Internal Brewsletter - May 7th, 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 Ewan! Swing by the Pub this Thursday for a Carnitas Torta!
We’re always looking for more submissions, so send in those ideas!
This Week’s Releases
Releasing Friday, May 9th
Caves Saison No. 004 // 7.00%
Description: Created for our sister restaurant, Caves Saison uses a solera method starting in our oak cask. We remove a fraction of the volume when peak character is reached; then, new beer is added and allowed to mature, increasing complexity with age. Batch 004's mother portion spent 24 months in the cask molding it into a lovely, fruit-forward saison.
Key Takeaway: Brewed for Caves in a historic solera manner, using a portion of the original brew as a mother to be split in two, one portion to be blended with fresh beer for next year, one portion to be packaged for this year.
Tasting Notes: Stone Fruit • Lemon Zest • Ripening
Format: Cans & Draft
Series: Cellars
Beer Style: Farmhouse Ale
The Beer Walker // 8.50%
Description: We brewed this beer for our longtime friend and customer, Gary, "The Beer Walker.” This year, to celebrate his 80th birthday, we amplified it to an Imperial West Coast IPA with vibrant hops and a lush malt base that balances with a pleasant dryness.
Key Takeaway: An old school west coast beer for an old school west coast guy. We updated Gary's beer to an Imperial IPA for his milestone 80th birthday this year. We held true to focusing on making this beer a more classic style IIPA with modern adjustments.
Tasting Notes: Orange Peel • Cannabis • Museum-Quality
Format: Cans & Draft
Series: Orbital
Beer Style: Imperial IPA
Imperial IPAs (often called Double IPAs) feature a more robust profile of malts and hops. Significant factors that set Imperial IPAs apart from regular IPAs are their alcohol content and bitterness levels. An Imperial IPA can range from 7.5%-10% ABV. Due to the increased malt load it takes to create the additional alcohol, more hops are required to balance out the beer and keep the malt in check. An Imperial IPA should be intensely hoppy, medium-light to medium-bodied, and have balanced hop characteristics. There can be Imperial versions of virtually any IPA style or sub-style.
Fresca Pils // 5.30%
Description: A crisp, hop-forward Italian-style pilsner brewed with Northwest pilsner malt and generously hopped with European Styrian hops, lending zippy notes of citrus, berries, and fresh-cut grass.
Key Takeaway: This year we employed Lemon Drop and Bavarian Mandarina hops to really push the dry-hop character of this delightfully dry pilsner.
Tasting Notes: Marmalade • Elderflower • Enrapturing
Format: Draft Only
Series: Perennial
Beer Style: Italian Pilsner
Upcoming Releases
*This list is subject to change based on the production schedule, so please keep that in mind!
Sticky Vortex // West Coast IPA
Series: Synergy, collab with Fort George Brewery
Releases: May 16th
Format: Draft & Cans
Description: Part two of our Fort George Collaboration, this brew pulls you into a pine, citrus, and diesel vortex crafted with the best parts of two iconic IPAs: Vortex and Sticky Hands.
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: Alpine Ibex
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, 5/15.
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: Caves Saison and a Refresher on the Solera Method
By Garrison Schmidt, Head Brewer
This week, we’re releasing Caves Saison #4 in cans and on draught at our locations.
Caves Saison, first brewed in August of 2011, was originally brewed as a house table-style beer for our sister restaurant, then called Les Caves Bier and Kitchen. It was a mildly funky, easy-drinking saison brewed using the solera method. As a reminder, the solera method is a type of conditioning in which a portion of the current batch of a beer is held back to be added to the net batch, ever-increasing depth, complexity, and personality. If you are familiar with sourdough mothers, this is the same idea.
In the summer of 2022, we decided to breathe some new life into the program and started from scratch at our production facility. We began that summer with 40 Barrels of Caves saison #1, which was a “clean” batch, meaning it had no wild microorganisms at play. We packaged 10 barrels of it into cans as it was, and put the remaining 30 barrels into our large-format casks at production, which are rife with microbial life. In the summer of 2023, we pulled 15 barrels out of the cask, canned them, and brewed another 15 barrels to replace it with. This year’s will be the fourth evolution, and it is proving to get better every time. It’s light, refreshing, complex, and highly drinkable. Lots of fruity wild character, perfect for enjoying as the heat ramps up. I hope you try it and enjoy, even if you haven’t liked saisons that you’ve tried in the past, I think that this one is approachable.
Marketing Updates
By Holly Amlin, Marketing & Creative Manager
Green Truck Focus in May
Party details have been finalized! Please mention this to our guests as we’re all excited to celebrate Green Truck’s promotion to a year-round beer.
Green Truck Promotion Party
When: Monday, May 26th (Memorial Day), 11 am - 9 pm
Where: Southtown Tap Room
Green Truck discounts: $4 pints and $8 4-packs
Debut of our new BBQ Menu.
Live Music 4 - 7 pm from Tuesday String Band (they played for us at Bloktoberfest last year and fit the vibe we’re looking for! Local band from Monmouth who play lively bluegrass.)
Mini forklift races on the hour, starting at noon, with the last race at 8 pm.
About Green Truck
As I mentioned last week, we’d love to have you give samples of Green Truck to those you’ve verified as 21+. Use the information below to dazzle our guests :) Pick a point or two to highlight when you chat with people. Again, it’s also our People’s Pint beer and marked on menus, giving you an easy talking point.
Beer Info
Our take on the classic American Light Lager, 4.20% Green Truck is brewed always with the best Pacific Northwest grain, hops, and water. Work hard, drink easy, this beer is crafted for the crew.
Tasting Notes: Clean • Crisp • Classic
Dig Into the Details
Clark
The inspiration for the name Green Truck came from our first forklift, “Clark,” who put in a lot of hard work over the years and is still going strong. The beer is a symbol of simple, hard work. It might not be the flashiest, but it gets the job done and is there for those hot days working in the yard, a refresher at the end of a long shift, and bringing along camping with the crew.
Green Truck is a part of our Lagered by the Sun program, representing our commitment to sustainable brewing practices by sourcing local and regional ingredients, utilizing solar energy in the lagering process, and implementing mindful brewing practices extending to the shelves and taps. Green Truck is made primarily with Pure Idaho Pilsner malt, a 100% Idaho-grown barley from Great Western Malting.
Green Truck is a high-gravity brew watered back with filtered and deaerated water. The water we use at our Production Brewery in Southtown Corvallis comes from the Taylor Treatment Plant and the Rock Creek Treatment Plant. Taylor, located in Southeast Corvallis, draws water from the Willamette River, accounting for approximately 69% of our total water supply. 31% comes from Rock Creek, which draws from the east side of Mary’s Peak, the highest point in the Coast Range.
We chose Contessa hops for Green Truck, a United States-grown hop variety with Noble hop characteristics developed in Yakima Valley, Washington. The beer also features a strain of yeast tailored explicitly for light-lager production. All together, the ingredients in Green Truck add subtle notes of green tea, pear, and lemongrass to a crisp malt base.
From the Executive Chef
By Sarah Farey, Executive Chef
May Monthly Specials will go live at both locations today!
Tap Room
Cold Cut Baguette - Salmon Creek Farms artisan ham, Genoa salami, and provolone layered with shredded lettuce tossed in a tangy oil & vinegar blend. Finished with sweet onion, tomato, and creamy mayo on a freshly baked sesame baguette. $15.99
Huli Huli Chicken Sandwich - Huli Huli marinated and grilled chicken thigh, creamy jalapeno-mango slaw & sriracha mayo on a toasted brioche bun. $16.99
Pub
Loco Moco - Coconut rice with rich mushroom gravy, a quarter-pound seasoned beef patty, and a sunny side up egg. Topped with house truffle hot sauce and green onion. $15.99
Smoked Salmon Spread House - smoked salmon with cream cheese, red onion & capers, served with fresh veggies, lemon-black pepper marmalade, fried capers, and toasted artisan bread $14.99
Chickpea Salad Sandwich - Spiced chickpeas, celery, onion & pickles in a creamy vegan dressing, romaine lettuce & fresh tomato on lightly toasted artisan bread. $13.99
Bakery
Notes from Lindsey Henricksen, Bakery Manager
Mother’s day dessert special Taproom only: Lemon Lavender Cookie Sundae! Caramel sauce only, no chocolate. We’ll have about a dozen of these available.
Next week we will switch to a Mojito sugar cookie as our rotating taproom cookie flavor!
Reminder: Pineapple upside down cake starts at the pub on Friday 5/9.
Check out our new sesame baguette, featuring our sourdough starter! It’s debuting this month at the taproom with the cold cut sandwich.
Pub Updates
By Kira Sciarrotta, General Manager
You all did an incredible job handling the Family Weekend mayhem! Keep your seatbelts buckled because we’re heading into Mother’s Day Weekend next!
Remember to encourage those upsales: desserts, appetizers, and packaged beer are effective, but are the more difficult ones to sell. Suggesting protein add-ons, fry seasonings, and burger toppings are sure-fire ways to add to our bill totals, go get em Tigers!
We will be phasing out Candied Lemon Peels as a garnish on the Pear Flower. What we have left is what we will run with, after that we’ll switch to garnishing the Pear Flower with the same lemon wheels as all other cocktails!
Our new leads have had lots of practice in their new roles, so it’s time to add on to their responsibility! We’ve been working on encouraging you all to lean on your leads more than anyone else on the floor. To help you all get used to seeking out your leads, each week every lead will pick one question from the weekly quiz to randomly check in with their servers, hosts, and food runners on. Weekly quizzes contain the vital information you all need to stay up to date in this fast paced environment, so this Lead Check-in will act as a double-authentication to those getting completed.
Tap Room Updates
By Elise Pietromonaco, General Manager
SUMMER HOURS ARE HERE! 🙂
Sunday through Thursday: 11 AM - 9 PM
Friday & Saturday: 11 AM - 10 PMNow that we are in Spring/ Summer hours, please make sure to check your schedule on a regular basis due to start times changing too!
Happy hour has expanded: Still Sunday through Thursday
New Hours: 2 PM to 5 PMIn the front of the White Binder, all batching info is now PRINTED to make it easier on everyone rather than having to use sheets on the Ipad 🙂
New cocktail: Pear flower is selling well, so that will move from a special to permanent on the summer draft menu, next print.
Added N/A option: Canned Sprite is now available for $2.50 a can, like Diet Coke.
All servers will soon be trained to dual open, so we can all have more flexibility with our schedules! Woot woot!
Caves Updates
By Aidan Welch, General Manager
Everyone absolutely killed it this family weekend! Nearly 400 covers in 2 days!
Let’s be just as awesome for Mother’s day weekend and get ready for some busy brunches!
We will be having a tasty blackberry mojito for Mother’s Day brunch so get your muddlers ready, bartenders!
Caves Saison #4 is COMING SOON! Keep an eye out!
Upcoming new Kombucha flavor from Billion New Friends: Pomegranate Cardamom
Make sure we are checking / tasting all our new beverages to show off our excellent service and knowledge!
High Fives
Katie Davis - She was an awesome trainer! Super supportive, gave great advice, and gave me some great server one-liners!
Drivers & Warehouse - Just a HUGE shoutout to the Distro Drivers and Warehousers! They have been absolutely CRUSHIN IT the last couple weeks with some long hours, and big routes! We appreciate all you do to make sure that our beers get in the hands of our fans in Oregon! Cheers Fellas!!!!
Kira - She’s killing it at her promotion to general manager!
Caves - For their delicious brownie scraps!
Paul - He's so steady and patient, and a great leader. Thanks for putting up with us!
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
Check back next week!
Charitable Programs
People’s Pint Tap in May with Green Truck
We’ll be supporting CASA - Voices for Children of Benton and Lincoln Counties through all of May by donating a portion of every pint and can purchase of Green Truck to them. In a nutshell, our donation is going towards supporting children with essential clothing items and activity fees, as well as advocacy for their best interests.
About CASA - Voices for Children
CASA, Court Appointed Special Advocates, provides advocacy on behalf of children in foster care. They are built on the foundation of everyday people contributing to make a difference in the lives of children who have experienced abuse and neglect. CASA - Voices for Children trains and supports community volunteers to advocate for children within legal custody of the state in Benton & Lincoln Counties.
When a child in care is going through the trauma of the court system, a CASA advocate is tirelessly working to guide them through safely, quickly, and effectively. Without the powerful voice of an advocate, children too often return to unsafe homes or languish in long-term foster care, risking future abuse or neglect.
What is The People's Pint?
We strive to make a positive impact on the community by supporting local non-profit groups focusing on issues such as health and wellness, education, and environmental sustainability. The People's Pint program allows us to contribute to the overall well-being of our community.