Block 15 Restaurant and Brewery

Last week we spent a few days at the southern Oregon coast, one part of the state we had yet to explore. Our family trip gave me the chance to visit a well-regarded brewpub that I hadn't yet been to, Block 15 Restaurant and Brewery in Corvallis.  It's not completely unusual to see one of their beers on tap in Portland, but I was really looking forward to checking out Block 15 in person, to be able to sample from their full range of offerings.

My visit to the pub did not disappoint in that regard.  There were 13 house taps to sample from, plus a guest tap from Oakshire, a guest cask from Brewers Union, and a collaboration beer brewed with fermentation science students at Oregon State.  Given all that bounty, and the fact that we were on the highway (I wasn't driving), I went through a couple of five-sample taster trays with our lunch, with a little help from Carla.  Here are the beers we tried:

• Pappy's Dark bourbon-aged strong ale: boozy yet smooth, delicious bourbon and vanilla notes
• Super Nebula bourbon-aged imperial stout: well-rounded big stout, on the sweet side, with hints of cocoa and coffee
• Alpha IPA: clean, tasty IPA with lots of floral/piney hops
• Up in Smoke rauchbier (the OSU student collaboration): dark and smooth, with the perfect amount of smoke
• Anniversary Trippel: lots of banana flavor, nice bubbles and hops on the tongue, pleasantly sweet
• Cherry Quad: lovely Belgian flowery aroma/taste, later the banana kicks in, very light cherry flavor
• Nebula Naked Oat Stout: licorice nose, charred malt and licorice taste, nice bitter finish
• Aboriginale strong ale: nice balance between grainy malts and piney hops
• Ridgeback Red Ale: firm body, fruity malty flavor, decent hops.

All the beers we tasted were really well done, there was nothing we turned our nose up at, and in fact we got seconds of the IPA.  Brewer/owner Nick Arzner told me that they recently installed a brite tank for serving the IPA, and he thinks not jostling the beer into and out of a keg helps keep the hop aromas at their peak.  I was hoping for a little more cherry flavor in the Cherry Quad, but it was a dandy Belgian.  Pappy's Dark is a gem: drink it whenever you find it.

There's so much to say about Block 15 as a brewery that I hardly know where to start.  The place seems to be going several directions at once, and surprisingly, doing them all very well.  For example, a lot of their best-known beers are giant, barrel-aged sippers like Pappy's Dark or Figgy Pudding, but on the other hand their cask ale setup meets the orthodoxy requirements of Ted Sobel at Brewers Union, so that Block 15 is -- as far as I know -- the only establishment where Ted will let another human being serve his wares.  Meanwhile, in the basement of the brewery, a few different rooms hold various wine and whisky barrels for aging beer, while in another corner sits a custom koelschip for open-fermentation projects.  Nick's brewing partner Steve van Rossem admits to a certain amount of nervousness about all the different critters they're using to ferment their beers, but he also keeps a tight handle on sanitation, which must be a big part of Block 15's success in producing such a varied lineup.

The collaboration with OSU -- called Brewed by Beavers --  makes good sense for a brewpub in a college town where the local university has a fermentation science program.  And in another kind of community outreach, Nick's Brewer's Brain blog is updated with pretty decent regularity, and has some really interesting content.

This was a lunch visit, so I better say something about the food in the restaurant.  It's not revolutionary -- a pretty straightforward Northwestern locavore menu -- but the whole family was happy with our burgers, fries, soups and salads.  I certainly recommend it.  If you are in Corvallis, you're going to hit Block 15 for the beer anyway, so you might as well go with an appetite.

Finally, I should mention that Block 15 won last year's Cheers to Belgian Beers with their Ferme de Demons.  Don't worry, we don't have to go to Corvallis for this year's festival, the surrogate site for it is Metalcraft Fabrication, 723 N. Tillamook, just off Interstate near Widmer and not far from a Yellow Line MAX stop. I hear that the big warehouse should be an excellent venue for the festival.  Mark your calendars:  April 30th, noon to 9 PM, with 42 (!) Oregon breweries lined up.

Further reading:

• Patrick Emerson recently put up a nice report on a visit to Block 15 a few months ago
• Angelo's interview of Nick is a couple years old now, but still interesting

Website Recommendations

Here are a few websites that I've been geeking out on recently, and that I think you should check out:

• White Beer Travels
• Silly Wine Tasting Notes Generator
• A pint for Dionysus

Let me explain:

White Beer Travels: We are hoping to take a family vacation to Europe this summer, and as I googled around for information on the Cantillon tour in Brussels, I landed upon the charmingly 90s-flavored webpage of White's Beer Travels.  The content hasn't been updated since Mr. White's unfortunate demise in 2007, but there is a ton of good beer information there, mostly focused on Europe.  There is absolutely no rational organization to the website, and the narratives and photo credits are innocently homespun in the manner of George Herter's cookbooks, or your oldest male relative's holiday videotapes.  If you must have some structure to your web activities, start on the beer hunts page, or the "pub of the month" entries for Bamberg, Bruges, Uerige, or Denver.

Silly Tasting Notes Generator: I'm very proud of my Beer Review Generator, and every now and then someone StumbleUpon's or Reddit's it, bringing an extra thousand visitors to the blog for a brief time.  Along the lines of the BRG, but for wine, is Greg's Silly Tasting Notes Generator.  It recently caught New York Times critic Eric Asimov's attention, who tweeted it to the rest of us.  Good stuff.  Try it out on your wine friends.  And don't forget the BRG when you need a silly beer review.

A pint for Dionysus: There are many excellent beer blogs in Portland. Man, that's a weird thing to say -- why would any town need more than a couple of good beer blogs?  There's only a certain amount of gossip and current events to report upon.  It's true, and yet the varying interests of the different bloggers still makes for a pretty interesting ecosystem.  Then there is A pint for Dionysus.  I don't want to ghettoize Dan by putting his blog outside that ecosystem, but there is something so refreshingly different about his writing style that it sits outside the mundane concerns of the rest of us.  Or -- I'm confused -- are Dan's concerns so timelessly mundane that they make good reading whether they're about beer or not?  You'll have to decide for yourself, but if you're not already following Portland's Studs Terkel of beer, I recommend you start with some of his bar reviews:  The Agenda, The Nest, Angelo's; or peruse his year-long project of checking out The Local.

Imperial IPA Blind Tasting

Imperial IPA is kind of a ridiculous term: it has no historical significance, and Double IPA is a better description of the same thing. Nevertheless, it's probably my favorite beer style if I had to choose one. Lots of hops, lots of malt, and lots of medicine.

Hopworks just released the 2011 version of their IIPA, the Ace of Spades, and since they gifted me a couple bottles of it, I thought I'd try it out alongside a couple of other big IPAs of note: the stalwart Ninkasi Tricerahops, and this winter's price-performer: Pyramid Outburst.  Tuesday night Dave came over from next door, and we did a blind tasting of the three, to see if we could tell which was which, and to see which one we liked the best.  Carla also took a quick taste; she didn't try to identify them, but voted on what she liked.

Sadly, I think the bottle of Tricerahops was a little old, even though I just bought it a couple days ago at New Seasons.  It didn't have the giant, flowery hops that I expected, and there was quite a bit of murky sediment in the bottom of the bottle.  It was so unimpressive that Dave and I both ranked it behind the other two, and we both assumed that our blind sample of Tricerahops was the cheaper Outburst.  Remember when Tricerahops was this startling new style of gigantic, floral IPA?  When you would call your friends if you saw it on tap somewhere?  That was only 3 or 4 years ago.  Now there are dozens of double IPAs, and a bottle of Tricerahops can be something of a letdown.

In second place in our blind tasting -- actually, it was Carla's favorite -- was the Pyramid Outburst.  A new offering this year, Outburst is priced right -- about $2 a bomber, or $6 a six-pack -- but I've had mixed emotions about it.  The first time I tried it, I had already had a beer or two (can't remember which), and I was completely underwhelmed by Outburst.  Then a few days later I popped one open after a long work day, and it really hit the spot.  A couple more good experiences followed, until one day when I followed up a bomber of Firestone Walker Double Jack with an Outburst, and I almost wanted to cry.  It tasted awful that day, like on Thanksgiving when you drink a glass of water after eating your cranberry sauce.  Because of those experiences, I was a little worried about how it would fare alongside Ace of Spades and Tricerahops, but this time it held its own.  Since it's such a bargain, stock up on Outburst while it's out there, just be careful how you use it.

Which brings us to the Ace of Spades:  boozy, malty, flowery -- what's not to like?  Dave and I both picked it out of the lineup, and also found it to be the most satisfying of the three we tasted that night.  Carla said it had an aftertaste she didn't like, but I almost wonder if that aftertaste was alcohol, given how big this beer is.  Enjoy it while it's out -- last year it seemed to disappear almost before I realized it was available.  It's highly recommended.

That's a look at three Double IPAs.  There are lots more out there: for example, we just went through our annual bout of Pliny the Younger madness, and Hop Henge is still pouring at Deschutes (and was $4 a bomber at the Burnside CVS a few days ago).  And do try Double Jack if you run across it -- it's stunning.