Another Early Craft Beer Pioneer is Gone as Oregon’s Rogue Shutters its Doors
We sadly have another casualty to report in the ongoing craft beer apocalypse: Oregon’s Rogue Ales, one of the segment’s most recognizable and widely available brands for decades since its founding in 1988, abruptly shuttered its doors yesterday, according to local sources. The company, as far as I can tell, hasn’t offered any public statement or acknowledged its own closure via social media: Employees were simply told yesterday that the entire company had ceased operations. It’s an ignominious end for what was once Oregon’s second largest craft brewer, a company that had its fair share of controversies over the years but simultaneously was among the most important brewers from a marketing and experimentation standpoint in the craft beer boom’s earliest years.
According to reporting from Portland’s The Oregonian, the Newport-based Rogue owes hefty amounts in unpaid rent and back taxes, which presumably just became too much to bear. It rents its 47,000 square foot space directly from the Port, and had already agreed in recent months to re-rent a portion of that space to a seafood processor, presumably to make some extra cash. Likewise, Rogue had already closed various other hubs in Oregon, such as its Pearl Public House in Portland in 2020 amid the COVID-19 closures, and a pub near Portland State University last year. All told, the company apparently owes $545,000 to the Port of Newport and $30,000 in property taxes to Lincoln County. Employees were notified of the closure at 8 a.m. Friday morning via the company’s scheduling app, and The Oregonian quotes a manager of Rogue’s West Salem location to capture just how abrupt this was: “There was no warning, no heads up, just an announcement that said we were going to be paid until the end of today. They wished everyone well … two weeks before Thanksgiving.”
In its salad days, Rogue was known as a playful symbol of craft beer as a thriving community and cultural phenomenon in the Pacific Northwest. They had a few things that made them unique among their peers: For one, the fact that their flagship Dead Guy Ale, bearing one of the craft beer industry’s most recognizable labels, was a maibock of all things, a style barely represented by any other brewery’s core offerings. The Rogue library of classic ales (we were partial to Shakespeare Stout) was built by respected brewer John Maier, who remained with the company all the way until 2019. They eventually ventured into distilled spirits and experimental beer territory with perhaps less success, creating collaborations with brands such as Voodoo Doughnut that in some cases have gone on to live in infamy–Rogue Voodoo Doughnut Bacon Maple Ale, first introduced in 2011, is often still fondly recalled as perhaps the “worst beer ever made.” But from an everyday sense, Rogue was a reliable producer of classic styles, perhaps not particularly flashy but ever present. Its closure is indicative of a type of time-worn brewing operation that has been abandoned by the consumer base, itself shrinking from an exodus to other styles of alcohol or to non-alcoholic alternatives. All too frequently, historic brewers like Rogue have been left in the dust.
This is certainly deeply concerning for other brewers that share some similarities with the likes of Rogue, to see a longtime icon reduced to such a ignoble exit. Rogue was a member of the craft beer world’s legendary “Class of ’88,” a group of brewers founded that year that went on to make big waves as nationwide brands at the segment’s peak. Other Class of ’88 members include the likes of North Coast Brewing, Goose Island, Great Lakes Brewing, and Oregon’s own Deschutes, which remains the largest in the state. If Rogue, a brewery that was once synonymous with the segment with its flagship Dead Guy Ale in particular, can fall upon its sword, then it stands to reason that even breweries from this lauded class are distinctly vulnerable at this moment.
Of course, one some level it’s fair to say that Rogue brought negative attention to itself in a variety of ways over the years. The company crushed a unionization attempt in Newport in 2011 and was a frequent target of criticism for labor practices and workplace conditions. In 2013, a hiring listing for an I.T. manager position at Rogue went viral online for its condescending tone and promise of harsh working conditions, famously containing the phrase “we do not plan, budget or forecast,” which now feels apropos in retrospect. The brewery seemed to struggle to adapt to the hazy IPA era as well, and its brands were increasingly regarded as old-fashioned and boring by a craft beer drinking customer base that had been taught to seek out the latest and greatest thing from smaller, more “local” breweries. Like so many of its era, Rogue was likely undone to some degree by the very culture of “support small and local” that it initially helped to foster, as drinkers instead embraced younger and more nimble local breweries.
Today, there are perhaps few Rogue Ales superfans left out there, and tap handles of the likes of Dead Guy Ale had, in all fairness, become quite a rare sight. But their closure is still both a symbolic and frightening moment for the American craft beer industry, and acknowledgement of how no number of GABF medals or historic achievements can insulate a company, even 37 years later, from economic realities. After almost four decades, the bar tab finally gets called in.
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Jim Vorel is Paste’s Movies editor and resident genre geek, who has also spent years writing on alcohol, spirits and cocktails. You can follow him on Twitter or on Bluesky for more film and occasional drink writing.
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