that I'm looking at wholesale keg prices as well, their kegs are $50-70 more expensive than comparable options (and they use 13.2 gallon kegs). Hard to justify that IMO.

 

Let's add another thing to the long list:

This has bugged me ever since I first started buying their beers 8 years ago. They list so much information about the beer on the bottle such as the types of malts, hops, IBU, even plato and lovibond measurements as well as one I never knew what it meant until I just googled it (AA apparently means Apparent Attenuation)...but never will they ever list the damn ABV. They'll give every minute detail that's meaningless to the average consumer but the one thing that most people would like to know about the liquid they're consuming they refuse to list. That's just plain asinine.

 

I don't "hate" Rogue. In fact, I like some of them.

But there are others that are better. Why is that? That's a question for Rogue to answer . . .