DRAFT Magazine

Cinco de Mayo, what do we do with you? For us, it’s one of those holidays where you wake up the morning of, realize you haven’t prepared, and grab your friend’s pickup truck to run to the store and buy all the Corona left in stock. You have a great time — you eat some nachos, you play some softball, you drink some tequila, you cut yourself cutting limes — but it could be so much more, couldn’t it?

Rogue Ales believes so. Rogue’s Chipotle Ale is the perfect drink for the perfect independence day celebration. A four-time silver medalist at the World Beer Championships, brewmaster John Maier’s concoction features a sublime mix of sugar and spice. Get it on draft or in 22oz bottles. Eat it with poultry and pork. Or Corona. Your call.

The ever-creative folks at Rogue Ales must be bored up there in Oregon, because in addition to Rogue Ales, Rogue Spirits, Chatoe Rogue, and the Rogue Micro Farms, they’ve also added barley-farming to the party. The Rogue Nation Department of Agriculture consists of 235 acres in the Tygh Valley Appellation, and their first barley harvest is dedicated to creating two unique Rogue Single Malt products.

Dare and Risk are the two specific types of malts from the crop, and apparently there is something to the names; as the Tygh Valley area wasn’t expected to produce good barley for brewing. Leave it to Rogue, who tackled the Chipotle Ale, to go rogue. (And they did it first, by the way. Mrs. Palin did not seek Rogue’s permission for her book title).

Risk has already been used for a new Rogue Spirit called Oregon Single Malt Whiskey, and Dare is destined to be a Single Malt Ale for release in April 2010. But the first chance to taste Rogue barley is in Chatoe Rogue’s Dirtoir Black Lager, set for release on the first of the year.

– Sarah Whitmere

Is there anything cuter than beers in little bottles? Maybe you could make a case for three-year-old kids or puppies or something like that, but we’ll take a teeny-tiny brew any day. (So much easier to clean up after, you know?)

With that in mind, we’re happy to let you know — thanks to our friends over at BeerNews.org — that Rogue Ales will debut a line of 7 oz. bottles on February 1, starting with Russian Imperial Stout. The brewery will soon follow with Imperial Younger’s Special Bitter, Imperial Red AleImperial IPA, Old Crustacean Barley Wine, and McRogue Scotch Ale.

As long as you’re toilet-trained, you’re ready to go.

Instead of going on one field trip today, we’re setting you up with three different DRAFT Uncapped interviews from the 2009 GABF. In them, DRAFT editor-in-chief Erika Reitz asks some of the best brewers in the business just what makes them so damn good.

Rogue Ales
Goose Island
The Homebrew Chef

See our previous Friday Field Trips here.

If you’d like to be featured in a Friday Field Trip or have an idea of a place we should tour, email us. And TGIF.

It’s not often that a specific beer from a relatively large craft brewery (oxymoron by definition, yes, we know) gets its own blog, but that’s exactly the type of treatment 17-year Rogue Ales veteran Sebbie Buhler gives Rogue Chocolate Stout.

Buhler, the face of the year-round release from the Newport, OR brewery, keeps a blog dedicated entirely to Chocolate Stout. On the site, you’ll find awards earned by the brew, tips on favorite cookbooks, even recipes including Chocolate Stout.

If that’s not enough, during January and February you can also get a limited release “valentine red” serigraphed bottle for a loved one. Or yourself. Or Buhler. (Or all three?)

Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has a book coming out that’s called “Going Rogue.” In it, she details the trials and tribulations of campaigning, being from Alaska, and all sorts of other juicy details. But is she really a Rogue?

Not according to Brett Joyce, president Rogue Brewery. He tells The Daily Finance that a Rogue is “a revolutionary, someone that doesn’t follow the status quo,” and he isn’t sure if Palin conforms to that criteria.

The matter is being referred to Rogue Nation Attorney General. “Led by Captain Sig Hansen of The Deadliest Catch and the Newport fishermen who ply the Alaskan waters, we are investigating where she was born and other issues of character,” a press release states.

At the 2009 Great American Beer Festival, DRAFT’s intrepid editor-in-chief Erika Rietz interviewed some of the biggest names in the beer business. In total, we shot 16(!) videos and we’ll be featuring a DRAFT Uncapped Interview each day so you can see the results.

In today’s edition, Erika interviews Brett Joyce from Rogue Ales.

DRAFT Uncapped Interview with Rogue Ales at GABF 2009

See all the videos here.

As the mercury drops, our good friends at Rogue Ales will offer a new Yellow Snow IPA and a dark ale known as Mogul Madness to lift your spirits. Both were brewed especially for the winter months and will debut in November, just in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

A gold medalist at the 2009 World Beer Championships, this IPA is yellow snow that you will actually want to drink. It’s made with Two-Row Pale, Cara Foam & Melanoiden Malts; Amarillo and Rogue Farm Willamette Hops; Free Range Coastal Waters and Top Fermenting Pacman Yeast.

Lucky folks can find Yellow Snow IPA on draft, in 5 liter cans with a “pull and turn” tap, or in 64 oz and 22 oz serigraphed bottles.

Not to be outdone, Mogul Madness is a darker brew that Rogue brewmaster John Maier calls his favorite. He describes it as “layers of complex malt flavors and radically hopped.”

Mogul Madness’ seven different types of hops (Centennial, Columbus, Perle, Saaz, Chinook, Cascade, and Rogue Farm Willamette) may be responsible for that; it also includes Harrington and Kages, Munich, Crystal135-165 and Chocolate Malts, Free Range Coastal Water and Top Fermenting Pacman Yeast. Bonus: it comes in glow-in-the-dark 22oz bottles.

For those who like to celebrate the Olympics from the couch, the Yellow Snow IPA and Mogul Madness will be available nationwide and in Canada. Look for them on draft in select mountain communities or ski resorts.

– Sarah Whitmire