Rogue First Farmstead Brew 3 Hop Sully Irish Red & 15-Acres of Rye Gone

We spoke quite a bit to Rogue Brewery CEO Brett Joyce about the Chatoe Rogue farms…and it’s exciting to see news of their first Farmstead brew….3 Hop Sully Irish Red.   Named after a farm Dog rescued from Ireland….Details from Rogue:  The recipe includes three of Rogue’s GYO Certified hops; Alluvial, Liberty and Newport. Grown, picked, separated, sorted and kilned right here on the Micro Hopyard, they’ve never left the farm. Josh also used Rogue Risk™ and Dare™ malts, made from the barley we grow on the Micro Barley Farm in Tygh Valley.  

Additional details from the Rogue Crop Report including the loss of 15-acres of Rye to slugs:

December dealt us a tough lesson about the risks of farming.

Early in the month, we planted 15 acres of rye on the Micro Hopyard. Just a few days after green shoots emerged from the dirt, the entire crop was wiped out. Slugs – the nemesis of many Oregon gardeners – ate every seedling.

So we’ll try again in the spring. Rye will grow quickly in the terroir of the Wigrich Appellation and should be ready to harvest by summer.
 
Someone around here joked that since beer is used to kill slugs in the garden, maybe the slugs were just getting even. 

While we don’t have any specific plans for our rye, it’s been used traditionally in rye beers such as Roggenbier and Kvass. And of course – there’s always rye whiskey.

Guard Turkeys Answer The Call Of Duty

We couldn’t be prouder of Tom and Juniper, our pair of Royal Palm Turkeys. We added them to the Hopyard brood to serve as guardians of the Free Range Chicks. They’re not yet mature enough to assume all their responsibilities. But when danger appeared this month, Tom and Juniper did everything they could to protect the Chicks.

Hop Production Holds Steady In 2011

The National Hop Report from USDA shows little change in production from 2010 to 2011. Last year’s harvest of 64.8 million pounds is off just 1% from 2010’s 65.5 million pounds. A lot has been said in the past few years about falling hops production. 2008 and 2009 were the biggest years for hops in almost a century. But 2011 is actually looking pretty good. It’s the 18th largest hops harvest since 1915. Our records don’t go back further than that.

In Oregon, Nugget and Willamette were the top varieties of hops, making up about 58% of production. Zeus, Columbus/Tomahawk, Cascade, and Super Galena were the leading varieties in Washington, accounting for almost half of the state’s crop.

Other hop growers are no doubt frustrated by falling prices. The national average for 2011 was $2.77 per pound, down 50 cents per pound from a year ago. Oregon hop growers were paid $2.93 per pound – the highest in the region. But that’s a dollar per pound less than what they were getting in 2010.

These numbers are not important to us at Rogue. Growing our own seven varieties of aroma hops protects us from the ups and downs of the market, and ensures that we get the kind of hops we want.

2011 National Hop Production – USDA

Rogue Farms Micro Barley Farm

Tygh Valley, Oregon
 
Doc McAllister checking the soil on the Micro Barley Farm this fall.

Thank Goodness For The Rain

While many Oregonians were enjoying the sunny weather in December, the dry spell was making us a little worried for the Risk™ winter malting barley we planted in October. Except for some snow in mid-November, the Micro Barley Farm received little moisture this fall.

So we were relieved when the rain returned during the Holidays. The Risk™ malting barley got the moisture it needed – when it was needed. The terroir of Tygh Valley comes through again.

If you could visit the farm over the winter, you might just see two inch green shoots sticking out of the dirt. Doc McAllister says the Risk™ winter barley is hardy enough to grow ever so slightly on warm winter days. On cold days, it’ll be dormant. But when early spring arrives, and the temperatures start to increase, the Risk™ barley responds immediately and begins to grow steadily for the next few months.

Doc says winter is the time of year when the farm appears to be sleeping. But don’t be fooled. Farmhands are pruning trees in the apple and cherry orchards, repairing farm roads, working on the irrigation equipment, and generally getting ready to plant the Dare™ spring barley by the end of March.

Left: The orchards in early summer

Right: A trespasser checks out the apples in autumn.

U.S. Barley Prices Remain High, Production In Oregon Increases

Barley farmers in the United States were paid an average $5.50 per bushel in December, according to preliminary data from U.S.D.A. This is one of the highest prices on record, continuing a trend we’ve seen over the past few months. It’s also much higher than farmers were getting a year ago. Malting barley commands a premium that’s more than $1 over feed grade.
 

Oregon’s barley farmers harvested 40,000 acres this year, up from 34,000 acres in 2010. This puts a stop to a decline in acreage that’s been underway since 2000, when we harvested 140,000 acres of barley in the state. Whether this is a one-time event, or the start of a new trend, remains to be seen.

Yields were very strong, about 74 bushels per acre. That’s one of the highest yields for Oregon barley in almost four decades. According to the U.S.D.A., Oregon farmers produced 2.9 million bushels of barley in 2011, worth almost $11 million.

At Rogue Farms, we’re proud of the small contribution we make. Our 200 acre Micro Barley Farm produced 875,987 pounds of Risk™ and Dare™ malting barley. We never worry about how much that’s worth. Being able to grow our own, and micro malt our own, is priceless.

Barley Headlines

North Dakota: State officials are warning barley farmers they better start lining up a supply of seed for next spring’s planting. Inventories are tight right now and the situation may continue through next year. During 2011, 10,000 acres of certified seed barley was grown in the state, only 25% of the five year average.

Australia: A bumper crop of barley has pushed down prices so low, that Australian barley is the cheapest in the world. But there are some questions about the quality of the crop. The higher yields may have contributed to low protein levels in some regions. In southern Australia, some farmers are reporting problems from "skinnings". That’s when the barley outgrows its own kernel, causing it to split. Barley with a split kernel is worthless to maltsters, so it will have to be sold at a cheaper feed grade price.

Canada: Barley and wheat farmers in Western Canada are following a "take it slow" approach as they try to figure out how they’re going to sell next year’s harvest. A new Canadian law took away the marketing monopoly of the Canadian Wheat Board and created a free market system for barley and wheat. But a series of legal challenges have put the status of the law in limbo. One producer says the court battle has created so much confusion; many farmers won’t be planting barley next spring unless things are sorted out by then.

Floor Malting

Led by Head Distiller John Couchot, Rogue’s team of maltsters created several micro batches of Risk™ floor malt during December.  Each batch is steeped, raked and shoveled by hand, using artisan techniques that go back centuries. The work runs 24/7 at our Floor Malting facility. These new micro batches of Risk™ floor malt were hand crafted for Rogue Spirits Good Chit Whiskey.

It’s amazing when you think about how long it takes to create a bottle of Good Chit Whiskey. The process began over a year ago when we planted the Risk™ winter malting barley in October of 2010. It continued through the spring and summer of this year as we tended the crop and helped it grow. In August, we harvested the Risk™malting barley and then trucked it to our Floor Malting facility in Portland. There it was steeped, germinated, dried, kilned and roasted to perfection.

The Risk™ floor malt is then transported to our Brewery and House of Spirits in Newport where it’s milled, smoked, mashed, distilled, aged in White Oak barrels and then hand bottled.

From beginning to end, Good Chit Whiskey is all Rogue and made from scratch.

Proving The Terroir Of Beer

We didn’t need a bunch of scientists to tell us terroir is important to beer. Ever since we started planting, growing, harvesting, kilning, baling, malting, drying and roasting our own hops and barley – and tasting the difference it makes in our ales, porters, lagers and stouts – we knew terroir was the real deal.

But it’s nice to have some scientific proof to back us up. Researchers at the University of Seville in Spain have discovered that by examining the compounds in beer, they can determine where it was brewed. They look at components such as iron, potassium, phosphates and polyphenols. So far, they’ve been able to determine with 99% accuracy whether a beer came from Germany, Spain or Portugal.

The next step is to add more beers and countries to the database, and to narrow the origin to a specific region, such as Bavaria.

The research was published in the journal, Food Control.

Waiting For La Nina

December in Oregon was so sunny and so dry, it’s hard to believe we’re in the grips of a La Nina. During a La Nina, cool waters collect in the eastern Pacific Ocean near the equator off South and Central America. It usually means a colder and wetter than normal winter in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. Cold – we got plenty of that last month. But December was surprisingly lacking in snow and rain.

According to the climate experts at NOAA, it’s just a matter of time. And judging by all the rain and cold temps we’re seeing in the recent forecasts, the time is now.

Here’s the official outlook for January.