Block15

Pappy’s Dark 2011

2012-02-02T23:00:35Z

This marks our third year of brewing Pappy’s Dark, a specialty bourbon barrel matured strong ale. As with Super Nebula, we tinker with the recipe and process each year in hopes of presenting a better beer to you. Pappy’s Dark is designed to display the bourbon that was once matured in the barrels. By maturing Pappy’s Dark for about 3 months, the beer picks up more of the liquor character and a small amount of the barrel.

The Barrels
20 yr old bourbon barrels from The Rip Van Winkle Distillery. Last year we matured in 10 yr old barrels. The 20 yr barrels provide the usual notes of caramel, coconut, bourbon and vanilla. One very nice additional note I detect is graham cracker, intriguing!

The Grain bill
We upped the specialty malts roughly 10% for more background depth. This provides a balanced base for the bourbon character to stand on. You will notice that this year’s version is deeper in color.

Yeast
We changed our yeast from American Ale yeast to British yeast. I felt that the American Ale yeast in the past was too attenuative, leaving it too dry to be well balanced. I like my strong ales on the drier side; many I feel are too sweet. However, the American Ale yeast was not leaving enough residual sugar to balance the alcohol in the beer.

Carbonation
We increased the carbonation in the bottle slightly. This provides more lift in the beer releasing the wonderful aromas, and balances the body.

Overall, I am very pleased with this year’s Pappy’s Dark. It has all the character of the past years versions but with a more balanced presentation. The beer is ready to drink now for nice upfront bourbon character, and will evolve gracefully allowing the characters to meld.

Release Info
On tap now at our Pub! Bottles go on sale at our pub this Saturday the 4th @ 11am. $14.95/bottle with a 4 bottle limit.

Outside of Block 15
Official PDX release Saturday February 11th at The Hop & Vine. We also will be selling bottles and draught to several beer taverns and bottle shops in Portland and Eugene. I will post the distributions list on Facebook as soon as we know where you can find it.

Cheers,
Nick and the Block 15 Team

Super Nebula 2011 [3]

2012-02-01T20:34:31Z

Our 2011 release of Super Nebula is the third rendition of the brew. In 2009 we matured 50% of Super Nebula in 23 yr old barrels and blended back in the other 50%.

2010 was 100% matured 3 months in 10 & 11 yr. old barrels. To add more depth we matured the batch on fresh roasted cocoa nibs from Papua New Guinea. The nibs, as advertised, added complex notes of cocoa, wood, and smoky bacon. At first I absolutely loved this beer. The bourbon was evident and backed up by the huge malt complexity and nib character. Though, several glasses later, over the course of the month I found the bacon smoke element detracting from the overall experience. We also found that Super Nebula really matured and hits its stride around 5 months after we released it, making for a wonderful July beverage.
With knowledge gained from the first two batches we again fired up Super Nebula. In March of 2011 I was notified of some very rare Buffalo Trace barrels dating 1989, 1991, & 1993. I took the opportunity and had them shipped right away. Thus we brewed Super Nebula again, but several months earlier than the previous year. This extra time is just what we were looking for to give the beer an opportunity to mature. As we were happy with the previous vintages overall, we kept the grain and hop bill the same: Maris Otter Pale , Special B, 135/165, chocolate, roast, pale chocolate, black patent, and a touch of clear candi sugar.

In December we tasted each barrel and began blending. At this time I went in search of the perfect cocoa nib. For those interested, my source is Chocolate Alchemy out of Eugene. This guy is as passionate about chocolate as I am about beer. Picking the correct nib is of extreme importance to the beer. I selected Dominican Republic “Conacado” cocoa nibs for their luscious earthy, rum, and blackberry character. We receive them raw and roast them in house the day before adding the nibs to the beer.
Now bottled and kegged , our Super Nebula 2011 is ready for your enjoyment. Normally, I’m not one to talk up our beers too much as it is expected from the brewer. But I must say that in my opinion, for my taste, Super Nebula 2011 is one of the top 5 beers to ever come from our brewery, if not the top. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Where to Find: Now on Tap at our Pub! Bottles will be sold February 4th at our Pub $15.95/750 ml Corked & Caged. The only other place bottles will be sold is at our official PDX release at The Hop & Vine

Limited draught will be available outside our pub in the next couple weeks. Keep an eye on our Facebook page for a list of fine beer establishments we will sell to.

Cheers,
Nick & The Block 15 Brewing Team

Ironically, as I write this I have received word that 20yr old Pappy Van Winkle Barrels will be sent to our brewery for Super Nebula 2012!

Brewing For Les Caves [1]

2012-01-08T21:39:09Z

The opening our new Bier Taverne, Les Caves has given our brewery an opportunity to expand our beer offerings. We are brewing two beers, Caves IPA and Caves Saison, exclusively for its taps. With this new opportunity, our brewery hopes to highlight flavors and techniques unique to our brewery and Oregon.

Caves IPA
Our Caves IPA is brewed with all Oregon grown hops. The aim for this IPA is to put the emphasis on hop flavor and aroma with restrained bitterness. This is achieved by moving the majority of our kettle hop additions the end of the boil. The malt make up is simple, 2-row and a touch of biscuit & Munich, and meant to only support the hops. We are bringing the gravity down to make it more quaffable, weighing in currently at 6% heading towards 5.75%. The Oregon grown Nugget and Cascade hops really shine with nice citrus and floral notes. The recipe will be tweaked ever so slightly until we reach what we consider is a perfect pint highlighting our unique Oregon bounty.

Caves Saison
Our Belgian inspired farmhouse ale will evolve with the seasons: light and refreshing in the summer and stronger in the fall and winter. As the Saison style is open to vast interpretations I decided to employ a couple of unique techniques.

Our first unique technique is the treatment of our yeast. For our first batch we purchased a farmhouse yeast strain from Wyeast. This will be the only time we purchase commercial yeast.* Our Caves Saison is open fermented in our wild cellar and the yeast is top cropped. The yeast is reused for each consecutive batch. In theory, over time the yeast will morph into our own house strain, picking up resident character from the cellar.

Additionally we have a mother barrel for a solera project. I will get into the thoughts behind solera in another post as we began a solera program last year for most of our wild ales. The quick rundown on solera is that for each batch of Caves saison a portion will be removed from the barrel for blending and then a portion added back to the barrel. Over time the character of the barreled mother beer will become more complex. Also, each batch of Caves Saison will have portions of every previous batch.

Our first batch of Saison was pretty straight forward. The aroma was slightly spicy and hoppy and the body crisp with a refreshing hop finish.

For batch two we increased the gravity a touch and layered in a few more specialty malts. We then blended in the barrel from batch one, mixed, and then refilled the barrel.

When we first tapped batch #2 the character was similar to batch one, seemingly unaffected by the barreled portion. However, as the beer matured in kegs over the last two months, the character changed dramatically. There is a noticeable brettanomyces influence in the nose. The character reminds me of brettanomyces bruxellensis with earthy and subtle “horsey” notes. I am really excited where this project is going and can foresee some small bottle offerings in the future.
Swing on by the Les Caves and grab a pint or two!

*if the yeast heads in a direction undesirable, we will start over.

Bottle Release # 3 , A change of pace. [2]

2011-08-05T20:25:18Z

Bottle Release #3, A change of Pace

Join us Saturday August 6th for our third bottle release! Ferme de la Ville Provision is our Farmhouse style ale over a year in the making. This funky and tart golden ale is a big change from our last two releases, Figgy Pudding and Pappy’s Dark.

Ferme de la Ville, or Farm of the City, is a beer over 15 months in the making. 15% is matured 12 months and another 15% is matured 9 months, both in Oak barrels with Brettanomyces. We then blend the matured beers with fresh beer in the spring. After two months of conditioning we package the beer in bottles and Kegs and allow further conditioning of six weeks.

In the bottle we prime with fresh yeast and sugar allowing natural carbonation to form at significantly high levels. The corked and caged Belgian bottles allow for this higher carbonation without breaking. On draught we force carbonate to higher carbonation levels than our other draft beers and serve it from our tap line designed for this.

2011 Release Details. 96 cases produced

Saturday August 6th at Block 15 normal Pub hours. Bottles are $13.95/750ml. Limit of four bottles per person. If you buy three or more bottles we will throw in a custom printed re-usable bottle bag. $2 a bag otherwise. Also, we will have the 2010 version on tap as well served in a taster set with the 2011.

Other Fine Beer Places that will have Provisions after the 12th.

Friday August 12th, Official Portland Release
5pm at The Beer Mongers. The Beer Mongers will also be serving several other beers from our bvrewery.

Portland Locations
Baileys: Bottles and Draught
Saraveza: Bottles and Draught
Bridgetown Beer House: Bottles
Hop & Vine: Bottles and Draught
The Beer Mongers: Bottles and Draught

Corvallis
Corvallis Brewing Supply

Eugene
The Bier Stein
Sixteen Tons

Newport
Bier One

Barrel Blending, Golden Canary [1]

2011-07-22T19:33:44Z

Today we release Golden Canary, our barrel matured golden wild ale. The blend is over 20 months in the making, a game of patience. Honestly, it doesn’t seem that long ago when we barreled the oldest part of the blend. Since then we have brewed over 400 batches of beer, and our barreling program has grown from 25 barrels to over 100.

Rewind a couple years, we were in year two of operations. From the onset of Block 15 I wanted to concentrate on barrel matured beers. Not just a token couple of barrels, but a whole program developed around the subtle and not so subtle barrel intricacies (much more on this in a later post). We had released a few; Pappy’s Dark, Super Nebula and Kings Gold.

Mesmerized by the complex funky and sour brews of Belgium I decided to dive head first into a wild beer program. With a healthy customer base and ample cellar room we made the decision to increase our barreling programs. At the time, there were a few American Brewers producing this style of beer. Cascade in Portland was beginning to release their wonderful lactic sours; Russian River in California was distributing the amazing Consecration; Jolly Pumpkin in Michigan produced natural brettanomyces brews, and New Belgium bottled their La Folie. Most craft beer drinkers I knew had not even set their lips on a funky sour beer. Even for me, the massive sour notes of a Cantillon were sometimes hard to handle. Still, the most inspiration for our Wild Cellars hailed from Belgium, specifically the Flanders region. I was most mesmerized by Rodenbach Gran Cru. This awesome sour beer (for $9.95 a 750ml!) had everything I liked; a nice acetic kick, brettanomyces, and just a touch of back sweetness; a perfectly balanced beer. Petrus aged Pale was also ground breaking for me, a wonderfully tart Flanders pale ale. I found most respect for the Flanders layered approach to blending various vintages of beer, allowing time to be possibly the most important ingredient.

Thus, our Wild program began. At first, we did not have a wild cellar, rather an area in our cellar to house barrels. Many visiting brewer’s thought we were crazy with barrels full of known brewery contaminate; brettanomyces and various bacteria. One brewer mentioned that they thought of us as a Canary in the coal mine, waiting to see if our normal beer production would survive.

In the beginning we would fill barrels with fermented beer and inoculate with various cultures. The first culture was “La Folie” from The Brewing Science Institute. From there we began to play with other isolated strains such as Drie Fonteinen brettanomyces, brettanomyces lambicus, bruxellensis, & claussenii, lactobacillus and pediococcus. We have learned an extraordinary amount in the last two years about pitching rates, wort composition, barrels, hopping rates, and time. Slowly, the program has shaped our brewery into our own style of brewing and cellaring.

In 2010 instead of spending money to go to the GABF we purchased an open fermenter/cool ship and expanded our wild cellars 1100 sq feet. Now we have total isolation for our wild barrels, and more importantly the ability and time to do a mixed ferment with our own blend of yeast, brettanomyces and bacteria, the Flanders style!

Golden Canary 2011 is a compilation of our first two years. A look at our past, present, and future of wild ale production. The blend and character will certainly change each year as our brewing and cellaring style is becoming more defined.

I had 21 barrels to choose from. The blend consists of four separate vintages;

20 month: inoculated in barrel with “La Folie” blend. Solid sour notes, tannic barrel, lactic and acetic acid, grapes. Aged brettanomyces, cherry and horse blanket. FG 1003

16 month: golden wheat ale inoculated in barrel with pediococcus for the first 6 months and then brettanomyces C. Solid sour notes, tropical and barnyard Brett, creamy wheat. FG 1000!

9 month: Our first mixed fermentation; Brettanomyces lambicus & lactobacillus. Gently tart & hoppy, apparent cherry brettanomyces character. FG 1004

4 month: Mixed fermentation with Brewer’s yeast and large lactobacillus pitch. Big clean lactic acid. Residual sugar due to no brettanomyces. Great fruity esters. FG 1010

The blend represents what I like about wild beers. Moderate lactic & acetic acid without unbalanced aggression. Complex brettanomyces ranging from tropical to funky. Firm carbonation with a touch of malt sweetness. Swing on by the Pub and grab a glass.

Cheers,
Nick