Youngers won’t remember, but once the Berlin Wall came down and the Kremlin got de-communist-ified, it was safe to make “red” beer again without some rat-faced Congressman using you as a scarecrow. Even Genesee did it, making “Genny Red”, but my favorite was Carlsberg’s version, the Red Elephant, which came in an oilcan 25 ouncer, and which would trample you.
Now since Rohrbach Brewery is in Rochester NY, and the home baseball team is the Red Wings, simple to predict that eventually we’d get a Red Wing Red Ale, and here it is. One ding against Rohrbach is that they don’t put much info about the beers on the side of their cans, or on the bottom (i looked, and it has a use-by date down there and “please store cold”). Rohrbach doesn’t tell you how strong their beers are, and i found out the hard way that their Highland Lager is quite a bit stronger than suspected.
But a plus for Rohrbach is the 1-pint cans with easily recycleable hard plastic clusterers. Not like the usual soft-plastic can clusterers, where you have to grab the scissors and cut each loop to be a responsible person and prevent seabirds from strangling.
As for the beer itself, this red ale is clear with a healthy coppery tone, a mellow taste and that customary “red beer” aftertaste of iron. Juicy midranges in the taste, like oatmeal with orange syrup, or saltines with nutella spread. Overall a tasty brew, but pricey at $9 for 4×16 cans = only 64 ounces.
So it’s a fine beer but i’m going to give a seemingly low rating. Part of that is the price, part of that is the fact that Red Elephant was the only one i really liked out of the flood of reds in the 1990’s. If you’re after a red, then this one is for you. I just prefer other types of beer. So this one gets a 4.5 from me.