Internal Brewsletter - July 16th, 2025
General
Employee Provision
A weekly special served at the Pub, the idea of which comes primarily from Block 15 employees.
This week’s Employee Provision will be brought to you by Simon! Swing by the Pub this Thursday for Korean Short Rib Tacos!
We’re always looking for more submissions, so send in those ideas!
This Week’s Releases
Hammock Daydream // 5.50%
Description: Float away on clouds with our XPA's abundant new dimension of experimental hop HBC 1019's peachie-o hop aromatics, and featherlight body - the perfect companion for sunny days and cosmic journeys. Turn on, tune in, hop out.
Key Takeaway: Featherlight body but explosive hops, featuring experimental hop HBC 1019, peachy-o aroma extravaganza
Tasting Notes: Stone Fruit • Pink Starburst • Ethereal
Format: Draft & Cans
Series: Emerging
Beer Style: XPA - Extra Pale Ale
An XPA is lighter in body and ABV than a standard pale ale, but deeper in hop character and expression. A perfect summer crusher for IPA lovers who are looking for something that leaves them feeling a little lighter.
Dry Town Incognito // 6.90%
Description: Brewed with our friends at Dry Town Tap Station in Monmouth, this Hazy IPA was developed to capture the spirit of brotherly love. Made with a wealth of advanced hop products, it bursts with citrus and tropical flavors, complemented by the creamy, round mouthfeel of a hazy we all know and love.
Key Takeaway: Fun-focused Hazy with lots of incognito to drive fruity hop goodness.
Tasting Notes: Citrus • Tropical • Laid back
Format: Draft Only
Series: Synergy
Beer Style: Hazy IPA
An IPA sub-style originating in New England, it originally evolved from American IPA to have a lighter malt bill, that had a soft finish from adjuncts containing higher protein levels and water naturally high in Chloride. Early versions retained an assertive bitterness, but that mostly softened over time giving way to a soft, juicy beer with a big, sweet body that mostly featured fruit notes (citrus, tropical, stonefruit, red fruit, etc..). Some versions can contain pine or dank notes as well. Bitterness ranges from light to moderate, and body ranges from moderate to heavy. Hazy is still a rapidly evolving style. The Variations of IPAs have become America’s primary contribution to the pantheon of world beer styles.
Upcoming Releases
*This list is subject to change based on the production schedule. Please keep that in mind!
Kumo // Japanese Rice Lager
Series: Perennial
Releases: July 25th
Format: Draft & Cans
Description: Brewed with NW Pilsner malt and rice, our Japanese-style rice Lager boasts a dry body and a delicate, floral character. It's an exceptionally crisp and sparkling craft beer, featuring pure white foam and a satisfying finish.
Moneta // Saison
Series: Emerging
Releases: July 25th
Format: Draft Only
Description: We used the finest ingredients and meticulous attention to detail while crafting this recipe. Moneta was designed to showcase our favorite Saison characteristics — fruit, earth, and effervescence — while downplaying phenolic Belgian spice. We utilized both traditional and modern ingredients and techniques to bring you the finest blend of the old and new worlds of brewing art and science.
Crowler/Package Sale for Sippin’ Sunday
20% off all packaged beer to-go, $5 Crowlers, and $10 Growler fills all-day Sunday of a specific beer.
This week’s beers are:
Pub: Beer Walker, Fog Filter
Beer Education
4:00 pm Every Other Thursday @ the Pub
The next Happy Hour is Thursday, 7/24.
Join us every other Thursday in the Game Room at the Pub to taste through beers, discuss our beers, brewing, or any other related topics you have questions about. This is a casual session, and anyone is welcome to attend. If you have an interesting bottle of beer you would like to taste/share with the group, bring it in. Your first beer is on us if you attend.
Beer 101: Turbulent Consequence Brewing at the Pub
By Garrison Schmidt, Head Brewer
Buckle up, mother-scratchers, Gary’s on a tirade this week.
In the next few weeks, you’ll see more of us brewing downtown at the pub. We are building up our stock of Turbulent Consequence. After a slowdown period during and after the pandemic, we are ready to start adding to our stash of barrels in the bomb shelter. Here’s a refresher on TC, the turbid mash, and spontaneous fermentation.
I like to tell the story of lambic brewing as a series of happy accidents, creating a perfect environment to brew a particular beer.
When we brew TC, we use an old-fashioned Belgian brewing technique known as a turbid mash. This means that we use as little water as possible to mash in, then use a series of washing back and forth to the boil kettle to extract the most sugars with as little water as we can. The reason that turbid mash became a staple of Belgian brewing is that at one time, Belgian brewers were taxed on the size of their mash tun, which led to them packing it as full as they could and making an incredibly thick, porridge-like mash.
Normally, when we brew, we want to convert all of the complex, hard-to-digest starches into simple, easy-to-digest sugars. This lets our favorite brewing yeast, Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, easily metabolize said sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, creating the delicious, clean beer we brew 99% of the time.
The turbid mash does a bad job of converting those starches into sugars. Many long, complex starches are left over when the beer is finished in the brew house and sent to ferment downstairs. All of this is due to weird Belgian tax laws from 300 years ago—happy Accident #1.
The Belgians knew that if they sent the beer directly into barrels to ferment, it would fail. This is because the hot wort would sterilize the inside of the barrel and render the whole thing sterile. However, they found that if they let the wort cool overnight in a wide, shallow vessel (the coolship or koelschip), it would ferment happily. What they didn’t realize is that the extended open period exposed it to a myriad of bacteria and wild yeasts in the air, which would each take turns over the next 1-3 years fermenting, souring, and adding their levels of complexity—Happy Accident #2. The complex sugars left over by the inefficient mash would leave plenty of fuel for the different yeasts to eat during the long maturation period.
The hops we use to brew Turbulent Consequence are very different than the hops that we use in other beers. Generally, we use hops that are as fresh as we can buy, and are packaged in inert gas to avoid any oxidation. The hops available to traditional Belgian brewers were harvested in the fall and not used until the weather cooled in the winter, when they brewed the beer. This led to the hops being increasingly oxidized as the winter went on. While the valuable flavor and aroma influencing Ɑ-acids in hops decrease with oxidation, the microbial stabilizing Ꞵ-Acids concentrate and become more effective. This led to the beer being more stable and having a longer shelf life during its extended fermentation—Happy Accident #3.
Lastly, the Belgians needed a place to ferment their beer, and metal containers were rare and expensive. What was readily available and cheap were used wine barrels. The wood inside the barrels is porous and serves as a perfect habitat for the various microbes that ferment Lambic beer. Some of them even use the wood fibers as a nutrient during their metabolism—Happy Accident #4.
So, as you can hopefully see, the combination of undersized mash-tuns, open coolship spontaneous inoculation, aged hops, and wooden fermentation vessels has led to a beer that is a perfect medium for microbes like Brettanomyces, Pediococcus, and Lactobacillus to make a beer that is truly unlike any other. While considered by some to be an acquired taste, Lambic style ales contain arguably the deepest expression, the widest breadth of character, and the most depth of complexity of any beer style brewed. We at Block 15 continue the tradition of brewing these historic beers because, well, we can. We have the equipment, skill, space, and understanding to be a part of keeping this art alive, and I, for one, would be ashamed if we were part of letting it die. Turbulent Consequence brews are part of who we are, and they always will be.
Marketing Updates
By Holly Amlin, Marketing & Creative Manager
Corvallis Knights Sponsorship - Upcoming Events
Meet the Brewer Nights
Fridays: July 18th & 25th
Our next Meet the Brewer night is this Friday, with the theme of “Groovy Night”. Join us if you’d like to hang out and watch some baseball! Next week’s theme is “Go Beavs Night”, a great time to wear your orange.
Events
From the Executive Chef
By Sarah Farey, Executive Chef
Bakery
Notes from Lindsey Henriksen, Bakery Manager
Pub Updates
By Kira Sciarrotta, General Manager
We will be running a Mango Lemonade special this weekend (Friday until we run out) to help move through some backstock of a Mango Puree Product. We will use this just as we do with the Smix and Passion fruit - as a flavoring for House Made Lemonades or Fruit Vodka Lemonade!
Say goodbye to the Pink Moon! As soon as we run out of our current stock of Pink Moon we will be phasing it out for a Watermelon Gin Fizz brought to you by inspiration from Bre! This cocktail will be made with our Crater Lake Gin, Watermelon Juice, Lime, and is topped with Prosecco!
Kira is going on vacation from 7/18 - 7/27! We will take a bye-week on the Quiz next week, but promise me you’ll still read the Brewsletter! MANAGERS: If there is anything you’d like on the Pub Updates for the Brewsletter next week, please connect with Holly before noon on Wednesday to have that added. I’ll miss you all and be good while I’m gone! ♥️
Tap Room Updates
Caves Updates
By Aidan Welch, General Manager
High Fives
Wiley - Such a hard worker and grade A communicator. He’s very attentive and quick to help out wherever is needed. We appreciate you!
If you have kudos or kind words you want to share about your co-worker anonymously in the Brewsletter, use the button below!
Staff Section
Check back next week!
Charitable Programs
Our next event will be a Dine Out! with the Whiteside Theater on August 19th.