Internal Brewsletter - March 20th, 2024
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 Ian Hutchings! Swing by the Pub this Thursday for a Double Taleggio Burger featuring two thinly spanked burger patties, taleggio cheese, grilled onions, and house B&B pickles.
We’re always looking for more submissions, so send in those ideas!
Marketing
Corvallis Knights
We are sponsoring the Corvallis Knights this year! We haven’t made an external announcement yet, but we are excited to be the exclusive beer of the game this year.
For those of you who have attended many baseball games, please share your ideas as we prepare for the season under the stadium lights! This could be anything from on-field games between innings to posters or fun contests run in the stadium.
https://forms.gle/fUCWy5XJPzA9Gn7k8
Corvallis Half Marathon
For those of you who want to run, we have our registration codes now! Please send me an email (kelsea@block15.com) with the title “Sign me up!” and I’ll shoot the code to you.
Again, this will be held on April 6th on OSU’s campus. For those of you who want to test out your legs for the big day, Bryce, Danny, and I threw together a running group called “Next Wednesday Running Club”. Some Wednesdays are hit or miss, but we are running 3/20 and next week from the Sowthtown Taproom at 5ish. See you there!
-Kelsea
UPCOMING PACKAGED BEER RELEASES - cans
Releasing Friday 3/22
Alpine Ibex // Pairing delicate regional pilsner and robust Munich malts with floral and spicy hops from the PNW, this gold hued lager features notes of honey with a balanced bitterness. // 6.90% ABV
Takeaways: Built on base of PNW grown Pure Idaho Pils, this Maibock is brewed with intention to respect the tradition and classic attributes of this historic style, but with a move to more sustainable sourcing of our ingredients.
Tasting Notes: Honey • Bread Crust • Equinox
Series: Perennial
Beer Style: Maibock
A Maibock is a transitional beer, which carries German lager lovers from Winter to Spring (in German, “Mai” means “May”). They’re traditionally a strong, malty Bavarian-style lager. Alpine Ibex is brewed with respect to tradition and classic attributes while using a base of PNW-grown Pure Idaho Pils malt.
COMING UP ON DRAFT
RELEASING Friday 3/22
Alpine Ibex // Maibock
Sticky Hands: Beer Pageant // Sticky Hands all dressed up for the big show. This version of Sticky Hands had it's dry hop cranked up to 11. With copious additions of Citra and Strata added on top of our standard dry hopping regime, this version of Sticky Hands is sure to be a crowd pleaser. // 8.10% ABV
Tasting Notes: Grapefruit • Dank • Mischievous Grin
Series: Sticky Hands
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.
CROWLER/PACKAGE SALE for Sippin’ Sunday
20% off all packaged beer to-go, $5 Crowlers and $10 Growler fills all-day Sunday
This week’s beer is: Group Ride
UPCOMING Releases
*This list is subject to change based on the production schedule, so please keep that in mind!
Rocky Shores IPA // American IPA
Series: Emerging
Release Date: March 29th
Highlight: This beer was made with Biscuit malt to make the malt experience as enjoyable as the hops. Like Eminent Point, our other recent American IPA, this beer is fuller-bodied than West Coast IPAs and has an assertive bitterness that balances malt sweetness.
DAB Lab: Hop Sauce // West Coast IPA
Series: DAB Lab
Release Date: April 12th
Highlight: The next beer in our returning DAB Lab program uses a new hop product from Yakima Chief Hops. Called YCH 702, it’s designed for use on the hot side of brewing to amplify survivable compounds and aromatics in the finished beer. If you were wondering, DAB stands for “Dank A$$ Beer.” This series has historically been used to experiment with new and cutting-edge hop products, which tend to find their way into our other beers if we like how they operate.
Anniversary IPA (name TBD) // IPA
Series: Synergy
Releases: April 12th (tentatively)
Highlight: A draft-only collaboration with On Tap in Bend to celebrate their 6th Anniversary.
Pink Boots Collab // West Coast IPA
Series: Synergy
Releases: April 19th
Highlight: We’ll be brewing this beer on March 29th at the Tap Room with the Willamette Valley Pink Boots chapter, which J Pascoe, one of our Brewers, is co-leader of. This year’s collaboration will focus on a bright West Coast-style IPA made with Chinook, Nelson, and potentially El Dorado hops.
Sol Fresco // Mexican Lager
Series: Perennial
Releases: April 19th
Highlight: Sol Fresco is one of our seasonal lagers, which balances gentle corn sweetness, light hop bitterness, and aroma with a crisp, clean finish. And it’s Lagered by the Sun.
BEER EDUCATION
2:30 pm Tuesdays @ the Tap Room
Join us for an educational session at the Tap Room every week to taste and learn about the week’s releases. All are welcome!
Beer 101: Quality of Bitterness
Written by Garrison Schmidt, Head Brewer
The face we’re trying to avoid.
This year, a point of focus in the brewery is the quality of bitterness in our beers. If you haven’t heard of ‘quality of bitterness’ before today, it’s understandable. Bitter is bitter, right? Brewers disagree, and I’ll spend today’s beer education segment explaining why.
Quality of bitterness is a hard thing to define, but like everything in our beer, we want the bitterness to be the most pleasurable experience possible. Many of us remember the old-school IPAs of the 2000s; a lot were overly bitter and focused on getting as many IBUs packed into the glass as possible. Luckily, that fell out of fashion, and now we focus on hop character, not just bitterness. We add hops late in the boil and supplement with generous dry hops so as not to add a ton of bitterness on the palate but a ton of aroma, which has a huge influence on perceived flavor.
What we are trying to avoid in our beer is a lingering bitterness that “stains” the palate. We want our hoppy beers to have an explosive hop aroma and a very enjoyable, assertive, but gentle bitterness that washes away clean.
Think about beers you’ve tried that have left a long-lasting, acrid, bitter taste in the mouth. For me, it’s especially noticeable on the sides of my tongue and the roof of my mouth, way in the back. That is what we are trying to avoid. Obviously, hoppy beers will have some bitterness (they’re designed that way!), but we don’t ever want our beer to present an unpleasant sensation in any way. We are constantly evolving our beer recipes to ensure they are the best they can be.
Keep in mind that the bitter components of a beer like IPA are an important part of creating a balanced product. On the flip side of the 2000s bitter bombers, we also experienced the hazy boom recently that led to many IPAs being brewed with remarkably low bitterness. A lot of those had no backbone for the sweetness of the malt to rely on, creating a ton of body with no structure. This is where we get the term “flabby” to describe a beer (to which I take personal offense). We borrowed this term from winemakers, who use it to describe a wine with a lot of fruity body but no tannic structure. This is also not what we are looking for in our beer.
We always want our beer to be structured, well-rounded, and clean. As you try our beers going forward, try to appreciate the quality of bitterness exactly as you would the aroma, flavor, and appearance of the beer. Bitterness is a big part of beer, and I want us to evaluate it as such.
Speaking of evaluations, if you feel like you’re having a lot of our beer and would like to have a voice in how it’s turning out, we have a cool way for you to be involved! We use a program called Draughtlab to evaluate our beers, and if you’d like to earn some free samples and have your voice heard, reach out to me, and I’ll get you set up with an account. A free app on your phone, it’s really easy to use, and honestly, it’s kind of fun. The other perk is that it’s the best way to develop your palate. Drinking beer, thinking critically about it, and writing down your thoughts are the best ways to grow your taster’s vocabulary and improve its use. It also shows me that you have a real interest in the product and might be someone who would be a good choice to send to an event or be a representative for the brewery when the need arises.
As always, if you have thoughts or concerns about our beer or want to get yourself signed up for Draughtlab, please reach out to me at garrison@block15.com
PUB UPDATES
When we have signs for Game Room reservations, please do not tape them to the front of the host stand. We have two sign holders in the Game Room that we can put these in that look more polished (plus we are sprucing up that host stand so we want it to keep looking sharp)!
Sprig & Seed is gone for the season, but we will add the Paper Plane to the menu temporarily to sell through some of that product while we dream up a new cocktail.
In early April we will be switching from Blood Orange lemonade to Blueberry Lavendar, so if you have folks that like the Sparkle Motion, make sure you push that before it’s gone!
We officially moved from Blueberry Cosmic Crisp to Raspberry!
We’ve seen some truly exceptional teamwork and communication from you all lately! From jumping in as often as possible to help crank out dishes in the kitchen, to prebussing each other’s sections and helping the hosts to flip tables, you all have been really impressive! One of our objectives for our company direction this year was to foster and encourage this super supportive and positive environment, and you all have done a fantastic job–thank you!
TAP ROOM UPDATES
When starting tabs, please double-check that the tab is pre-authorized with a card before the customer walks away, as it sometimes takes a second swipe to have the card properly on file. Or make sure they are fully cashed out.
Please do not put a random letter on a tab name unless you are able to fully cash it out then and there. There have been multiple tabs left at the end of the night with random letters for beer togo and merch. This is unacceptable.
Discounts: Please make sure we are using the correct discounts when cashing out employee food, comping something, waste logging an item, etc. There is a reference sheet in the bar binder if you need a refresher. Please be honest when discounting employee food, if you worked less than 7-8 hours there should not be a 70% credit on your food unless approved by a manager. Food discounts are an employee perk that can be taken away if they are abused and misused and we really don’t want to have to do that so please use the proper discounts!
With the nice weather making us busier, let's try to keep dirty pints separate from water/kids cups. The top dirty rack should be all pints/10oz glasses and the bottom red rack should be water cups/kids cups. This will make dishes and restocking clean glassware easier during rushes!
We will be closed Wednesday, April 3rd to refinish the dining room floors, just a heads up! We may have a few project shifts available to help out, if you are interested let Madie know! (Will be happening in the morning)
Caves Updates
HIGH FIVE SECTION
ALL Taproom Staff! - Thanks for absolutely crushing the busy weekend we had! Customers were happy, everyone had great attitudes, and extra shoutout to BOH for never having high ticket times and giving wonderful communication. Thank you all for working so hard!
Jack Kellems - Jack is always on top of it and has amazing customer service. His positivity is contagious and it’s impossible to be in a bad mood when he’s on shift. I love hearing him talk to guests and connect with every table on something personal. Great job Jack! You’re awesome.
Cedar Nelson - Cedar rocks! She is so efficient but keeps up a great attitude and even better hospitality. Customers are always laughing and having a good time when she’s their server. She’s awesome on bar too and I love working with her!
Mars Gunn - for always bringing tasty treats! they’re so good
Molly Branstetter - Molly is always working hard and wants to learn new things. She's doing a great job!
Mars Gunn - Your tarantula is cutie
If you have kudos or kind words to share anonymously in the Brewsletter, use the button below!
Human resources
STAFF SECTION
Check back next week!
SAFETY TIPS
Remember to test the weight of something before you lift it up completely; it might be too late if you realize a few seconds later that it’s too heavy or cumbersome for you. If the load is too heavy for you to handle alone, don’t hesitate to ask for help.
Office Hours
Monday: Pub 10am - 1pm
Tuesday: Tap Room 1- 4pm
Thursday: Pub 1 - 4pm
Friday: Tap Room 10am - 1pm
THE PEOPLE’S PINT / CHEERS FOR CHARITY / DINE OUT
Dine out for Corvallis Environmental Center - April 9th
Our next Dine-out will be on April 9th with the Corvallis Environmental Center (CEC)! They will also be tabling at our Taproom from 5-7 p.m., so come by and say hi! A portion of our food sales will go directly to CEC to help fund their efforts in our community. Let our customers know that they are playing a part in helping the community on April 9th!
About CEC:
Corvallis Environmental Center (CEC) is a community-based educational nonprofit that has prioritized partnerships to implement programs to address community needs since 1994. CEC's mission is to create a healthy, sustainable community. We do this through pre-K through 8th environmental education, Farm to School programs, youth leadership development, teacher training, and food security.
CEC’s programs include after-school programs, summer camps, NaturePlay preschool in Avery Park, and classroom education and field trips in partnership with school districts in Benton and Linn Counties. We offer family programs and events, including summer concerts and a fall film festival, and operate a 1-acre demonstration and education garden in Starker Arts Park known as SAGE. The food grown at SAGE is donated to those in need through our social service partner agencies.
WHAT’S UP ON INSTA??
FEEDBACK
Hey friends! If you find yourself sitting at home, or out and about and something pops into your mind that you would like to pass along to the team, feel free to use this form! Please be mindful of keeping feedback or suggestions constructive and positively worded!