This past spring, Jack Joyce, founder of Rogue Ales & Spirits, passed away. He was a trail blazer in craft beer and the first to export American craft beer to Japan. Phred Kaufman, of Ezo Beer and Mugishutei in Sapporo, reminisced about his relationship with Rogue.

I met Jack Joyce in 1993 after traveling to Olympia, Washington to brew Ezo Beer. An agreement with a brewery there fell through, but they put me in touch with Jack. I drove down to Newport, Oregon, and the rest of the night involved a lot of beer and gambling.

The next day Jack wrote an agreement on the back of the bag that our coffee came in and our twenty-year relationship started. Jack showed a stroke of brilliance when he met John Maier at a fogged-in airport and hired him as brewmaster. At his previous job as an executive at Nike he recruited athletes to the cause, but his nose for talent extended to the beer world.

His philosophy was to let John brew and figure out how much to charge later. To this day that’s the way things are done at Rogue. Bean counters telling brewers what to do doesn’t make good beer.

At first I just sold the Ezo brand in Japan, before importing Rogue. I made a special edition beer called “Phred’s Phucking Bitter Beer.” I put two government warnings on the label: “Warning: beware of governments” and “Warning: drinking too much beer may lead to pregnancy.” John and I were on our third batch when Jack saw the bottle. He wasn’t happy and said any future bottle designs had to go through him. He couldn’t have been that mad, though; the bottle is on display at the Rogue museum and there is a poster of it at headquarters.

I was lucky to know Jack for over twenty years as he was a true Rogue.

Jack Leroy Joyce (1942-2014)

This article was published in Japan Beer Times # () and is among the limited content available online. Order your copy through our online shop or download the digital version from the iTunes store to access the full contents of this issue.