Rolling Thunder Barrel Works
This post is going to be out of the normal order of posts for those who are familiar with my writing. This story is about a side business of the Rogue Brewery and Distillery that has been growing throughout the Northwest, this business is building the barrels for the distillery part of Rogue Nation. I promise I will return with later posts to fill you in on the brewery itself and the spirits that they are producing.
A little about the cooperage. First I had to search for a meaning, I found the definition of the word as; The word on its own is derived from Middle Low German; it simply means “barrel.” But just about anything that the cooper creates is referred to by the name coopering. The shop where he works is often called a “cooperage.”
From Rogue Nation website:
In 2015, Rogue acquired vintage French WWII-era coopering equipment and built Rolling Thunder Barrel Works. Longtime employee Nate Linquist was tapped to be Rogue’s first cooper and spent a year and a half apprenticing, learning the ancient art of barrel making.Using Oregon Oak, Nate assembles, raises, toasts, chars, hoops, heads, hoops again, cauterizes, sands and brands each barrel, one at a time, all by hand. At full capacity, he makes one barrel a day.
One barrel a day is a long, slow, multi-faceted, and heat-filled process that takes the Cooper through a circuit of different machines to complete a finished product. Buying a new barrel is an option for the company at a price tag of about $600 each, but procuring the local wood and using local craftsmen at their own facility is worth much more to them then the price of a purchased barrel.
Rolling Thunder is also experimenting with various woods of the Northwest to determine the subtle nuances in flavor the wood imparts to the various spirits they produce.The Revolution began in 1988 in the basement of the first Rogue Public House on Lithia Creek in Ashland, Ore. where American Amber Ale and Oregon Golden quickly became popular brews. Before long, our founder Jack Joyce was looking for a second location.
The Rogue Bayfront Public House soon opened in that storefront and John Maier, who joined Rogue in May of 1989, brewed the first batch of Rogue beer there in the back room. Before long, this would become the world headquarters of Rogue Ales & Spirits when the Ashland location was forced to close due to flooding. The brewpub in the back of the Bayfront Public House would eventually be moved to a larger facility on South Beach, which is now also home to Brewer’s on the Bay, Rogue House of Spirits, Rogue Spirits Distillery and Rogue Rolling Thunder Barrel Works. A small inn, the Bed ‘n’ Beer, is also operated in the three apartments located above the Bayfront Public House.
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I love the hand-made barrel with local wood. Look for excerpts from this post in the March edition of the Washington County Small Woodlands newsletter “Forest Forum” at http://www.wcswa.com.
Yeah! Thank you Bonnie, I always appreciate seeing and sharing my stories with the Forest Forum!