Name: Rogue Yellow Snow IPA

Style: IPA

Country: U.S.A.

ABV: 6.5%

Beer description: Rogue Brewery comes out of Portland, Oregon. The brewery is world famous for all the right reasons: great craft beer. Rogue’s list of beers is huge and pretty much every single one is a hit. Rogue aren’t afraid to play around a little bit, but they also know how to do an “ordinary” beer. The Yellow Snow is a standard style. It’s an IPA and, as we all know, it’s not hard to find a brewery doing an IPA these days! According to the ingredient list though, it appears that Amarillo is the only hop in this beer, so, while it’s not marketed as a single hop, it seems to be!

They call this one the Yellow Snow because it’s a pale golden yellow coloured beer. There’s a little bit of head that sticks around, but it’s really a mild mannered beer…

It’s a great smelling beer, starting with a bit of malt followed by citrus and other fruit smells from the hops. The fruits are of mixed berries with some melon to smooth things out. They’ve really gotten quite a bit out of the Amarillo hops! It’s interesting as this is a fairly American style IPA, but as it’s just the one hop, it’s lacking some of the pine that’s really common in the style. This is really nice for a change: an American IPA that isn’t stereotypical.

This beer is quite smooth and creamy, with hints of vanilla and biscuit from the malt and possibly the yeast. There’s certain elements here similar to other Rogues beers that use their Pacman yeast, and, most likely, that’s where it’s coming from! It’s quite a sweet beer but also has an extremely dry and bitter finish, and the bitterness really sticks around.

The bitterness in this beer should please the hop heads, especially because it lingers. The dryness extenuates the bitterness so, while the Yellow Snow may not have the IBUs of a Double IPA, it has the dryness that makes it seem more bitter than it actually is.

This is a great IPA, pure and simple. It’s very American but not like every other American IPA out there; it really sets itself apart.

Check out other IPA reviews.

Check out other Rogue reviews.

And for those not in the know, IPA stands for India Pale Ale. Find out why it’s called IPA.