“Where do you make your beer?”
“When are you getting an in-house system?”
“What do you mean by ‘soon'”?
Folks, the time has come! As we speak, our long-awaited, inaugural brewing system is being installed in our dining room. It’s big, beautiful, shiny, and full of beer-making potential.
About Our Brewing System
Our team has gone to work immediately (because we waited a long time for this) installing the stainless-steel tanks and fixtures in the brewery. We purchased the used O’Neil brand brew house from a brewery in Denver, Colorado, and it just happens to fit perfectly in the space we’ve set aside since opening.
With its 15 barrel batch size, the up-cycled system has the capacity to brew 720 barrels (or 22,320 gallons) of beer each year. The fermenting and serving tanks, which will live on the upstairs mezzanine of Common Block, are currently being fabricated separately by Practical Fusion in Portland, Oregon.
Since opening in December 2016, we’ve contracted-brewed our original recipes on equipment at other local breweries, including Climate City Brewing Co. in Grants Pass and Wild Card Brewing Co. in Redding. And to them, we say a big THANK YOU – we couldn’t have made it through these first couple of years without you!
Our new in-house system will allow us to expand our varieties (including more specialties and seasonals), explore new distribution options, and develop employee and community education about the beer making process with brewery tours, classes, pairings and more.
A Special Thank You to SOREDI
We secured final funding for the brewing system with the help of SOREDI, Southern Oregon Regional Economic Development, Inc. This organization works to advance local economic development, and fortunately they like beer…or at least they’ve chosen to help bolster local brewing in Southern Oregon. So a big thank you to the SOREDI team for helping make our beer dreams come true sooner rather than later.
So What’s Next for the Brewery?
You’ll see lots of changes over the next several months while we install the new system on the platform in the dining room (you know, the big empty concrete pit), and the upstairs mezzanine. We’ll be open during construction, and anyone interested will be able to watch the process phase by phase, until expected completion in the late summer or early fall of 2019.
While we’re building, you can still imbibe the same beers we’ve been serving, brewed at the same great local breweries. And once the system is fully in place, be ready to watch the brewing process in-action on our fully-visible platform.
So, are we excited? Uh huh.
Do we have a lot to do to put it all together? Yep.
Are we going to throw a big party when we make our first batch of beer AT COMMON BLOCK???!!! You betcha.
Stay tuned for news, photos, progress reports and all the updates over the next couple of months. We couldn’t be happier to reach this milestone, and we want to say thank you to all our guests who have supported us during the past two and a half years while we’ve maneuvered, pivoted, and planned to make beer happen. We’re over the moon to finally be able to brew right here, on our own equipment, and pour straight into your pints.