The first beer I tasted was delicious. Cold, carbonated, refreshing. The beer was Busch, and I was around five or six. My old man used to drink a lot of Busch in those days… ah the Eighties!  Things were more carefree then – or maybe that was the seventies.  In any case, and despite my youth, I had a feeling even then that beer would someday become a much larger part of my life, more than just a sip here and there when Mom wasn’t looking.  But for years to come I would still think of Busch anytime I heard the word beer.

Around four years after this initiation into the world of brew, some folks out in Oregon started a brewery and they called it Rogue.  These guys either got sick of drinking Busch all the time or they actually had been drinking good beer for years and decided to make it on their own.  (Honestly I don’t know, but I will find out the whole story.  Look for a follow up to this article in the next few months that will be an entire feature on Rogue Brewery – as soon as I can get this cheap-ass website to pay for me to fly out to Oregon to interview these guys.  Promise.)  These guys started making beer, and like so many things, before you know it they were huge in Japan (this is true).  With their newfound success and exposure, at least on the Pacific Rim, the company grew, and they started making all kinds of different beers.  All of them were and continue to be made without preservatives, additives, chemicals, or pasteurization.  In other words, real beer.  My favorite one of them all, indeed the best beer I have ever tasted in this life, is one they call the Dead Guy Ale.

According to their website, the Dead Guy was created as a “private tap sticker to celebrate the Mayan Day of the Dead (November 1st, All Souls Day) for Casa U Betcha in Portland, Oregon.”  A few years later they began to bottle it up and distribute it.  What, exactly is it?  Dead Guy is made “in the style of a German Maibock” with Rogue’s Pacman ale yeast.  As one would expect from an ale, it has a lovely, dark honey-brown color and a full body on the palette.  But more on that later.  Allow me to tell you how I became acquainted with this fine brew.

Many years after that fateful first sip of beer, I had come to reside in a small studio on Lenox Avenue and 122nd St.  I was starting to get an itch for the West Coast after a particularly hot and muggy summer, and a friend of mine came in to town to observe Yom Kippur.  At some point in our fasting, we began to talk about Portland, Oregon and somehow managed to work our starved brains into a frenzy:  New York was death incarnated in a city and Portland was a veritable land of Oz where our East Coast woes would melt away in evergreen dreams.  One month later we were driving his Volkswagen Jetta cross-country at 110mph, smokin’ bowls and thinking large.  A few months after that he had driven off to Mexico and points south and I was still in Portland, barely employed and miserably desperate to return to New York.  The place I was working at was a little wine bar and restaurant called Wine Down, and the owner, a stout, cheerful, slightly obtuse man with an ear wax issue, barely knew the difference between red and white.  It was frustrating, to say the least.  Turned out my salvation was right next door.

The place next door to us was called Beulahland, a hip, concrete-floored, slightly punk rock bar that served only beer, wine and hard lemonade, with a great pool table, the owners two young, hip guys with a passion for beer.  One of the beers on tap was Dead Guy.  From the first frothy sip, I was hooked.  But it was probably a keg or two gone before I realized just how amazing a brew it was.  The realization that this was my favorite beer of all time came when I realized that I could never get tired of drinking it.  It had been weeks at that point.  I was waking up wondering if it would be bad to walk over to Beulah just to start the day with nice, crisp, cold pint of Dead Guy.  The taste of it – it was as though it couldn’t leave me.  And neither did I want it to – ever.  Every night after work, and not a few nights during a shift, you could find me next door to Wine Down sitting at the bar talking to Eric the owner, putting away the Dead Guy.  It was a whole lifestyle really, a whole East-Coast-kid-slacking-off-on-the-West-Coast drinking beer and smoking pot kind of lifestyle.  If it weren’t for having absolutely zero money I could have stayed there like that forever.

Alas, I could not.  I returned joyously to New York after only a year, and I assumed that Dead Guy and I were not to be.  Then, miracle of miracles, it started to turn up about a year or two ago.  I can’t tell you happy this makes me.  The only problem is that most places are still carrying it in bottle and this is a beer that demands the attention of a keg with a fantastic tap line.  When the conditions are correct, this is one ale that is not to be beat.  First of all, the color could not be more attractive, dark but not too dark, rich looking but not intimidating, this is an ale that visually screams “DRINK ME!”

The nose gives up that nice malty, maybe even a little smoky aroma that makes your mouth literally water with anticipation… then the first sip… sweet mercy!  Rich hops flavor with notes of chocolate, smoke, and a little earthiness – in my mind, this is what Beer is all about.  The finish is smooth, clean, refreshing, and leaves you begging for more.  Everything that goes into Dead Guy plays its part perfectly, and while it’s in your gullet there is no point at which you find yourself wanting anything different – the touch of sweetness is perfect, the balance of flavors is perfect, the weight is perfect – it couldn’t be heavier or lighter, it couldn’t be more full or less full.  For me, the perfect beer!