This new beer six-pack walks in smelling like citrus groves, pine sap, and a very friendly greenhouse that may or may not be playing reggae in the back. Peaks & Pints New Beer Six-Pack 4.18.26 Somewhere between citrus groves, pine forests, and a suspiciously mellow backroom haze, this week’s New Beer Six-Pack leans hard into terpene-kissed IPAs, sticky resin dreams, and bright, modern hop chaos that refuses to behave. Lagunitas Brewing Hop Stoopid Double IPA: A full-volume blast of grapefruit pith, lemon oil, and unapologetic pine swagger barrels through the palate, as Lagunitas lets the bitterness
There was a time—not long ago, but it feels like another century—when lager meant cold, clean, obedient, a background player in a world of louder ales, the kind of beer your grandfather drank without thinking twice, reliable as a recliner and just about as thrilling. But somewhere along the way, lager slipped the leash. Brewers started listening closer—to fermentation, to grain, to time itself—and what came back wasn’t noise, but nuance: spunded bubbles that feel like silk instead of static, corn and rice used not as shortcuts but as brushstrokes, noble hops reimagined with a modern flicker, and patience wielded
Peaks & Pints Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries April 18 By now, the easy choices are gone. The soft edges have burned off. What’s left are breweries with real pull — the kind people defend, debate, and quietly panic-vote for before midnight. Yesterday didn’t deliver chaos so much as clarity. A few heavyweights flexed. A few illusions disappeared. And one of the most decorated breweries in Washington ran into the Mountain. Day Eleven didn’t wobble. It revealed. Let’s weed through the malt. Friday, April 17, Second Round Games Results GAME 1, NORTHERN WASHINGTON REGION 2. Holy Mountain Brewing vs.
Snowshoes on, pace slowed, senses turned up — a ranger-led wander at Mount Rainier where winter does the talking and every step feels like a quiet conversation with the mountain. The Daily Outside: Kona Big Wave Pond Skim, Parks Appreciation Day … 4.17.26 Saturday stacks itself like a choose-your-own-adventure fever dream — creekside birds, muddy civic virtue, renegade lawns, alpine splashes, and the quiet possibility of going home with dirt under your nails or water in your boots. Kona Big Wave Pond SkimHosted by Crystal Mountain ResortSaturday, April 18, 2026 • 8:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.Crystal Mountain Resort,
Friday’s New Beer Six-Pack is a full mood swing in six pours — mellow, wild, juicy, decadent, and then suddenly sharp again. Peaks & Pints New Beer Six-Pack 4.17.26 Friday’s New Beer Six-Pack drifts in like a dream that escalates — from pub-ale calm to berry-bright hallucination, through hop-cut clarity and smoothie excess, before cresting in a triple IPA surge and snapping back to a razor-clean West Coast finish. Fort George Brewery Ottermatic Pub Ale: A gentle drift of toasted bread, soft caramel, and herbal whisper settles in easy waves as Fort George leans into malt-driven
There are tasting flights, and then there are meals — the kind that unfold in courses, each pour arriving with its own mood, its own little story, its own reason for being exactly where it is. Peaks & Pints 5-Course Beer Flight leans delightfully sideways into that idea: five beers as five courses, moving from bright, salty, and strange through lush indulgence and into full-throated centerpiece swagger before easing into a sweet, lingering finish. It’s less about order and more about experience, a playful progression where each glass sets the table for the next, and nothing behaves quite the way
Peakls Pints bartenders Monica and Matthew are behind the bar, blinking at the bracket like, wait — Chuckanut vs. Cloudburst wasn’t even close? Peaks & Pints Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries April 17 Somewhere back in February, this was just a list. Names tossed into the ring. Public nominations. A loose, hopeful idea of who belonged. Then 64 breweries took shape, got seeded, and stepped into something that immediately stopped behaving like a clean bracket and started acting like a living thing. Now look at it. Favorites have been pushed. A few didn’t survive. Others
E9 Brewing and Matchless Brewing were always going to make this ugly in the best possible way, and the Peaks & Pints Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries Second Round proved it — a three-vote margin that felt less like a result and more like a standoff finally exhaling. On one side, Tacoma’s first craft brewery, born in a firehouse in 1995 and sharpened over decades into the modern, quietly confident E9. On the other, Matchless out of Tumwater, 10 years deep and glowing with anniversary momentum, pouring fresh releases like a brewery fully aware of its stride. Legacy versus
The Grit & Grain Podcast discusses today’s Second Round games on their Episode 187 dropping Friday, April 24. Peaks & Pints Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries April 16 The Peaks & Pints Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries bracket has turned into a living thing — part scoreboard, part group chat, part low-stakes civic duty. People are standing under the giant bracket at Peaks & Pints, pointing, debating, recalculating. Brewers are watching. Friends are lobbying. Someone, somewhere, is absolutely overthinking a lager versus hazy IPA matchup like it’s a life decision. And the swings? Already
There are IPAs, and then there is Fort George Vortex — the one that doesn’t just sit in the glass so much as hum, a low, citrus-laced frequency that feels like weather remembering its teeth. Born from a near-mythic road trip moment — a brewhouse nearly scattered by a tornado en route to Astoria — it arrived with just enough chaos stitched into its bones to keep things interesting. Pine, grapefruit, structure, restraint — a Northwest spine with a pulse. Over time it became something rarer than hype: a standard. Not loud, not trendy, not chasing the next shiny thing.
Peaks & Pints Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries April 15 — Second Round And now it tightens. The First Round — all 64 breweries, all that chaos, all those late-night votes and “wait, how did that happen?” moments — has done its work. What’s left is 32. Not just good. Not just popular. Surviving. This is where the Tournament changes shape. Because the easy decisions are gone. The casual scroll-and-tap is gone. What remains are matchups that feel personal — brewery versus brewery, yes, but also style versus style, city versus city, philosophy versus philosophy. Legacy squares up against
Tuesday’s New Beer Six-Pack hits like a full-spectrum flavor trip — hazy glow, West Coast snap, collab wizardry, and one unapologetically decadent nightcap waiting at the end. Peaks & Pints New Beer Six-Pack 4.14.26 Tuesday’s New Beer Six-Pack rolls in like a technicolor hop opera with a velvet encore — Yakima haze, Tacoma spellwork, coastal collabs, and one decadent stout finale that lingers like a slow, satisfied exhale. Bale Breaker Brewing Retrograde Hazy IPA: A slow swirl of mango nectar, ripe melon, and peach fuzz glow rolls through the glass as Bale Breaker dials the haze
Gavin Lord did not exactly tumble into brewing by accident or wake up one morning with a beard, a mash paddle, and a dream. He took the long road, the real one — UC Davis Master Brewers Program, the notoriously brutal Institute of Brewing and Distilling diploma exam, then into the brewhouse at Full Sail alongside Dan Peterson and Josh Pfriem, learning the larger rhythms before stepping into the kind of role that actually shapes a brewery’s soul. In 2014 he followed Josh to pFriem Family Brewers, and over seven years as head brewer helped grow it from a small
Peaks & Piunts bartenders Amber and Trish call the final four games of the Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries First Round. Peaks & Pints Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries April 14 — First Round Finale And just like that — blink, sip, argue, repeat — the First Round hits last call. Today closes the opening stretch of the Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries, where 64 publicly nominated breweries from Washington and Oregon entered the ring and, by midnight, only 32 will remain — leaner, louder, and suddenly carrying the full weight of your
The Daily Outside: Birding Walk, Peck Greenspace, Fleet Feet 4.14.26 Tuesday stretches itself across the day like a slow, satisfying exhale — birds at dawn, dirt under the fingernails by afternoon, and a few honest miles to shake it all loose by evening Sehmel Homestead Park Birding Walk, where the morning starts on boardwalks and ends with a handful of sightings stitched into memory Sehmel Homestead Park Birding WalkHosted by Tahoma Bird AllianceTuesday, April 14, 2026 • 8–10:30 a.m.10123 78th Ave NW, Gig HarborFree • All ages and skill levels welcome; minors must be accompanied by an adult. Morning arrives
Ice cider begins, as all the best indulgences do, with patience and a quiet flirtation with winter. The method nods to ice wine — fruit yielding to the cold, sugars concentrating as water slips away — but here the apple steps forward, no longer the humble orchard extra but the star, deepened and slowed and just a little indulgent. In colder pockets of Canada and Northern Europe, cidermakers freeze or press apples into a dense, golden concentrate, then let time and fermentation do their hushed, deliberate work, shaping something that feels less like cider and more like a conversation between
Peaks & Pints bartenders Mitchell and Monica are excited for today’s Wayfinder versus Brujos game. Peaks & Pints Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries April 13 The bracket had a weekend to sit with itself. No votes. No last-minute swings. No frantic refreshing of percentages while someone across the room insists their brewery “still has a shot.” Just a pause — long enough to revisit the matchups, replay the close calls, and quietly commit to whatever logic (or loyalty) has been guiding your decisions. Because now we’re back. And the First Round is entering its final
There are beer weeks, and then there is Bellingham Beer Week — that misty, slightly unhinged stretch of April when a college town with a philosopher’s shrug and a brewer’s backbone decides to turn the volume up just enough. It began without permission slips or corporate choreography, more a friendly uprising than a festival, a loose coalition of breweries agreeing that celebration should feel like a living thing. What followed was not tidy. It spilled. Tap lists bled into sidewalks, collaborations arrived like unexpected weather, and the whole town began to hum with that low, collective understanding that beer is
Goodall Day Beach Cleanup at Foss Waterway Seaport: Start with music and meaning, then grab a bag and give the shoreline a little dignity back. Jane would approve. Photo courtesy of South Sound Surfinder Facebook The Daily Outside: Snowshoe, Goodall Day 4.12.26 Sunday trims itself down to a two-act wonder — alpine hush and shoreline purpose — less spectacle, more soul, and still more than enough proof the outdoors refuses to be just one thing Snowshoe Guided Experience, where Sunday trades pavement for powder and learns how winter actually works Snowshoe Guided ExperienceHosted by National Park
Kings & Daughters Brewery did not arrive in Oregon beer wearing steel-toe boots and shouting about dominance; they slipped in like a beautifully dressed secret, all elegance, nerve, and quiet confidence. Founded in 2021 by Kyle Larsen and Kacie McMackin, the Hood River project grew from years spent wandering through very different beer cultures and deciding, with admirable restraint, not to mimic the loudest voice in the room. Kyle’s path runs from Full Sail through a long, steady stretch at Double Mountain, across the Atlantic to Siren Craft Brew in England, then back again to lead Trap Door before this
Peaks & Pints Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries April 11 Six days in, and the bracket takes a deep, steady breath. Not every day needs chaos. Not every matchup needs a last-minute surge or a photo-finish gasp. Sometimes the story is simpler — clearer lines, firmer choices, the kind of results that feel less like arguments and more like decisions. Day Six didn’t flicker. It held. Let’s weed through the malt. Friday, April 10, First Round Games Results GAME 1, NORTHERN WASHINGTON REGION 7. Reuben’s Brews vs. 10. Fremont Brewing Reuben’s Brews moves forward with 75 percent of the
Crystal Mountain Ski Resort has officially entered its most glorious, unhinged phase today. Photo courtesy of Crystal Mountain Facebook The Daily Outside: Bikinis on snow, boots in the forest … 4.11.26 Saturday refuses to pick a lane — bikinis on snow, boots in the forest, hands in the soil, and just enough wild curiosity to make the whole day feel like a very good idea. Return of the Bikini Downhill, where spring skiing drops the pretense and leans all the way into joyful absurdity for a very good cause Return of the Bikini DownhillPresented by Elysian
The Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries hits Day 6 today, and the bracket has officially stopped playing nice. What began as casual taps and easy votes has sharpened into something more revealing — preferences stepping out of the shadows, loyalties digging in, every matchup carrying just a little more consequence than the last. You’re not just picking breweries anymore; you’re choosing what matters — precision or personality, legacy or lift, the quiet masters or the beautifully loud contenders. This flight pours that tension straight into the glass. Five beers, each tied to today’s battles on Peaks’ Instagram Stories, each
Peaks & Pints bartenders Matthew and Amber celebrate the first week of Tournament games. Peaks & Pints Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries April 10 Day 6 of the Peaks & Pints Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries, and the bracket has officially lost its innocence. The early days were all curiosity — scrolling, sampling, maybe flipping a coin between two good options and calling it instinct. But now? Now you’ve seen enough to know how you vote. You know what matters to you. Maybe it’s legacy — the brewery that’s always been there.Maybe it’s precision
Wes Finger talks about place and patience on Grit & Grain Episode 185. Mashing-In News: Bellingham Beer Week, Spotlight Brewing Opens GOOD MORNING, SOUTH PUGET SOUND! Friday, April 10, 2026 — Haley Joel Osment turns 37 today! The craft beer world wakes up buzzing today — part community heartbeat, part industry chessboard, part sunlit pint on a ferry deck — as stories of place, pressure, celebration, and stubborn creativity ripple across the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Wes Finger Talks Place and Process on Grit & Grain Grit & Grain Podcast Episode 185 features Kulshan Brewing’s Wes
Some flights arrive loud, flexing ABV and bravado right out of the gate. This one takes a different route — Bright Hops, Slow Burn — beginning in that easy, sunlit register where everything feels fresh, aromatic, almost weightless, and then, almost imperceptibly, turning the dial. What starts as a breeze becomes a current, becomes a pull, becomes something with gravity. You don’t notice the shift at first. You just keep sipping, smiling, maybe saying something like “oh, this is nice,” as the hops flicker and glow and behave like polite little fruit-forward ambassadors of joy. But then the structure starts
Peaks & Pints bartender Monica and Trish can’t believe all the blow-outs yesterday. Peaks & Pints Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries April 9 Five days in, and the bracket has started to separate those who’ve been tested from those still waiting their turn. Some breweries have already taken a hit — felt the weight of a full day’s voting, watched a lead shrink, or held on just long enough to move forward. Others are just stepping into that moment now, fresh, unproven, and about to find out how quickly things can turn. And that difference
There are flights that behave, that pour neatly into categories and call it a day. This is not that flight. This is channel-surfing at 1 a.m. with the volume a little too high and the remote nowhere to be found — horror bleeding into cartoons, static snapping into citrus, pastry stout crashing the scene like an uninvited but somehow welcome guest. Every pour nods to a screen somewhere — cult film, strange TV, something half-remembered and slightly warped — and each one leans all the way into its role without asking permission. It moves like a binge you didn’t plan.
Peaks & Pints bartenders Monica and Phaedra discuss the Cloudburst versus Fast Fashion game, and our crappy dishwasher during day four of the Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries. Peaks & Pints Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries April 8 Four days in, and the bracket starts asking a different question. Not who makes the best beer — that’s too easy, too clean, too polite for what’s actually happening here — but what we mean when we say “best” in the first place. Because the results so far don’t line up neatly. They don’t behave. One
There are holidays that politely suggest celebration, and then there’s National Beer Day — the one that kicks the door open with a crooked grin and a bit of history tucked into its back pocket. April 7, 1933, the Cullen–Harrison Act flickers to life, Prohibition loosens its grip, and suddenly America remembers how to gather again — around pints, around conversation, around that simple, radical pleasure of something fermented and alive. Peaks & Pints leans all the way in, turning Basecamp Proctor into a living echo of that moment, a room full of glasses raised not just for the beer,
Some regions make beer. The Pacific Northwest makes breweries — strange, stubborn, rain-fed institutions. Peaks & pints bartenders Matthew and Amber discuss our region’s beer scene and the eight “best” breweries battling today. Peaks & Pints Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries April 7 Two days in, and the bracket is starting to tighten its grip. Opening Day was curiosity. Day Two was momentum. Day Three? This is where it starts to feel a little personal. Some breweries have already moved on, settling into the comfort of survival. Others are staring down the narrow window that
Somewhere between orchard discipline and full-on wilderness, the berries take over. They creep, they climb, they stain everything in sight, and thank goodness for that. This week’s Monday Cider Flight leans into the mess in the best possible way — juicy blackberry, dusky huckleberry, a lift of lemon, a whisper of herbs — all tethered just enough by crisp apples to keep things from spinning into jammy oblivion. Five pours, one quiet reminder that the edges of the orchard are where the real flavor lives. Long before cider flights and tidy tasting boards, the Northwest already knew this story by
Peaks & Pints bartenders Mitchell and Monica grab the mics for Day Two of the Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries. Peaks & Pints Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries April 6 And just like that, the bracket has a pulse — not a polite one, not a resting one, but something alive, twitching, occasionally unpredictable, like it had a pint too fast and decided to lean into it. Opening Day shook loose the nerves, rattled a few assumptions, and reminded everyone that this thing doesn’t run on logic so much as loyalty, timing, and who
3 Floyds Brewing — the beautifully unhinged, cult-favorite hop sorcerers from Indiana — just landed in Washington this week, courtesy of Odom Corp, and yes, we’re celebrating the only way that makes sense: by pouring it. National Beer Day at Peaks & Pints: 3 Floyds Brewing There are days that hum politely along the calendar, nodding at you like a courteous neighbor, and then there is April 7 — National Beer Day — which kicks the door open with a frothy grin, smells faintly of rebellion, and whispers, “Remember when we weren’t allowed to have nice
Sunday, April 5, Peaks & Pints becomes part jazz room, part cellar séance, part beautifully unreasonable excuse to spend an afternoon with wild Belgian beer in your glass. The Kareem Kandi World Orchestra’s 2026 KKWO Music Festival Tour runs through May 8, with the Peaks stop serving as a kind of opening chord: The Whopper Johns from 4 to 5:30 p.m., then Sheryl Clark and the Saxtoons from 6:30 to 8 p.m. — groove easing into brass, warmth bending into joy, the whole room slowly learning how to listen again. And lambic, of course, is its own kind of music
Help restore Swan Creek Park with Parks Tacoma today. The Daily Outside: Swan Creek Hug, Hermit Crabs Hustle 4.5.26 Sunday gets its hands dirty and its eyes wide — a little mud under the nails, a little saltwater wonder, and the quiet satisfaction of helping something thrive before watching something wild eat. Sunday … in the park Swan Creek Work Party Hosted by Parks Tacoma Park Volunteers Sunday, April 5 • 12–2 p.m. Swan Creek Park, E 42nd St & Roosevelt Ave, Tacoma Free • Registration through MyImpact Some outdoor plans are built around views and
Some flights are tidy, polite, built for casual sipping and responsible decision-making. This is not that flight. This is Dreams, Resin, and Consequences Flight — a slow climb from soft, tropical suggestion into full-blown hop delirium, where mango haze leans into citrus voltage, where structure tightens, bitterness sharpens, and somewhere along the way you realize you’ve stepped into a story that has no interest in ending quietly. It starts with a gentle glow — plush, sunlit, almost disarming — then gathers momentum in subtle, deliberate turns, each pour nudging the dial higher, deeper into resin, into warmth, into that low
And off we go. … Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries Opening Day results Sixty-four Washington- and Oregon-brewed breweries — not beers, not styles, but full-on living, breathing beer ecosystems — were tapped by the people for this year’s Tournament of Beer, which kicked off yesterday with two games in the Northern Washington region and two in the Southern Oregon region. Brackets are already pinned to refrigerators, whispered about in taprooms, debated over pints that suddenly feel more important than they did 24 hours ago. Loyalties have been declared. Group chats have been activated. Ballard has
Still water, tall firs, and the quiet mirror of the forest inside Point Defiance Park. The Daily Outside: Mt. Rainier Snowshoe, Bird Walk, Point Defiance Hikes … 4.4.24 Saturday fans out in all directions — birds in the back woods, boots on forest trails, snow underfoot on the mountain, and somewhere in between, the quiet urge to grow something beautiful or delicious and call it your own. Snowshoe into the hush, where the mountain lowers its voice and winter asks you to pay attention Snowshoe Guided Experience Hosted by the National Park Service Saturday, April 4
Friday’s New Beer Six-Pack hits like a bi-coastal hop summit — Midwest muscle colliding with Astoria finesse, all citrus oil, pine snap, velvet haze, and one mellow amber landing to bring you back to earth. Peaks & Pints New Beer Six-Pack 4.3.26 Friday’s New Beer Six-Pack storms in like a two-coast hop summit — 3 Floyds bringing the Midwest muscle, Fort George countering with Astoria precision — all citrus oil, pine snap, velvet haze, and one calm amber exhale at the end. 3 FLOYDS BREWING DREADNAUGHT DOUBLE IPA: A hulking wave of grapefruit rind, sticky pine,
There are tournaments, and then there are pilgrimages disguised as brackets — and the Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries lands firmly in that second, slightly more transcendent category. Sixty-four breweries, all humming with regional identity, all shaped by rain, river, orchard, mountain, and the quiet, stubborn creativity that defines this corner of the country. It began at 12:01 a.m. this morning, a moment just strange enough to feel ceremonial, with Georgetown (#1) facing Stemma (#16), Lucky Envelope (#8) meeting Urban Family (#9) in a Seattle-on-Seattle meditation on style and intent, Pelican (#7) lining up against Monkless (#10), and Deschutes
Robyn Schumacher drops wisdom on the Grit & Grain Podcast about building Washington’s beer future from the ground up. Mashing-In News: PNW Brewery Showdown, Robyn Schumacher Podcast GOOD MORNING, SOUTH PUGET SOUND! Friday, April 3, 2026 — Eddie Murphy turns 65 today! Good morning, South Puget Sound—today’s craft beer news swings from bracket-busting brewery battles and hop-world breakthroughs to pilsner plot twists, ballpark beers, and the quiet, stubborn math of an industry learning how to bend without breaking. Tournament of Beer Returns with PNW Brewery Showdown Peaks & Pints launches its 2026 Tournament of Beer: Best
Peaks & Pints bartenders Matthew Usher and Phaedra Miller discuss how this year’s Tournament doesn’t involve styles but actually the best brewery in Washington and Oregon. Peaks & Pints Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries Begins! Some regions make beer. The Pacific Northwest makes breweries — strange, stubborn, rain-fed organisms that take root between mountain shadow and saltwater, between hop field and highway, between a brewer’s quiet obsession and a community’s need for somewhere to land at the end of the day. And that’s the thing, really. Beer is the product. Breweries are the story. Over
Long before beer became branding, before haze turned fluorescent and cans started yelling from coolers, there was Tadcaster — limestone water, old stone, and Samuel Smith’s Old Brewery quietly doing its thing since 1758. Not merely old, but enduring, Yorkshire’s oldest brewery and one of the few remaining independents in England, stubborn in all the right ways: water still drawn from the original well, ales and stouts fermented in stone Yorkshire squares, tradition handled not as relic but as something alive, tuned, and still very much in motion. That discipline is what gives Samuel Smith its peculiar gravity. This is
