ROGUE DEPARTMENT ofAGRICULTURE - Rogue Ales & Spirits

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varieties of apples, including Braeburn, Winesap, Newton, Spitzenberg, .... How do we know when our hops are ready? ....
ROGUE DEPARTMENT of AGRICULTURE

CROP REPORT HARVEST EDITION 2014 MEMBERS OF:

In This Issue:

John Maier at Rogue Farms in Tygh Valley. In front of him, amber Risk™ malting barley ready to be harvested. Behind him, a still green field of Dare™ malting barley. The Beer and Spirits Harvest Begins Page 3 Grain to Glass Page 4 Tree to Table Page 6 The Farmstead Malt House Page 7 Bine to Brew Page 10 Growing, Picking and Harvesting The Revolution Page 11 Rogue Farms Wildflower Honey Page 15 Dare, Risk, Dream Rye Page 16 Growing Our Proprietary Palate Page 17 From Patch to Batch Page 18

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Sizing Up Our Nuts Page 18 From Greenhouse To Ground To Glass Page 19 How Our Garden Grows Page 19 Hops and Honey Report Page 20 Beyond GYO and DIY Page 21 Weather Report Page 22 Rolling Thunder Barrel Works Page 23 Rogue Seafood Report Page 25 A Century Ago At Rogue Farms Back Cover

Rogue Department of Agriculture

Rogue Farms Barley Farm Tygh Valley, OR

Latitude: 45.2° North, Longitude: 121.2° West, Elevation: 1700 feet

The Beer and Spirits Harvest Begins

The harvest of Rogue Farms Risk™ malting barley in the rain shadow of Mt. Hood. There’s lots of ways to know your barley. At Rogue Farms, our preferred methods are the squeeze and the bite. If the kernels go flat when we squeeze them it means they’re empty. If they’re squishy, then the kernels are filling with milk, the liquid that will eventually become the seed we will malt and mash. If they’re hard to squeeze, but we can still bite into them, that says the kernels are in the doughy stage. Milk hardens into dough as it ripens in the summer sunshine of the Tygh Valley Appellation. Finally, when the barley is so hard that we can’t even bite down on it, we know the kernels are ripe and harvest is near. That’s when everything and everyone move into place. We test regularly for moisture and, when the levels drop below 12%, it’s time. The combines roll into the fields and the harvest of Rogue Farms Risk™ and Dare™ malting barley begins.

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Grain To Glass

The first our of two varieties to mature is Risk, a winter barley we planted last fall. John Maier came for the Risk™ harvest this month to check on the condition of the crop. Being able to see it and touch it gives him more information about the barley he’ll be mashing for our beers and spirits than he’ll ever get from a lab report.

We began reaping, threshing and winnowing the grain in late morning after the dew has evaporated. Dry barley is less likely to develop fungus and other problems when we store it in the grain silo. Barley needs to sit for a while before we can malt it - the funny thing is, no one really understands why.

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Rogue Department of Agriculture

When it comes to malting barley, size matters. Plump kernels have more of the starches we’ll convert into fermentable sugars during malting. As the harvested grain came out of the combine, we bagged some of it and tested for plumpness with a hand held screener. Our field tests showed that this year’s Risk™ crop is 96% plump, well above industry standards.

Meanwhile, we have 100 acres of Dare™ malting barley ripening towards harvest. In the next few weeks the kernels will fill with milk, turn doughy and hard. The green stalks you see here will be transformed into amber waves of grain. And when the time is right, the combines will roll into the fields for the harvest of Rogue Farms Dare™ malting barley.

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Tree To Table - Rogue Farms Orchards Mother Nature sure knows how to keep us on our toes. Just as our Risk™ malting barley was coming in off the fields, our cherries turned ripe and were ready for picking. We had to scramble to bring in both harvests at the same time, but nobody complained about the timing. We knew a blessing when we saw one.

Rogue Farms bing cherries. Rogue Farms bing cherries.

This was our first cherry crop in three years. We lost our 2011 and 2012 cherries to unusually severe frosts. Our apples, apricots, pears, plums and peaches suffered, too. So after this spring came and went, and we saw our orchards brimming with beautiful fruit, we exhaled.

Here’s what we’re growing in our 20-acre orchard. Five varieties of cherries including Bing, Rainier, Selah, Attika and Regina. Seven varieties of apples, including Braeburn, Winesap, Newton, Spitzenberg, Matsu, Red and Golden Delicious, Gravenstein and Sundowner. Plus our apricots, pears, plums and peaches. We’re celebrating this year’s bounty of fruit by using the crop to make small-batch, artisan Rogue Cider and Rogue Soda. By growing our proprietary palate of flavors, it means we can create new and interesting craft beverages.

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Rogue Department of Agriculture

The Farmstead Malt House Just a few steps away from our orchards and barley fields lies the birthplace of Rogue’s DIY Revolution, the Farmstead Malt House. The grains we grow at Rogue Farms in Independence and Tygh Valley, Oregon come here to be carefully crafted, by hand, into small batch artisan floor malt and micro malt. One of our batch sizes is 2,000 pounds or less, a mere .0057th of your standard commercial run. This isn’t the most efficient way of doing things, but it means our maltsters can see, touch, and sniff the grain every step along the way from steeper, to floor, to kiln, to bag. This summer, we’re busy working on the best techniques for malting corn and wheat, two new ingredients for our beers and spirits that we’re growing at Rogue Farms in Independence. Each grain and every batch is different. We’re always adjusting our steeping times, germination rates and kiln temperatures according to the grain and according to the season. But by floor malting and micro malting our own in small batches, it gives us the kind of hands-on commitment to quality that we’d never get if we bought malt off store shelves.

Rogue Farms is reviving the lost art of hand flipped floor malting at the Farmstead Malt House.

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Mt. Hood Mt. St. Helens Badger Creek Valley Tygh Ridge Tygh Valley Farmstead Malt House Orchards: Cherries, Apples, Pears, Peaches & Plums Cattle Sheds Trout Ponds Barley: Dare & Risk

Wildlife: Bald Eagles Canada Geese Great Blue Herons Elk White Tailed Deer Black Tailed Deer Mule Deer Mallards Pheasants

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Dream Rye Dream Pumpkins Cherries Kirk Hazelnuts Rogue Farms Honeybees Hops Parking Leroy O’Lantern Pumpkins Chatoe Tasting Room Chuck Wagon Oregon Roses Garage Amphitheater Hop ‘n Bed Hop Cooler Hop Kiln Hop Baler Hop Picker Voo & Doo Berries Jalapenos Corn Farmstead Brewery James & Franny Coleman Conference Center Bike and Walking Trails

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Rogue Farms Hopyard Independence, OR

Latitude: 44.8° North, Longitude: 123.1° West, Elevation: 170 feet

From Bine To Brew At Rogue Farms in Independence, Oregon the harvest season is still a few weeks away. We’ll begin in our 42-acre hopyard where we’re growing seven varieties of hops; Alluvial, Freedom, Independent, Liberty, Rebel, Revolution and Yaquina. We’re especially excited because this will be the first harvest of our Yaquina variety. Our hops are growing like crazy this summer. Tiny strobiles emerged in early June. By harvest, the bines will have grown another 20 feet and will be brimming with lupulin filled hop cones. As for February’s wacky weather? Our tough bines shrugged off the floods and snow with a dismissive, “whatever”. If anything, all that water was a blessing, restoring the soil with some badly needed moisture. We’re also looking forward to harvesting our first ever crops of wheat, corn and botanicals. All together, they’re another seven ingredients in our proprietary palate of flavors.

The Rogue Farms hop rows in July.

We think the harvest season is the best time to visit us at Rogue Farms. The hops will be ready about mid-August, but the exact timing is up to Mother Nature. We’ll keep you up to date via our website, farms blog and social media. Please join us this summer for the harvest and see how we Grow Beer and Spirits!

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Rogue Nation Department of Agriculture

Growing, Picking and Harvesting The Revolution The hops harvest is biggest of the year at Rogue Farms. Seven varieties, picked one at a time, over a period of four weeks.

John Maier in our rows of Freedom hops. Freedom hops, our earliest maturing variety, are usually ripe by the middle of August. John Maier will come out for the Freedom harvest and pick the cones he’ll use for this year’s batch of Wet Hop Ale. It takes about 48-hours to move each variety from bine to bale. The steps along the way including trimming the bines off the trellises, moving them to the processing facility here on the farm, separating the cones from the bines, sorting out the cones from leaves, shoots and other small debris, kilning the cones in giant ovens, allowing them to cool, and then stamping them in 200 pound bales wrapped in hand-stitched burlap. How do we know when our hops are ready? Just like our malting barley, we wait until they’ve reached the prime level of moisture. Hops are right for picking when they’re between 20% and 22% dry. It takes several hours to run dry matter tests and a lot of math is involved. Which is probably why the old-timers just opened the cones and gave them a sniff.

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TRIMMING: We cut the bines from the trellis wires and let them fall into the truck.

SEPARATING: We feed the bines into a giant cutting machine that strips away the cones from the bines. This machine is called the picker.

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Rogue Nation Department of Agriculture

SORTING: A series of fans, conveyor belts and dribble belts separate the cones from smaller sized leaves and shoots.

KILNING: Then we drop them into the kilns where they’re heated to 145° to 155°. This brings down moisture levels even further so they don’t catch fire in storage.

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COOLING: Hops need about 24-hours to cool down before we can bale them.

BALING: Finally, we press the cones into 200 pound bales, and then wrap them in burlap. Then they go into storage awaiting John’s call to use them to brew our world class ales, porters, lagers, stouts and kolsch.

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Rogue Nation Department of Agriculture

Rogue Farms Wildflower Honey As farmers, we learned a long time ago that the timing of our harvest depends on the whims of Mother Nature. Some years, she’s more whimsical than others. That’s certainly true this season for our 7,140,289 Rogue Farms honeybees. When we checked on them in early July we saw they had almost filled the supers, the boxes on top of the hives where they store excess honey. If we didn’t do something quick they’d run out of room. We donned our beekeeping suits, grabbed our hive tools and started harvesting the 2014 crop of Rogue Farms Wildflower honey - six weeks sooner than our previous honey harvests!

Pulling honey heavy frames from the supers.

John wasn’t going to miss out. That morning he hopped in his truck and drove over the Coast Range from our Brewery in Newport to our farm in Independence. As we were pulling frames from the supers, John melted the beeswax off the honeycombs. We placed them in the extractor and spun them around to remove all that sweet, dark amber honey. Why was this year’s harvest so early? One reason might be that in February, we sent our honeybees 600 miles south to an almond orchard in Tracy, California to get them out of the cold, rain and snow. Winter temperatures and the lack of natural food sources are hard on honeybees. We figured they’d like a couple of months in the sun, to forage among the almonds, and to build up the population of the hives.

Crop Report - Harvest Edition 2014

John’s version of “quality control.”

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We also planted several acres of wildflowers around the farm this spring. The more sources of wild food they have, the happier and healthier are our honeybees. From hazelnuts, to cherries, apples, Dream Pumpkins, Rogue Farms Jalapeños, marionberries, raspberries, blackberries and clover - our Honeybees sample all the flavors of the Wigrich Appellation. The honey they produce is the true taste of the terroir of Rogue Farms.

Just a few of the wildflowers we planted this spring for the Rogue Farms honeybees.

You’ll be able to taste it too when John uses this year’s honey crop to create Honey Kolsch, Marionberry Braggot, 19 Original Colonies Mead, and Rogue Ciders and Sodas.

Dare, Risk, Dream Rye We never gave up on rye. Our first attempt to grow rye was thwarted by a gang of slugs who ate the entire crop just a few weeks after we planted it. Last year, a big wind and hail storm flattened several acres of our Dream rye. But rye is tough. It grew back. So far, this year’s growing season has been trouble free. The crop is turning from green to brown and should be ready to harvest in August. Rye farming has all but disappeared in Oregon. There are so few acres of rye left in the state that the government has stopped trying to keep track of it. We may be the only rye farmer left in Oregon and not even know it. All because we didn’t give up on rye.

Rogue Farms field of Dream Rye in July.

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So we celebrate this tough little grain by using it to brew our Roguenbier Rye Ale and our first ever batch of Rogue Spirits Oregon Rye Whiskey. They are truly a unique taste of terroir that you can only get from Rogue.

Rogue Nation Department of Agriculture

Growing Our Proprietary Palate Revolutions never rest. This year we’re growing the GYO Revolution with two new grains for our proprietary palate of flavors. First, we planted five acres of wheat next to our jalapeños and pumpkins in late spring. It took to the terroir of our farm right away, emerging, leafing and tillering in just a few weeks. We expect to harvest it in August, about the same time as our honey and Dream Rye. Then we’ll floor malt it and micro malt it at the Farmstead Malt House in Tygh Valley.

Rogue Farms wheat in early June.

Wheat is one of the oldest domesticated grains and has been used by brewers for centuries. John will brew with this crop for our MoM’s Hefeweizen. But when he sees Rogue Farms grown and malted wheat coming into the brewery, who knows what else he’ll be inspired to create. The other new grain is our five acre field of sweet corn. Corn is truly an all-American plant, having originated in Central America and spreading across the New World long before the settlers arrived. The history of fermenting with corn goes back 7,000 years. We tried growing a small experimental batch of corn a couple of years ago. But just as the first shoots appeared, the Free Range Chicks hopped over the fence and ate everything. So we learned. This year’s crop is planted so far away from the chicks they’ll need four-wheel drive to find it.

Our five acres of corn at planting time. Beer and spirits begin in the dirt.

Crop Report - Harvest Edition 2014

We’ll harvest our corn in October. But unlike our other grains, we don’t harvest the seeds, we harvest the ears. Then we’ll truck them to the Farmstead Malt House in Tygh Valley to shuck the corn, dry out the kernels and then micro malt them for Rogue Ales and Spirits. Whiskey and bourbon are two possibilities, and John might want to create a new corn beer from scratch.

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From Patch to Batch

John checks up on his Dream pumpkins in July. Rogue Farms would like to announce that our Pumpkin Patch Ale won’t be ready this August, when so many other pumpkin beers appear on shelves. We have yet to figure out how to brew Pumpkin Patch Ale before we pick our Dream pumpkins. We’ll harvest our three acres of Dream pumpkins in September, and that same day we’ll truck them to the Rogue Brewery in Newport where we’ll cut them open, clean out the seeds, carve them into chunks and roast them in the oven to bring out that naturally sweet pumpkin flavor. Only then can John Maier use our farm fresh pumpkins to brew Pumpkin Patch Ale.

Sizing Up Our Nuts Next door at Kirk Family Filberts, our neighbors are having a great year in their 98-acre hazelnut orchard. It’s good news for us because the Kirks grow the hazelnuts we roast and infuse in our Hazelnut Spice Rum. Lance Kirk says his nuts are sizing up nicely in the summer sun and might even be ready for harvest a couple of weeks early. The harvest usually starts with the strong winds that blow through the Wigrich Appellation in fall and knock the nuts out of the trees. Judging by the progress so far, we’re looking at a harvest in late September or early October. Summer at Kirk Family Filberts.

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Rogue Nation Department of Agriculture

From Greenhouse To Ground To Glass Two years ago we planted some jalapeños in the garden to see if they’d grow on our farm. This year we planted a full acre. One of the reasons we started the GYO Revolution was to discover new ingredients, test them out, and see how they tasted in our beers and spirits. What we learned about jalapeños is that they love the terroir of the Wigrich Appellation. We started this year’s crop in a greenhouse and then planted them in a field next to our Dream pumpkins. Rogue Farms jalapeños are the last of the crops we’ll pick this year, usually in October. We hold off longer than most pepper growers because we want to give our jalapeños more time to fully ripen and turn bright red. Then we’ll pick them, drop them into baskets, drive them over the Coast Range to the Rogue Brewery Newport where we’ll slowly dry smoke them into chipotles in tiny batches.

Planting our peppers by hand.

That’s the best way to grow the chipotles that John uses to create Chipotle Ale and Chipotle Spirit. It’s a difference you can taste.

How Our Garden Grows Reading the list of ingredients on a bottle of Rogue Spirits is a lot like browsing through a seed catalog. You’ll find juniper, ginger, coriander, orris root, angelica as well as jalapeños, corn, and barley. We were inspired by the idea to grow a garden of botanicals for Rogue Spirits at our farm in Independence. It started when we planted several juniper bushes and then added ginger, coriander, orris root and angelica. We’ll be picking our berries and botanicals throughout the summer and fall. There’s nothing like growing and harvesting your own to craft world class gin, vodka, rum and whiskey.

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Rogue Farms Hops and Honey Report This year is going down as a pivotal one in craft brewing. According to an analysis by the Brewers Association, 60% of the 2014 hop acreage in the United States will be strung in aroma varieties, the kind of hops used mostly by craft brewers. Just five years ago, only 21% of hops were aroma varieties. Overall, hop growers strung an additional 3,168 acres over 2013, an increase of 9%. Oregon and Washington had double digit increases. Rogue Farms share for this year is .0011th of the U.S. total.

2014 U.S. Hop Acres Strung For Harvest Hop Acreage 2013

Hop Acreage 2014

% Increase

Oregon

4,786

5,559

16%

Idaho

3,376

3,812

12%

Washington

27,062

29,021

7%

U.S.

35,224

38,392

9%

Winter Bee Losses At 8 Year Low: U.S. honeybees had their best winter ever since Colony Collapse Disorder was first reported in

2006. Beekeepers lost 23% of their colonies during the winter of 2013-2014. That’s well below the eight year average of 30%. USDA researchers say it’s too early to know why this winter’s losses were down by so much. Oregon beekeepers fared slightly better than average, losing 21% of their colonies. For many beekeepers, losing 23% of their hives is still too much. They reported they could afford to lose about 18% of their colonies this winter and stay in business. So while that extra 5% loss is smaller than years past, it still stings them in the wallet and isn’t sustainable over the long run.

Honey Prices Hit Record High: U.S. Honey prices hit a record high in 2013, averaging 212¢ per gallon. That’s up 6% from 2012. Dark amber and specialty honey commanded above average prices. Rogue Farms produced .0000040134th of the U.S. harvest.

U.S. Honey Production 2013 Colonies

Yield per colony

Production

Price per pound

2012

2,539,000

56 pounds

142,296,000 lbs

199.2¢

2013

2,640,000

56.6 pounds

149,499,000 lbs

212.1¢

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Rogue Nation Department of Agriculture

Beyond GYO and DIY When we’re done seeding, cultivating, reaping, threshing, winnowing, floor malting, micro malting, roasting, smoking and mashing our grain - it doesn’t go to waste. Instead, we give away our spent grain to farmers on the Oregon Coast and the Willamette Valley where they feed it to their pigs, cows, goats, turkeys and chickens. Everybody benefits. We don’t have to dump it in the landfill. Our fellow farmers get a cheap source of high fiber, high protein, low fat supplemental feed for their livestock.

Walker Farms Siletz, OR Our neighbors at Walker Farms serve Rogue spent grains to their beef cattle, pigs, lambs, turkey and chicken. Feed is their biggest expense and using our spent grain helps them stay in business. Try some of their guilt-free meat and produce at farmers markets in our hometown of Newport and nearby Lincoln City.

Rivers Edge Chèvre Logsden, OR Pat Morford crafts her award winning chèvre at her farm on the Siletz River in the Oregon Coast Range where she feeds Rogue spent grain to her dairy goats and sheep. We also collaborate with Pat in another way. Her Mayor Of Nye Beach cheese is washed for a minimum of two months in our Dead Guy Ale. Soon, we’ll be adding Walker Farms meats and Rivers Edge Chèvre to our menus at Rogue Public Houses. The food on your plate and the beer or booze in your glass will be made with the same barley, rye, corn and wheat!

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Weather Report Look for the return of El Niño this winter. NOAA says we have an 80% chance of an El Niño forming by fall and lasting through winter. The forecast calls for a moderately strong event. But NOAA is hedging its bets, noting that it’s difficult to accurately predict the strength of an El Niño this far in advance. Here in Oregon, El Niño usually means warmer and drier than normal weather. That’s certainly what we’re expecting for the rest of the summer.

Temperatures: Areas in orange can expect warmer than normal temperatures. Areas in blue, colder than normal.

Precipitation: Areas in brown can expect drier than normal conditions. Areas in green, wetter than normal.

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Rogue Department of Agriculture

Rogue Brewery and Distillery Newport, OR

Latitude: 44.6° North, Longitude: 124° West, Elevation: 7 feet

The barrel room at the Rogue Distillery where we ocean age our spirits on Yaquina Bay. With Rolling Thunder Barrel Works, Rogue will be the only U.S. brewery to hand craft its own barrels from scratch.

Rolling Thunder Barrel Works With the flip of a shovel we embarked on a Revolution in Oak. This spring, we broke ground on Rolling Thunder Barrel Works, a tree to table cooperage at the Rogue Ales and Spirits World Headquarters in Newport, Oregon. Rolling Thunder is the next wave in the Do It Yourself Revolution. No more buying someone else’s barrels made from someone else’s wood. We wanted to know what would happen when we aged our Oregon made beer and spirits, crafted with Oregon grown ingredients, in barrels we crafted ourselves from Oregon White Oak.

Crop Report - Harvest Edition 2014

Newport Mayor Sandra Roumagoux breaks ground for Rolling Thunder Barrel Works.

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This summer, we’ll begin in the forests of the Oregon Coast Range, less than 100 miles from Newport, where we’re searching for the Oregon White Oak trees we’ll use to make the first generation of Rolling Thunder Barrels. After we harvest the trees and mill the wood, the white oak pieces will be seasoned in terroir of the Willamette Valley and in the ocean air of Newport. Crafting our own barrels using old-world traditions is a painstaking and arduous process. Each stave will be individually cut, beveled and shaped by hand for a perfect fit. No nails. No glues. Each barrel will be custom charred to create custom products. A grove of Oregon White Oak in the Coast Range. From the time we harvest the trees, through seasoning, milling, cutting, beveling, shaping, charring, raising and hooping; the time on this journey may be as long as two years. When we age our beers, spirits, mead and braggot in Rolling Thunder barrels, the wood will be as much a part of the terroir as our hops, barley, water and other ingredients. They will be another ingredient in our proprietary palate of flavors of known origin.

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Rogue Nation Department of Agriculture

Rogue Seafood Report Fishery

Landing

Dungeness Crab

The Dungeness crab season is winding down and will close August 15th. Landings in mid-June totaled 14,176,487 pounds, well above the ten year average. Crabbers are getting $3.46 per pound this season, which may be a record high.

Oregon Pink Shrimp

The Pink shrimp season opened in April and so far, shrimpers have landed 15,932,335 pounds. Landings usually peak during summer. The season closes at the end of October.

Albacore Tuna

Look for Albacore tuna fishing to get underway in July, when large schools of these migratory fish move in close to the Oregon Coast. The average catch for the last ten years has been 9,739,250 pounds per season.

Halibut

Nearshore fishing for halibut opens July 1st and the all-depths season opens August 1st.

Salmon (Chinook and Coho)

We’re expecting strong seasons for both chinook and coho this year. The sport season for ocean chinook off the Central Coast continues until the end of October. There are two sport seasons for ocean coho, June 21st August 10th, and August 30th - September 30th. Commercial landings hit 1,221,347 pounds at the mid-June, but we’re still early in the season.

Sablefish

Sablefish is off to a slow start, hitting 968,015 pounds at mid-June. The best months are usually late summer and early fall. The ten year average per season is 5,643,892 pounds.

Dover Sole

The Dover sole harvest is on track for a close to average year. Six months into the season, fishermen have landed 6,276,829 pounds.

Whiting (Hake)

We're just coming out of the winter and spring doldrums for whiting. So far, 929,268 pounds have been landed. Things kick into high gear starting in July and in a normal season fishermen land 16,749,948 pounds.

Yaquina River

Cutthroat trout is open in all sections of the river. Chinook fishing up to Big Elk Creek opens August 1st and Coho fishing in the same area opens September 15th.

Newport’s commercial fishing fleet, across the street from Rogue’s Bayfront Pub. 

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M A D E W I T H R O G U E FA R M S I N G R E D I E N T S Our proprietary palate of ingredients, planted, plowed, disced harrowed, harvested, brewed and bottled in brand new packaging to help you Grow the Revolution.

A Century Ago At Rogue Farms

This photo from the Oregon State University Archives shows a family picking hops at the Wigrich Ranch in the 1930’s. Today it’s the location of Rogue Farms in Independence, Oregon. This is the oldest hops growing region in the state. Oregon’s first crop was planted just a couple of miles south of here in 1867. It was the start of a major shift in hops growing. In just a few decades, the center of hops production moved from New York, through the Midwest until it finally settled in Oregon and Washington. By 1910, the Wigan Richardson Company established the world’s biggest hopyard here on the banks of the Willamette River. For the next four decades, the Wigrich Ranch and the area surrounding Independence dominated global hops production. Scenes like the one above were common during this era, when the only way to pick hops was to pick them by hand. The Wigrich Ranch and other growers needed tens of thousands of pickers during the harvest season, and Oregonians answered the call in droves. Wages and working conditions were good. In just a few weeks, a picker could earn enough to provide food for his family over the winter and still have money left over to buy school clothes for his children. Hop picking became a tradition in many families and they returned year after year.

Join us! Stay overnight in the Rogue Hop ‘n Bed on our farm at Independence or at the Rogue Bed ‘n Beer on the Historic Bay Front in Newport. Please feel free to contact Cher at 503-838-9813 for more information or to schedule a tour.