May, 2016 | Common Block Brewing Co.

Fill Your Calendar to the Brim at Medford Beer Week

Get ready for Medford’s big, annual craft beer showcase! Medford Beer Week, June 2-11, is a citywide celebration of the craft beer industry. Breweries, restaurants and bars all show their love and commitment to local beer, and the food and entertainment they serve alongside it. You’ll find tastings, tappings, tours and more all around town every day of Medford Beer Week. So much to do, and so little time to do it (dreamy sigh).

We’re celebrating with our own Meet-the-Brewer event on Friday, June 10^th from 5-8pm. Our brewer, John, will be on hand to talk his favorite topic: beer. We’ll also show you around the building so you can get a sneak peek of Common Block before we open later this year. We’ll pull out some chairs, open the big garage doors, and hang out for a few hours of craft beer appreciation and conversation.

Visit the Medford Beer Week events page for over 100 happenings all throughout the week. Seriously, there are a handful of events every day, all day long. Brunch, happy hour, dinner and late night…establishments all around town have you covered with great craft brews, special deals, games and entertainment. Here are our top picks for the week:

Kegs and Eggs with Buttercloud Bakery and Oakshire Brewing @ Beerworks Medford | June 4^th| 10am – 1pm

This 4^th annual event features a special “Kegs and Eggs” sandwich along with tastings of the Oakshire Brewing Overcast Espresso Stout. It’s not too early for beer. It’s 10am somewhere…

Brews, Bluegrass, and BBQ | June 4^th| 12pm – 8pm

Tap into the best of the Rogue Valley’s food, drink, and music at the 4th annual Brew, Bluegrass, and BBQ presented by THRIVE. Eight hours, five bands, and 26 Rogue Valley microbrews on tap! Admission includes commemorative pint glass and tasting tickets. Buy tickets online at www.roguebbb.org

Hops Painting Class @ BricktownE Brewing | June 7^th| 6pm – 8pm

Spend a couple of hours creating a beautiful HOP painting. Sign-ups are at BricktownE, or Tia Mckenzie’s facebook page: tiamckenzieart. $30 includes supplies and instruction.

Movies in the Biergarden with Worthy Brewing | June 9^th| 8pm

What’s better than watching The Goonies? Watching The Goonies under the stars with a delicious stein of Worthy beer in your hand! Kicking off a full summer of Thursday night movies at Schoolhaus Brewhaus with an all-time favorite. Get there early to get a seat.

Southern Oregon Craft Brew Festival | June 11^th| 12pm – 8pm

With over 25 breweries showing off their best offerings (over 50 beers to sample), this event is a must-attend for Medford Beer Week. $16 gets you a commemorative pint glass and 5 tasting tickets. Pre-sale tickets available at Beerworks Medford and Beerworks Jacksonville for $14. 21+ only.

Mark your favorite events for this awesome Southern Oregon celebration and show your love of the local craft beer community. We’re thrilled to add to the amazing local variety later this year, and in the meantime we’ll join in drinking up all that our valley has to offer. It’ll take some commitment to try all this beer, but we’re oh-so willing to do it.

7 Things We Love About the Wild Rogue Relay

We’re mixing up brewery construction work with race training to ready ourselves for the Wild Rogue Relay, June 17-18th. Our team of 12 Common Blockers is running from Applegate Lake to Brookings, Oregon in this 36 leg, 30+ hour relay. It’ll be long, it’ll be challenging, and it’ll all be worth it for the beer a the end.

This annual race is about as good as it gets: dramatic scenery, great volunteers and support stations, enthusiastic teams, and a big, awesome party at the finish line on the coast. When we sit down and think about it (and we can’t sit long – we’re training, remember?), we can easily come up with our top seven reasons why we love the Wild Rogue Relay. Here are the highlights:

The views – The scenery on this race is pretty unbeatable. Along the river and through the woods (with winery stops along the way), the relay winds along forest roads before popping out at the ocean in Gold Beach. Every leg has something different to offer, and each runner gets an amazing view at some point (or many points) during the race.
Van artwork – Just give Wild Rogue Relayers some sleep deprivation and glass paint markers and watch their vans and trucks turn into pieces of art with team mottos, nicknames, and senseless sayings.
Team support – What’s the best way to run six miles in the middle of nowhere? With a van of friends cheering you on, spraying you with water, and playing your favorite power songs.
Dancing at the exchanges – Don’t pretend you didn’t do it. We saw you last year. Vans blast music, and runners start gettin’ down.
Middle-of-the-night Dutch Bros. mochas – Thank goodness for Dutch Bros.! This main race sponsor posts up a middle-of-nowhere coffee stand in the woods and serves free beverages for racers. Hot chocolate at 1am never tasted so good.
That one guy dressed as Fred Flintstone – Yeah, we remember you.
Beer at the finish line – What’s a grueling, hot, 30+ hour race without a cold beer at the end? We’re sponsoring the event by serving beer at the finish line party at Azalea Park in Brookings, alongside Chetco Brewing. All runners get a free brew and race pint glass, because dang they’ll have earned it!

If you’re in Brookings that weekend, be sure to stop by and cheer in all the die-hard finishers. We’re Team Runners’ Block, and we’ll be the ones with shaky legs pouring brews. If we seem a little delirious, just give us gentle pats on the head and remind us what is was that you ordered.

PS. We survived! Check out shenanigans on our Wild Rogue Relay Photo Recap.

May is National Bike Month

Go By Bike Week starts today! Dust off your seat, pump up your tires and shine your helmet. Or, if you’re already an everyday kind of biker, just keep doing what you’re doing! During the week of May 16-20^th, the Rogue Valley is celebrating the unique and fabulous benefits of biking with prize drawings, special events, and a Go By Bike Week Challenge.

Join us in upping our two-wheeled commutes for this awesome annual community event (seriously, we’re making each other bike to work). Channel your inner pedal-power and ride to these great happenings throughout the week:

Monday – Bike Breakfast at Railroad Park in Ashland, 7-9am

Tuesday – Slow Roll Fun Ride at Medford Cycle Sport, 6pm

Wednesday – Bike & Lunch Greenway Ride at Hawthorne Park, 12pm

Thursday – Bike Safety for Adults + Bike Social at Jackson Creek Pizza, 5:30-7:30pm

Friday – Medford Bike Breakfast at City Hall, 7-9am

You can log your bike trips all week long and take part in the Challenge by signing up with Drive Less Connect. You’ll be able to track your trips (and savings), organize group rides, and enter to win some great prizes from Dutch Bros., Kaleidoscope and more.

Did you know it’s also the Bicycle Transportation Alliance (BTA) Bike More Challenge all month? Over 12,000 bikers from around Oregon have already signed up, and you can log your miles there, too, for extra prize-winning opportunities. We’ll admit it, we’re totally double dipping on trip logging. Two great challenges, one simple idea: get out there and bike more! It’s great for your physical heath, mental wellbeing, and the environment. And who doesn’t look great in tight-fitting cycle gear?! (rhetorical question.)

We’re looking forward to seeing y’all out on the bike path! If you snap photos of your journeys, you can use #GoRogueValley, #Bikemore, and #Bikemonth to get even more props from other bikers. And props from us. We’ll be pretty impressed.

Raise Your Glass to American Craft Beer Week, May 16-22

While many of us don’t need an excuse to revel in all the tasty wonder that is craft beer, a nationwide celebration certainly adds steam to our constantly growing love of great, local brews. Join breweries and beer enthusiasts around the U.S. in toasting our favorite beverage during American Craft Beer Week (ACBW), May 16^th-22^nd. This 11^th annual, nation-wide festival brings the entire craft beer industry together with events, tours, pairings, specialty beers and more to honor the unique culture and community of American craft beer.

This year, the Brewers Association (aka, American Craft Beer Week coordinator extraordinaire) is dedicating a time for one and all to join together and collectively toast craft beer. Be sure to have a pint in hand for the nationwide toast at home or at your favorite local brewery, May 19^th at 5pm (8pm ET). Around the country, brewers, homebrewers, beer geeks, and casual beer fans will raise up their glasses in support of the beverage we all enjoy. Brewnited we stand!

Looking for other events in your area? Visit the ACBW Events page and click on the map to find a growing selection of happenings in every state. In Oregon, you’ll find workshops, festivals, dinners and tap takeovers – pick your favorite event and jump on board.

Though we’re still working away to get our doors open and brew tanks pumping with craft brews, you can bet we’re taking a moment to toast the reasons we’re here: the beer, the food, the friends and the community. So join us, and the masses of beer lovers celebrating this big week for small breweries, and help make this year’s American Craft Beer Week one for the books. Cheers to American Craft Beer Week 2016, and all the people who keep us motivated to brew fresh, local, and original craft beer.

Siskiyou Challenge Photo Recap

We traversed grueling terrain, raced against strapping athletes and perilous odds, pushed ourselves to the edge of sheer exhaustion…

Ok, maybe that’s all a BIT exaggerated. But, wow, did we feel ready for our recovery beers afterwards.

Last weekend, our Common Block crew joined the Siskiyou Challenge Multi-Sport Relay in Ashland as competitors (we’re using that term lightly here) and sponsors. Our team “Common in Hot” raced with the crowds via bike, kayak and two legs to complete the race and earn a spot among the top 30 finishing teams! We won’t say how many teams there actually were…

We also fed the masses with free food and beer for the racers, because they earned it! What an awesome day of teamwork, encouragement, and all-around fun, provided by the fine folks at Rogue Valley Farm to School. This great organization puts on the Siskiyou Challenge every year as their major fundraising event, and we could see from the happy crowds that this year was one for the books.

Congrats to the winning team, Flywheel Bicycle Solutions, and the top solo racer, Bobby Carpenter! We’ll work on catching up to you all next year.

Here are some of our favorite team photos from the day, to remind us how much we love working together to support this awesome southern Oregon tradition. Our fun meter ranked off the chart! So long, Siskiyou Challenge, and we can’t wait to rally for the relay again next year.