Rogue Santa's Private Reserve

Here is what the Brewer says:

A double-hopped Red, reddish in color, with a roasty, malty flavor and a hoppy spruce finish. Rogue’s annual holiday offering, Santa’s Private Reserve, is a variation of the classic Saint Rogue Red, but with double the hops--including Chinook, and Centennial, and a mystery hop called Rudolph by head brewer John “more hops” Maier!

10 Ingredients:

Carastan 30-37 & 13-17, Crystal 70-80 & Rogue Micro Barley Farm Dare™ & Risk™ Malts; Chinook & Rogue Farm Revolution & Freedom Hops; Free Range Coastal Water and Pacman Yeast. 

My Thoughts: The color was a reddish amber with a very slight white bubbly head. My nose only picked up a sugary, malty sweetness. As much as I sniffed I got no hops at all in this. The taste, well from start to finish this was all sweet roasted malt and sugar.  The aftertaste was simply not pleasant.  Body was medium and the carbonation seemed way off, very low.  Drinkability, well I drank about 8oz and poured the remaining 4oz down the drain.  Even my fiancee said it was god awful!  

All of this being said, there was no bottled on date anywhere on this bottle.  There was a code on the bottom of the bottle, but it had nothing to do with date (That I could find).  While writing this I researched the Brewers take, and even read that on BA it got a user rating of B+ and on Ratebeer a User rating of 93.   Did I have a bad beer...maybe, but until brewers start to put "Bottled On" dates, I'll never 100% know.  If you agree about the dating of bottles, please read the following post. 

Serving Type: 12oz bottle

My Rating: Overall 12/100
look: 3 | smell: 1.5 | taste: 0 | feel: 0 | drink: 0