You may have heard that all the doors at Rogue Ales turned up shut last week. Jeff Alworth wrote an obituary, and reminded us how influential Rogue was. I agree. We first met Jack Joyce during the Oregon Brewers Festival in 1995. And I remember XS Russian Imperial Stout vividly. It paved the way for other intense beers.
Alworth mentioned that Rogue remained one of the largest craft brewers (50th in 2024) in the United States, which made me wonder when Rogue first made the list and how it had moved up and down through the years. As I was looking through the numbers, my goal changed. At one point, I thought about comparing Rogue and Anchor through the years, but that turn out to be particularly interesting. Instead, I charted Rogue and New Glarus Brewing, and added in Brewers Association defined Craft as well.
Two thoughts before I leave you to consider the numbers. First, comparing almost any brewery to New Glarus is not fair. Too bad. Also, the Craft numbers underwent some adjustments through the years for a variety of reasons (most notably to account for breweries that were once consider Craft and then were not). So there is a chance that I grabbed the 2017 number in 2018 and it has since been revised.
| Year | Rogue Ales | Domestic Craft | New Glarus Brewing |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | 25,000 barrels | 5,307,057 barrels | 9,406 barrels |
| 2001 | 27,458 | 5,352,580 | 10,478 |
| 2022 | 29,817 | 5,460,742 | 13,700 |
| 2003 | 28,503 | 5,532,031 | 18,700 |
| 2004 | 38,084 | 5,922,272 | 26,113 |
| 2005 | 43,150 | 6,409,290 | 39,622 |
| 2006 | 51,985 | 7,172,536 | 54,261 |
| 2007 | 67,737 | 8,018,237 | 64,953 |
| 2008 | 69,642 | 8,483,659 | 75,137 |
| 2009 | 76,342 | 9,064,629 | 78,733 |
| 2010 | 81,958 | 10,133,977 | 91,937 |
| 2011 | 92,110 | 11,467,337 | 108,690 |
| 2012 | 113,209 | 13,246,390 | 126,727 |
| 2013 | 104,000 | 15,504,850 | 146,310 |
| 2014 | 117,000 | 22,133,379 | 162,287 |
| 2015 | 105,961 | 24,335,413 | 194,894 |
| 2016 | 105,000 | 24,302,549 | 214,006 |
| 2017 | 98,000 | 24,958,560 | 226,328 |
| 2018 | 88,000 | 25,457,429 | 231,875 |
| 2019 | 89,000 | 26,320,151 | 236,161 |
| 2020 | 75,000 | 22,842,008 | 206,302 |
| 2021 | 88,000 | 24,746,826 | 232,539 |
| 2022 | 67,000 | 24,179,853 | 231,395 |
| 2023 | 55,881 | 24,048,217 | 228,132 |
| 2024 | 45,602 | 23,103,985 | 232,171 |
Union busting tastes disgusting!
Agreed. But that happened in 2011 and did not seem to slow down sales.
I think the comparison is not just fair but quite interesting inasmuch as the two breweries adopted strategies with perfectly contrasting strategies. New Glarus, which started out selling beer outside WI, decided to retrench and focus on America’s Dairyland. Rogue had a relentless drive to go wide, achieving 50-state distribution while neglecting the home market.
Of the two strategies, Rogue’s was the conventionally “bold” choice, but it’s what a number of national breweries were doing. New Glarus, though, did something more unconventional—growing big by limiting reach—and it has totally paid off.
Sorry the garble in that first sentence. It’s early in Oregon!