Internal Brewsletter - March 12th, 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 Murphy! Swing by the Pub this Thursday for a French Dip Sandwich!
We’re always looking for more submissions, so send in those ideas!
This Week’s Releases
Releasing Friday, March 14th
Ancient Grove // 5.00%
Description: Our GABF Gold-winning recipe, Ancient Grove, is brewed in the German Altbier tradition with extended cold conditioning. Beautiful caramel-rich malts are balanced with a crisp and refreshing finish.
Key Takeaway: Gold Medal winning recipe blending the styles of lager and ale. using top fermenting yeast at lower than normal temperatures we are able to capture the mouthfeel and depth of an ale with the crisp clean finish of a lager.
Tasting Notes: Toffee • Fresh Baked Bread • Tradition
Format: Draft & Cans
Series: Orbital
Beer Style: Amber Ale (traditional Altbier - See Garrison’s Beer 101 for more info)
45 Below // 7.00%
Description: Hemispheres collide. Southern hops meet northern ambition, unleashing waves of tropical lychee and citrus flavors from Superdelic, Riwaka, and Nelson Sauvin that dance across 90 degrees of latitude.
Key Takeaway: Uses the best of both worlds, NW grains and NZ hops to create a light, clean flavorful NZ IPA
Tasting Notes: Lychee • Candied Fruits • No Worries
Format: Draft & Cans
Series: Emerging
Beer Style: New Zealand IPA
Lighter in body and ABV, these beers are sessionable. Lots of hop character without much bitterness and a lot of tropical and white wine hop aroma from exotic NZ hops like Riwaka, Rakau, Pacific Jade, Pacific Sunrise, Superdelic, Nectaron, Motueka, and more.
Upcoming Releases
*This list is subject to change based on the production schedule, so please keep that in mind!
Queen’s Head // English Mild
Series: Pub Life
Releases: March 21st
Format: Draft Only (Nitro & Cask)
Description: This beer showcases the depth that a careful selection of specialty malt can obtain. Not overly hopped but balanced, it drinks light and refreshing, with the fans of malt in mind. Offered solely on cask and nitro, we designed this beer to be the perfect springtime classic to welcome back our two favorite alternative serving styles, which have been out of commission since 2020.
Animal Cookies // Hazy IPA
Series: Perennial
Releases: March 21st
Format: Draft & Cans
Description: Brewed for the hop-loving animal inside of you, this can is packed with sticky, pungent hops. Unleash a swirling circus of pineapple, tangerine, mango, pine, and dank herb hop characters.
Illuminated // Belgian Tripel
Series: Orbital
Releases: March 21st
Format: Draft & Cans
Description: Brewed with respect for tradition, a dynamic array of imported grains, select hops, and classic Belgian yeast illuminates this crisp abbey ale with notes of pear, baking spice, and a rich, honey-like finish.
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 beer is: Cosmic Coldbrew
All Super Nebula and Kriek 2025 release bottles will now be available for the Sunday 20% off discount starting this Sunday, March 16th.
Beer Education
2:30 pm Tuesdays @ the Tap Room
Join us at the Tap Room every week for an educational session where you can taste and learn about the week’s releases. All are welcome!
4:00 pm Every Other Thursday @ the Pub
The next Happy Hour is Thursday, 3/20.
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: Altbier
By Garrison Schmidt, Head Brewer
Altbier, originating in Düsseldorf, Germany, is a traditional copper-colored German ale dating back to the 13th century. This top-fermented beer persisted even as bottom-fermented lagers gained popularity throughout Germany, with "alt" meaning "old" in German, referencing its ancient brewing style. Characterized by its clean, crisp profile with a moderate maltiness and pronounced hop bitterness, Altbier undergoes a cold conditioning (lagering) period after primary fermentation, giving it a smooth character that marries ale complexity with lager drinkability. The style presents a medium body with caramel and toasted malt flavors, balanced by spicy, herbal hop notes, and moderate bitterness. The long and short is that Altbier is a combination of ale and lager brewing styles, and represents a relic of the past that persists to this day.
Ancient Grove, our Great American Beer Festival gold medal-winning Altbier, is themed after the native oak savannahs that covered the hilltops of the Willamette Valley lowlands. The image on our can depicts an oak, showing its roots as well as its branches, inspired by traditional illustrations of the Tree of Life. This image is associated with the archetype “as above, so below,” which ties in nicely to the beer's top-fermenting vs. bottom-fermenting nature.
Marketing Updates
By Holly Amlin, Marketing & Creative Manager
Check back next week!
From the Executive Chef
By Sarah Farey, Executive Chef
Don’t sleep on getting your food feedback written down and sent to me!
Bakery
Notes from Lindsey Henricksen, Bakery Manager
Check back next week!
Pub Updates
By Kira Sciarrotta, General Manager
Monday, March 17th is St. Patrick's Day! Let’s show some team spirit and come dressed and accessorized in green, remember to encourage Green Truck (draft and cans) as well as Charmed Life (cans) to help people celebrate!
April is the month of Deep Seek! To help us all hone our skills and get back to our roots, we’re going to spend dedicated months this year focusing on one of our beers from our Perpetual Series. Our perpetual beers (Sticky Hands, Nebula, Ridgeback Red, Fluffhead, Joy, and Deep Seek) are beers of all different styles that almost never leave our tap list. These are offerings that guests from all over the country have come to associate with Block 15, so we should be as knowledgeable as we can on these. Look forward to fun facts, fun merch, and lots of Deep Seek in April!
New cocktails are coming to the Pub! For the next two weeks expect some cocktails to fall off and their replacements to come on. For now, here are your two changes:
Earl Grey Paloma replaces the Ginger Spice Hot Toddy
This is a tequila cocktail infused with grapefruit, orange, Earl Grey tea with lime juice
Don’t Panic replaces the Hot Spiked Cider
This is a gin cocktail featuring Blueberry Lavender Lemonade and a spritz of absinthe topped with Prosecco
With those menu changes also comes our seasonal rotation of our lemonade flavor. We will phase out Marionberry and switch to a Blueberry Lavender. Most of these changes should take place on Friday, March 14, but some may come once their predecessor falls off for good - make sure to check those pre-shift boards!
Tap Room Updates
By Elise Pietromonaco, General Manager
Monday, March 17th is St. Patrick's Day! Let’s show some team spirit and come dressed and accessorized in green, remember to encourage Green Truck (draft and cans) as well as Charmed Life (Draft) to help people celebrate!
On that note, Charmed life is gone in distribution, so we are going to keep Charmed life 86’d on draft until St. Paddy’s Day to save the half keg we have left for the holiday! Sadly, we are already out of cans! 🍀
April is the month of Deep Seek! To help us all hone our skills and get back to our roots, we’re going to spend dedicated months this year focusing on one of our beers from our Perpetual Series. Our perpetual beers (Sticky Hands, Nebula, Ridgeback Red, Fluffhead, Joy, and Deep Seek) are beers of all different styles that almost never leave our tap list. These are offerings that guests from all over the country have come to associate with Block 15, so we should be as knowledgeable as we can on these. Look forward to fun facts, fun merch, and lots of Deep Seek in April! 🍻
Stay tuned for a new cocktail in the next few weeks created by Mak 🍹
As we gear up for Spring & Summer, please let your management team know if you see anything that needs improved, replaced, or guests request something we don’t have. While not all these requests will be fulfilled, it's really nice to get an idea of what people are looking for that we are missing! (Cornhole bags went missing at some point this Winter, but they have now been ordered and are on the way!)
Focus this week: 86 communication & waste logging📝
Caves Updates
By Aidan Welch, General Manager
One more week until Spring! As we get into the much needed warmer weather, we’ll be opening our streetside windows and having some exciting new items for both dinner and brunch!
Here are some fun new drinks that have just joined the menu or will be very soon!
Isenhower Malbec from Walla Walla, WA.
Some delicious dark berries, notes of dry herbs and cracked pepper
Malvasia from Pago Casa Gran in Spain.
An ancient white wine varietal from the Mediterranean. Very unique rustic fruit that will be an excellent pairing with the Spring weather and bright sunshine!
Bourbon Barrel Aged - Flander’s Red from Dirt Road Brewing
N/A Fluff and Ease
Using our N/A Ritual Gin and blackberry puree, this is an excellent chance to try out our most popular cocktail with an N/A spin on it!
We have an upcoming new Hash on our brunch menu!
There will be some busy weekends coming up this season, so definitely snag a reservation to join us for some kickass brunches and tasty dinners!
And shout out to Luke as he steps into becoming one of our kickass bartenders!
High Fives
Murphy! - Murphy is just a joy to work with! She is always on top of things and is a hard worker!
Levi S. - Thank you for coming in on your days off to make sure things are cleaned and well maintained! Your hard work never goes unnoticed or unappreciated.
Kylie! - Whenever I work with Kylie I always have a great time! She is sweet and always gets things done!
Goodie - You are one of a kind—an incredibly complex, kind, intelligent, respectful, and beautiful individual. You will go so far in this life. I hope you don't forget about us too fast. We won't forget about you. It's been great growing up with you. Love forever, your B15 brother. p.s. bad pancake no crying in the walk-in.
Whitney - Where have you been all my life?
If you have kudos or kind words you want to share about your co-worker anonymously in the Brewsletter, use the button below!
Human Resources
Staff Section
Please welcome the following folks to the team:
Faith Holmes–Host
Christopher Gorton–TR Server
Charitable Programs
People’s Pint Tap in April
We’ll be supporting Grace Center for Adult Day Services this April by donating a portion of every pint and can purchased of Deep Seek to them.
Grace Center sent this along about who they are:
The only certified adult day center in Linn, Benton, and Polk counties, Grace Center is a unique and needed service for the community. We are a non-profit organization with the mission to provide day services that optimize the cognitive and physical abilities of seniors and adults with disabilities so they can remain as independent as possible and in their homes.
More details to come!