Block 15 Set to Release 4 Wild Ales on Saturday

Block 15 Brewing is gearing up for their next bottle release on Saturday, June 28th at their pub in downtown Corvallis, Oregon. Block 15 is excited for the bottle releases of four beers from their wild cellar. The four beers will be Golden Canary, Turbulent Consequence Peche, Turbulent Consequence Cassis, and Farm To Fruit Apricot.

Here’s a rundown from Block 15’s Nick Arzner on the four wild ale releases on Saturday.

Golden Canary
A blend of five barrels; 10 months, 11 months, 1 yr 4 months, 2 yr, and 3.5 yrs old. All barrels are from Block 15’s wild gold program, open fermented with brewer’s yeast, brettanomyces, lactobacillus and pedio. When sampling barrels I look for a combination that will make a complex combination of acids, medium funkiness, stone & tropical fruits, with supporting body structure. The character of this blend is very similar to 2012’s blend at the time of bottling with a PH of 3.4 and identical final gravities. I’m very happy with the acid profile that complements an array of esters, complex brettanomyces and tropical & stone fruit notes.  Waiting the extra year to find this blend was well worth it.
7% ABV

60 Cases, 375ml bottles. $9/bottles limit of 3

Turbulent Consequence Peche & Cassis
Our spontaneous program continues to slowly expand.  These beers are brewed with a complex turbid mash of unmalted wheat and malted barely, boiled with aged hops, and naturally cooled over night in our custom coolship.  Barrels are then filled where spontaneous fermentation and maturation occur.  We blend various vintages of barrels from the program, sometimes adding fruits and in the future herbs and flowers.  All bottles are conditioned with locally gathered honey and no added yeast for true 100% spontaneous fermentation throughout.

Peche
Our second release of this beer.  My wife Kristen and daughter Cassidy helped me hand pick 150lbs of winter snow white peaches from Olson Family Farm last fall.  I then selected two barrels of Turbulent consequence barreled on April 26th, 2013 and added the peaches. We then matured the beer another 7 months before blending.  This year’s blend is exceptional with clean and sharp acids, floral peachy aromas, creamy wheat, and citrusy brettanomyces.  At 6.8% the beer is a bit stonger in this years blend due to higher extraction of milled wheat at 6.8% and a final PH of 3.1.

50 cases, 375ml bottles, $9/bottle, limit 2

Cassis
This is our first time adding black currant to Turbulent Consequence.  I really wanted to procure whole currants, which turned out to be tougher than anticipated.  I ended up finding a farm out of NY that would send whole berries overnight.  With shipping, these little berries cost us more than any other fruit we have worked with.  We added the whole currants to a single barrel of fall 2012 Turbulent Consequnce and matured it another eight months. These tart currants lend a lot of character to the base Turbulent Consequence.  In addition to a beautiful magenta color, I find notes of dark cherry, plum and mint. At a PH of 2.8 this is be the most mother puckering beer we have released.

26 cases, 375ml bottles, $10/bottle, limit 1

Farm To Fruit Apricot
This beer will be available on tap beginning at 3:00pm on Friday, June 27th at Les Caves Farmhouse Festival.
Brewed to celebrate Les Caves two-year anniversary. This strong farmhouse ale was brewed with wheat, oats, mosaic and citra hops, and open fermented with farmhouse yeast. It was then barreled with fresh organic apricots and then topped with beer from Les Caves mother barrel, which contains portions of each caves saison brewed. This is possibly our most labor-intensive beer to date as several hundred pounds of organic apricots were spread out on tables in the wild cellar.  Each apricot was individually pitted and placed into barrels when perfectly ripe.  This occurred over a span of five day! The beer shows a wonderful apricot aroma with soft grain complexities. The hops have faded overtime and balance the beer nicely. The Caves mother barrel has been an interesting blend to work with.  This barrel seems to be even more unpredictable than our spontaneous program with acids, esters, and pediococcus ebbing and flowing over time. In this blend the barrel took several months to mature developing gentle acids and complex farmhouse notes. I like this blend so much that we will continue it each year, picking a different fruit to work with. 10.25% ABV PH 3.9

26 Cases, 750ml bottles. $19/bottle. Limit 1

Block 15 Restaurant and Brewery
300 SW Jefferson
Corvallis, OR 97333