Month: October 2017

NEW! Online Ordering For To-Go Orders

Exciting news: you can now order your food to-go online! We’re making it even easier to take Common Block food (and beer) home with you – just visit our website, click the ‘Order To Go Online’ button, and add whatever you’re craving to your ticket. You can pay either online or when you pick it up, making it an awesome way to place an order for a work group, a hungry teenager or that one person you know who always forgets their wallet at home.

New Online Ordering Features

 

  • Schedule your order to be picked up right away, or hours into the future. If you’ve already decided during the mid-afternoon lull that you don’t want to make dinner tonight, place your order early and schedule for pick-up at 5:00.

 

  • Add special requests…if you don’t want cheese on your salad, just let us know. Want an extra side of ketchup? You can tell us that, too. You can type in your special message for each item, so your order comes exactly how you want it. Ordering for a big group? You can also use the feature to write people’s names on their orders. When we see a ticket with lots of names, we’ll write each one on their to-go box so there’s no confusion about who has what. That’s right Bill, keep your hands off Susan’s Reuben.

 

  • Order gift cards online, too! For the holidays or special occasions, just hop on our online ordering page, click ‘Start Your Order’ and then click on ‘Buy a gift card’ up at the top. You can have their gift card either emailed or texted, and send it right away or on a future date – you can schedule out gift cards for the entire year in one step (if you’re a Type A, get-er-done kind of person).

 

  • If you have your own gift card, you can also go to the online ordering page to check your card balance – no need to play guessing games with how much you have left.

 

  • Taking beer home in a growler, too? You can pay for that online all at the same time. Just ring in which beer you want to fill your half gallon or liter bottle with, and once you arrive it’s all paid for. Just make sure you bring your own bottle!

 

We hope you find our new online ordering system as convenient and easy-to-use as we have. Just add your order, choose to pay online or when you get here, and then head straight to the bar counter to pick up your food when it’s ready. Have any questions? Feel free to call us at 541-326-2277 and ask more about how it works!

New Beer on the Block: Last Cast Special Bitter

Greetings, beer drinker!  Yes, YOU!  We’ve got a new alcoholic beverage for you to try.  We’re calling it Last Cast.

Before we get into the details of the beer itself, let’s talk about the style of beer.  Our Last Cast is a Bitter Session Ale.  Remember the Brits?  You know, those guys who love tea, planting flags in foreign countries and making food that is somehow enhanced by vinegar?   Well, they’re responsible for a lot of modern-day beers, including IPAs, Stouts, Porters and Pales.  If the Brits were a Boy Scout, they’d be that annoying over-achiever who had a badge for everything and smugly told the rest of the world how they’re doing it wrong, like how beer is best enjoyed at room temperature.

So naturally, they’re responsible for the Bitter Session Ale as well.

The Session Ale is similar to the IPA in the sense that there’s no true history behind the name.  It’s somewhere between rumor, fact and hypothesis.  We have ideas, but no one wrote down the exact history as it happened.  Possibly because they were too busy drinking beer to write anything down.

With that in mind, here are some of the nitty gritty details of a Session Ale:

Technically called a Bitter Session Ale, this style of beer is characterized by its low alcohol content and drinkability.  A true session  is generally accepted as having lower than 4% alcohol content.  The point of the beer is to be able to enjoy its flavor over a plethora of pints, something not possible to do with a 6-7% abv. beer.  At least without stumbling into traffic.  Beyond the 4%, it’s broken down into two more specifications: a Special Bitter is between 4-4.9% and an Extra Special Bitter is anything 5% and above (but generally not higher than 5.9%).

Perhaps oddest of the name, a Bitter ale doesn’t necessarily imply bitterness.  Kind of like a pale ale.  A pale ale is a style that’s generally pale, but just because it might have a reddish or copper tone, doesn’t mean it’s no longer a Pale ale.  A Bitter Ale certainly has a hop flavoring to it, but it’s mild when compared to the heavy hopped Double and Triple IPA’s of the Northwest. The name is victim to the time in which it was created: at the inception of the Bitter Session Ale, the most popular ales in The United Kingdom were Stouts and Porters, a sweet and malty beer that could make just about any other style of beer seem bitter.

That’s all fine and dandy, but what does this all mean for flavor?  Well, we’ll step aside and let the Brewer and stats do the talking:

Last Cast Session Ale

Style:  Special Bitter (a British session beer)

ABV:  4.5% (easy drinkin’)

IBU:  30 (modest)

Malt: 

  • 2-row
  • munich
  • crystal
  • special roast (great malt backbone)

Hops:

  • Fuggle (traditional hop)
  • Goldings (traditional hop)
  • Amarillo (a little NW twist because that’s our jam)

From the John the Brewer:

Low alcohol, moderate carbonation, and round malt flavor finely balanced with modest hop bitterness create the easy-drinking effect.  In spite of its name, Special Bitter is NOT a bitter beer.  The British use the term metaphorically to refer to sessionable pub beers generally in the way one might use the word “pints” to describe “beer.” 

Pairing Suggestion:

Try this beer alongside our Pretzel, Herbivore Burger, or Stout Battered Fish & Chips!