Rogue Farms: Thank beer for well-fed turkeys

The life of a Rogue Farms grain doesn’t end at the brewery. This Thanksgiving, feast on a turkey and drink a beer that fed on the same grains. The company recently shared that it grows its two varieties of malting barleys, Rogue Farms Dare and Risk, on its 200-acre barley farm in Tygh Valley, ore. In the rain shadow of Mt. Hood, the 300 days of sunshine creates the ideal terroir to cultivate these proprietary ingredients.

The 2014 harvest of Rogue Farms barley yielded its highest bounty yet, with 1.063 million lbs. The fine folks at Rogue Farms plow, disc, harrow, plant, harvest, kiln and floor-malt. Once malted, the barley is trucked over the Cascade Range to the Rogue Brewery in Newport, Ore., where it’s roasted, smoked and mashed. But that’s not where the story ends.

Rogue Farms spent grain is donated to local farmers and cheesemakers for feed, giving Rogue Farms grains a full life cycle from ground to glass and from farm to table.

Rogue Ales & Spirits is an agri-fermenter founded in Oregon in 1988, as one of America’s first microbreweries. Rogue has won more than 1,000 awards for taste and quality and is available in all 50 states and 48 countries. Since 2008, Rogue has remained committed to saving the terroir of Oregon hops and barley, one acre at a time, by growing its own.