This Is How You Pick Farm Fresh Pumpkin Beer

At Rogue Farms picking beer is not about opening the fridge and grabbing a bottle.

It’s about getting in the dirt, chopping vines, hauling pumpkins across the field, back-breaking and sweaty work.

When Mother Nature says pumpkin picking time is happening during the heat of August instead of a cool September, we don’t argue with her. We just do it.

Armed with machetes, Rogue employees cut pumpkins from the vines.

We grow two acres of Dream Pumpkins to brew our Pumpkin Patch Ale and Pumpkin Savior Wit. No canned pumpkins, pureed pumpkins or so-called pumpkin flavoring.

Gathering the pumpkins and throwing them in the loader.

Dream pumpkins are a small, sweet variety. The kind of pumpkin you’d use to make pumpkin pie.

Tossing the pumpkins into harvest crates.

From loader to crate.

Getting ready to haul the pumpkins to the Rogue Brewery in Newport, Oregon.

A big thanks to all the Rogue employees who came in to help out with the harvest. Working together, we got the job done and saw the pumpkins off on their 77-mile journey over the Coast Range to the Rogue Brewery in Newport, Oregon.

There, more Rogue employees will clean, chop and roast the pumpkins all by hand. Then, and only then, will Brewmaster John Maier start brewing new batches of pumpkin beer.

One happy Brewmaster.

The reason you don’t see Rogue pumpkin beers in summer is because first we have to pick, clean, chop and roast our pumpkins. Using ingredients we grew ourselves means Mother Nature determines when they’re ready. When you taste the difference it makes when your pumpkin beer is made from farm fresh ingredient, you’ll know it was worth the wait.

Want to know more about how grow beer, spirits, ciders, and sodas from ground to glass? Come visit us at Rogue Farms and see for yourself.