Keith Henson Octet will perform at B Sharp Coffee House tonight. THURSDAY, FEB. 2 2017: Tacoma events paired with craft beer … B Sharp Coffee House + Peaks and Pints = Oscar and Oskar G. Donnalson’s + Silver City Brewery = romantic THE GREAT EIGHT The Keith Henson Octet will perform an extensive repertoire of jazz and American songbook standards at 8 p.m. in B Sharp Coffee House in downtown Tacoma. Led by Henson, expect five-horn arrangements from composers Shorty Rogers, Harry Warren, Mingus, Coltrane and others. PREFUNK: Why look, here comes one of Western Pennsylvania’s
MORNING FOAM FOR THURSDAY FEB. 2 2017: A seven-taster flight of craft beer and cider news, from the fluffy head all the way to the bottom love. … Gig Harbor Brewing Co. has been busy this winter. It just released its seasonal beer, Gig Harbor Spice Winter Ale. It’s also barrel-aging its beers, with a barrel-aged Imperial Stout currently on tap in its Tacoma taproom. Oregon dominated the 2017 Best of Craft Beer Awards, taking home more than twice as many medals as any other state. In a blind taste test with 88 certified beer judges, Oregon won 64 medals altogether, 18
Kali and hi Ancestors In Training perform at The Valley tonight. WEDNESDAY, FEB. 1 2017: South Sound events + craft beer … The Valley + Peaks and Pints = Family Tacoma Comedy Club + Parkway Tavern = Trickster Broadway Center + Pint Defiance = Silver and Soo SO STREET Kali Stoddard-Imari and his Ancestors In Training is a Boston-based band comprised of street musicians and open mic junkies with a passion for meeting new people and playing as much good music as possible. The body and soul moving music that emanates from the folk pop, rhythm
Something curious is happening in the beer universe — a quiet tectonic wiggle beneath the barstools. Friday afternoon used to mean a fluorescent Safeway aisle and a dutiful six-pack of something cold, familiar, and forgettable. Now the ritual tilts sideways. The modern beer mom or dad slips into places like Peaks & Pints for a quick pint that tastes like someone actually cared, fills a 64-ounce growler like a small amber time capsule, and glides back home just in time for dinner, still smelling faintly of citrus peel and good decisions. And yet, out beyond the glow of the tap
TUESDAY, JAN. 31 2017: And it was good … The Grand Cinema + Peaks and Pints = Heavenly CLEVER SPIRITUAL COMEDY Cheerily sacrilegious, the inventive comic fantasy The Brand New Testament by Belgian director Jaco Van Dormael is narrated by a 10-year-old girl in Brussels (Pili Groyne) who’s neglected by her drunken mother (Yolande Moreau) and beaten by her frustrated father (Benoît Poelvoorde). Imagining him as God and herself as Jesus’s kid sister, she vows revenge and hits the streets to recruit a homeless man as her Peter and various other lost souls as her disciples. Catch this wackiness at
Meet the American roughneck, Chinook. This hop is usually used for its bitterness but has lately gained popularity for the aromatics it imparts in many American craft beers across the style spectrum. The Chinook hop is a cross between the Petham Golding and USDA-selected male (#63012, if you want to be specific), and was first released from the breeding program in 1985. Primarily grown in the Yakima region of Washington state, this hop is primarily used for its high alpha acid content as a bittering hop. These days, however, late additions and even dry-hopping with Chinook is becoming more popular.
MONDAY, JAN. 30 2017: Blue Mouse Theatre + Peaks and Pints = Flight The Power MORE WIZARDS J.K. Rowling will always be aces in Peaks and Pints’ book. Got an entire generation interested in reading. Gave away so much of her money that she no longer qualifies as a billionaire. So yeah, she can milk the wizarding crap for the rest of her life as far as we’re concerned. Warner Bros. seems to agree, having allowed Rowling for the first time to adapt her own work in the form of Fantastic Beasts, a story that predates Harry Potter’s by some
Three Magnets teamed up with Diana Arens, former producer of the radio show Free Things Are Cool, program director at KAOS Olympia Community Radio, audio engineer at Dub Narcotic and Yoyo Studios, show organizer and Riot Grrrl band member who wanted to create “a strong beer for strong women.” The result is Free Things Are Cool Stock Ale, an 8.3% English strong ale. MORNING FOAM FOR MONDAY, JAN. 30 2017: A seven-taster flight of craft beer news, from the fluffy head all the way to the bottom beard bib. … Olympia’s Three Magnets Brewing Co. collaborated
Peaks and Pints has a proclivity toward lists and the ranking of favorites. High Fidelity inspires desert island-record discussions. March Madness is a drug. And when we were just Hills and Schooners, we’d sit cross-legged in the living room, surrounded by sorted mounds of Halloween candy and conduct elaborate trades and negotiations based on our arbitrarily prized possessions. The point being: we’re no different today. Building a desert island list is a delicate task. With records, you need to take into account all the different styles, eras, and at least one sentimental favorite. You probably want some reggae in there, being
Happy Sunday, Peaks & Pints pals—did we make it? Did we finally, collectively emerge from the flu-fog, shake off the sinusy shivers, and remember how to taste things again? Judging by the bustling clink of our bottle shop, the warm hum of the taproom, and the general return of color to everyone’s faces, it looks like the great immune comeback of 2023 is officially underway. January is exhaling its final frostbitten breath, February looms with promises of stouts, love, and Groundhog-related mysteries, and meanwhile, we’ve been joyfully stalking you on Instagram all week long. Snow-drenched crowlers, frosty pint selfies, and
Regional bragging rights. Office betting pools. Weekend afternoon boredom. These are all worthwhile reasons to be a sports fan. But for Peaks and Pints’ money, the best defense of sports’ spectators has to be the vicarious thrill that we get from seeing athletes do all the cool stuff we can’t do. So unless you already know how to dance atop a stack of chairs or juggle jars, desks, ladders, and bamboo with your feet, you’ll want to check out The Peking Acrobats in the Pantages Theater at 3 p.m. Unless you’re completely dead on the inside, there should still be
Sam Calagione didn’t so much open a brewery in 1995 as light a fuse in a Rehoboth Beach pub kitchen, tinkering with beer at Dogfish Head Brewings & Eats back when it was the smallest commercial brewery in America and proudly felt like it. What followed wasn’t a sellout arc but a slow-motion dare: scaling up without sanding down the weird. By the early 2000s, Dogfish Head had leapt from scrappy, stove-top ambition to a 100,000-square-foot fermentation playground in Milton, Delaware, proving you could grow big and still behave like a curious, slightly unhinged mad scientist. Today they’re one of
SATURDAY, JAN. 28 2017: Tacoma events + craft beer … Doyle’s Public House + Peaks and Pints = Cody Ray and the New Favorites and the Chicocabra Tacoma Little Theatre and The Eleven Eleven = Wild Tacoma GUITAR DRIVEN In May 2014, Cody Ray Raymond and Jesse Turcotte formed Cody Ray and the New Favorites, each adding exceptional guitar skills, experience and huge hearts to the neo-soul/R&B funk-rock fusion group. Catch the guitar-driven, power-trio soul and blues explosion in Doyle’s Public House at 10 p.m. PREFUNK: Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.’s Beer Camp is the ultimate brewing experience. The Chico, California
Our beer flight doesn’t so much travel east as slip into a transcontinental daydream, a Craft Beer Crosscut that hums along the old rails of American brewing ambition, headed straight for the misty, monastery-tinged hills of the East Coast. Brewery Ommegang arrived in 1997 like a love letter written in yeast and reverence, pitching a Flemish farmhouse fantasy onto a former hop farm in Cooperstown, New York, and daring America to fall hard for Belgian soul. With Belgian beer sage Don Feinberg whispering sacred fermentation spells into the kettles, Ommegang brewed saisons, dubbels, tripels, and other holy relics with monk-level
FRIDAY, JAN. 27 2017: Tacoma music + craft beer … Dystopian State + Wingman Brewers + Peaks and Pints = Gigantic Sometimes you just need to bang your head. At least we do, and tonight’s head-banging option will satiate any and all neck-injuring, hair-thrashing needs you may have. Get ready for some hair metal rippers as Scorpions tribute band Dark Lady rock you like a hurricane in Dystopian State Brewing Co.’s taproom at 8 p.m. Also of note: Colin Scott Reynolds (frontman for alt-country stylists the Silver Dollars, drummer for both slippery math-rock act Etchings and crunchy alt-rockers Watermelon
After being relentlessly hounded by a spamming cake marketer — which conjured up horrific mental imagery of frosting — we are capitulating. We will inform you that today, Friday, is National Chocolate Cake Day. In the spirit of National Chocolate Cake Day – which has yet to be declared an official holiday – we’re playing to your craft beer. Luckily for us craft beer lovers, there are many delicious and unique chocolate beers being crafted by U.S. breweries — just in time for this national day. We present Craft Beer Crosscut 1.27.17: A Flight of Chocolate Beer, our beer flight
THURSDAY, JAN. 26 2017: South Sound events + craft beer and cider … Tacoma Comedy Club + Peaks and Pints = Tasting beer Broadway Center + Rainier Growlers = Walking Harlequin Production + Fish Tale Brewpub = Corrie & Chocolate & Cherry STAND UP COMEDY Probably best known as the cop in Dumb & Dumber who tastes a “beer” that more than smells like piss, Canadian actor-comedian Harland Williams has been doing some of the quirkiest stand-up around for years. His observational humor comes wrapped in a conventional appearance and stable, intelligent persona that can go off the deep end
Wonderfilled MORNING FOAM FOR THURSDAY, JAN. 26 2017: A seven-taster flight of craft beer and cider news, from the fluffy head all the way to the bottom show trick. … April 2, Portland Farmhouse and Wild Ale Festival and the inaugural Farmhouse Weekend will celebrate the rustic, working-class, yeast-driven beers that originated in France and Belgium but have had a new renaissance in the United States. The Lost Abbey Cuvee de Tomme is back in bottles. Last bottled in 2013, the quad — brewed with raisins, and aged with Brettanomyces in bourbon, brandy and red wine
Sierra Nevada Brewing Company was founded in 1980, and is credited with starting the craft beer movement. We present Craft Beer Crosscut 1.26.17: A flight of Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., two days before the release of the Sierra Nevada Chicocabra Imperial Chocolate Stout. Craft Beer Crosscut 1.26.17: A flight of Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale 5.6% ABV, 38 IBUs Sierra Nevada’s Pale Ale has been the beer drinker’s gateway craft brew for more than three decades. Peaks and Pints doesn’t know how many times we’ve heard someone tell us that, for some reason, they ordered a Sierra
WEDNESDAY, JAN. 25 2017: South Sound events + craft beer … Washington State History Museum + Peaks and Pints = Then and Now Olympia Film Society + Northwest Beerwerks = Voodoo and White Russians King’s Books + The Red Hot = Presidents and pFriems HIGHBROW BREW Washington State History Museum newest exhibit, Steins, Vines & Grinds, explores the culture and industry-related stories of three libations that continue to be wildly popular in the Evergreen State — beer, wine and coffee. The exhibit follows a general timeline through movements in the industries, beginning in pre-statehood then follows an arc of early
Peaks and Pints use to love Tuesdays. Sandwiched between the protracted psychotic episode of Monday and the soul-crushing tedium of Wednesday, Tuesday is a peanut-buttery buffer of soothingly mediocre experiences. Productivity is high, outlook positive and acid reflux pleasantly fruity. Well, not anymore. In some belated — and misguided — response to Thursday being the new Friday, Tuesday has become the new Wednesday … or Monday … or both. Want to schedule a 6 a.m. breakfast meeting? How’s Tuesday look for you? Family emergencies? Bad hair? Exhausting games of one-upmanship with the office alpha male? Ah, Tuesday, we see you
Remember when you knew how to relax? It was probably before you had an iPhone, before you had kids, before you had a job that demanded 70 hours a week — plus weekends. Relaxation, we’re afraid, is a dying art (especially this time of year). That’s why we offer a five craft beer flight of tropical chill today. So pawn the kids off on Grandma, put your phone down, and get ready to swallow one seriously giant chill pill. Step one: Deep breath, South Sound. Step two: Grab today’s Craft Beer Crosscut sample flight of tropical-themed brews intended to give you
Celebrate Beer Can Appreciation Day at Peaks and Pints in Tacoma. Yes, it’s Beer Can Appreciation Day today, commemorating that storied day in 1935 when the world was introduced to a beautiful and paradigm-changing concept: canned beer. Krueger Brewing Company of Richmond, Virginia walked into a grocery store carrying a steel can that weighed in at almost 4 ounces and opened with a church key. Not long after, beer cans fell out of vogue. Not so anymore: today, the beer can industry is overflowing with smartly designed graphics and artwork on canned beer. Many believe that
Season of Strangers performs at The Valley tonight. MONDAY, JAN. 23 2017: South Sound events + craft beer … The Valley + Peaks and Pints = 1980s and 1990s Rhythm & Rye + Pig Bar = Legit SHOEGAZE SEASON Tacoma musician Lino Fernandez has been rocking the South Sound in way or another, from garage rock band the Dignitaries to pop band Bandolier to the all-Filipino Hall and Oates cover band the Little Donuts. Fernandez’ new band, Season of Strangers, is a pretty substantial departure from his other projects. With Mandy McGee, the two singers drench
My name is Scrump, pronounced with a “ump”. MORNING FOAM FOR MONDAY, JAN. 23 2017: A seven-taster flight of craft beer and cider news, from the fluffy head all the way to the bottom spins. … The rise of the incredible, edible IPA: From tacos to milkshakes, food flavors are being cooked into an unlikely beer style: the India pale ale. With a few days left in January Fish Brewing Company has released their planned releases for Spring 2017. 2 Towns Ciderhouse out of Corvallis, Oregon has released their latest imperial seasonal cider Serious Scrump in
Craft Beer Crosscut 1.23.17: A Flight of Scotch Ales Scottish style beers can be a malt lover’s dream beer, with its smooth sweetness and body. The epitome of malty, scotch ales are boiled twice as long as ordinary beer, caramelizing the sugars to build these deep flavors of maple and molasses. Recipes may include peat-smoked malt, which can lend smoky, earthy tones to the aroma and flavor. Scottish ales commonly fall into four general types: Light, Heavy, Export and the Scotch Ale. Historically these distinctions carried labels of the shilling currency, which reflected the price charged per barrel of beer
Whether you’ve been on Instagram since its beginnings in 2010 or you’re an Instagram neophyte, you know keeping up on important photos can be overwhelming. If you follow everything and everyone you find interesting, you can end up with hundreds and hundreds of Instagram posts showing up in your feed on a daily basis. Don’t despair. Peaks and Pints shares important and pointless IG posts from craft breweries’ IG accounts every Sunday so you may catch up on horses that pose with beers and the latest action along the production line. This week, beer syrup, hop beards, black latex beer
It’s a wickedly simple concept. Gather ye together five craft beers, pour 5-ounce samples of each and drink and self-deprecate and laugh easily and look at the chap next to you and chat up the crazy mixture of styles. But, you know, in a good way. Today’s Peaks and Pints Craft Beer Crosscut sample flight is a hodgepodge of goodness. Private Weissbierbrauerei G. Schneider Und Sohn Schneider Aventinus Weizen-Eisbock 12% ABV, 15 IBUs Eisbock is a traditional German beer that is made by freezing off and removing water to further concentrate flavor, body and alcohol content. In other words, eisbocks
For single-minded devotion to quality, purity and tradition, the Trappist monks of Belgium are hard to match, especially when it comes to ale. It doesn’t take much imagination to get carried away picturing them at their work. Seated at their rough-hewn tables, clothed in their coarse robes, they spend hours in the serenity of silent prayer and study. Then the word goes out it’s time to brew the beer and like so many elves, off they go to perform their sacred chores. Unibroue founders André Dion and Serge Racine took beer brewing techniques used by said monks and brought them
FRIDAY, JAN. 20 2017: South Sound events + craft beer … Broadway Center + Peaks and Pints = Oregon craziness Olympia Film Society + Three Magnets Brewing Co. = Olympia craziness MARCHING TO A DIFFERENT DRUM Will saxophone-playing stilt-walkers ever get old? Even over a decade later, no one throws a party like a punk-rock marching band. Portland-based MarchFourth is a big band spectacular, consisting of a brassy assemblage of saxophones, trombones, trumpets, and a raucous drum/percussion corps anchored by a wireless electric bass. The group is also accompanied by world-class stilt-walkers, executing acrobatics and spinning fire six feet up.
MORNING FOAM FOR FRIDAY, JAN. 20, 2017: A seven-taster flight of craft beer news, from the fluffy head all the way to the bottom thank you! … Washington Beer Commission’s 8th Annual Belgianfest takes place at Seattle Center’s Fisher Pavilion Saturday, Jan. 28. There are two separate sessions: afternoon and evening. The event will feature 42 Washington Breweries pouring more than 110 unique, innovative and delicious Belgian-style, Washington-brewed beers. Check out the 2017 Belgianfest beer list here. North Jetty Brewing and Heathen Brewing collaborated to produce an imperial red ale that captures the relentless spirit of the Washington coast. Graveyard of the Pacific is
In 2015, Oregon’s breweries crafted 1,700,000 barrels of beer. (A barrel is 248 pints.) Beer contributed $4.49 billion to the state’s economy and employs roughly 31,000 Oregonians directly and indirectly, from the guy who drives that beer truck all over Portland, to the woman working her family hop farm in the Willamette Valley, to the dude mushing thirsty peddlers around Bend on the Cycle Pub. But perhaps the snazziest stat is that of all the beer sold in state, 22 percent was made within its borders. In that same year, Oregon’s craft brewers sold 1.048 million barrels outside of Oregon,
THURSDAY JAN. 19 2017: Drink up South Sound … YEE-HAW Cowboy literature isn’t exactly an oxymoron, although it is a rare breed. Its authors publish books of vernacular verse, but are part of a living oral tradition that sticks close to its working-class roots. Tacoma Art Museum hosts a Western Reading Club at 7 p.m. Join fellow enthusiasts of the American West in roundtable discussions and hear from guest facilitators. PREFUNK: Peaks and Pints feels fortunate every time we tap a Holy Mountain Brewing Co. craft beer. These days, the demand for all things Holy Mountain is so high that
Everyone loves a sampler platter. Buffalo wings, chicken tenders, eggrolls, potato skins — who wants to choose? Decisions can be tough, sometimes too tough to make. Especially when it comes to cider. There are just too many ciders out there — black and white, dry to sweet, apple to pear. Fortunately, the Peaks and Pints Craft Cider Crosscut 1.19.17 flight is all about cider. Seattle Cider Company Dry Cider 6.5% ABV Seattle Cider Company, the city’s first post-Prohibition cider producer, delivers delicious artisan products. With zero percent residual sugar, its Dry is a very dry cider in a classical style.
We’ll miss you Mr. Kevin Lind! WEDNESDAY, JAN. 18 2017: South Sound events + craft beer … Tacoma Mountaineers + Peaks and Pints = Power To The People Tacoma Comedy Club + Pint Defiance = Laughs and Sticky Hands DANCING WITH SNOW Nothing really brings that dying-for-the-first-big-snowfall ache more than being reminded of the adrenaline rush and the awe-inspiring beauty of a winter playground landscape. The Backcountry Film Festival makes a stop in Tacoma tonight and is guaranteed to serve as that reminder. The Tacoma Mountaineers will screen the films at 7 p.m. It’s open to
MORNING FOAM FOR WEDNESDAY, JAN. 18 2017: A seven-taster flight of craft beer news, from the fluffy head all the way to the bottom man on the street. … For the third straight year, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau issued more than 1,000 new brewery permits, bringing the total number of permitted U.S. breweries to a record high of 7,190 in 2016. New Belgium Brewing’s new spring seasonal Whizbang, is a hoppy blonde ale with vibrant notes of mango, lemon, blueberry, and pine thanks to Mosaic, UK Admiral and Centennial dry-hopping. Celebrated by craft beer fanatics as
The holidays are intended to incite love, merriment and cheer. But with celebrations of Baby Jesus’ birth beginning months in advance, Peaks and Pints understands that the season’s overextension can instead provoke something else entirely — such as aggravation and a general sense of dread. Of course, this in turn triggers guilt — and by the time one resolves to just be happy, for cripes sake, Christmas is over. That is why Peaks and Pints presents a Craft Beer Crosscut 1.18.17: A flight of holiday craft beers. … Midnight Sun T.R.E.A.T. Imperial Chocolate Pumpkin Porter 7.8% ABV, 30 IBUs Midnight
Old Olympia Brewery Brew House, built 1906, part of the Tumwater Historic District, Tumwater, Washington, photo by Joe Mabel Washington state beer geeks, rejoice! Nerding out on your favorite malted beverage is officially highbrow. Saturday, Jan. 21, the Washington State History Museum unveils its newest exhibit, Steins, Vines & Grinds, exploring the culture and industry-related stories of three libations that continue to be wildly popular in the Evergreen State — beer, wine and coffee. Museumgoers will drink up the passion of beverage industry leaders connected with the unique climate and geography of our state to place
TUESDAY, JAN. 17 2017: South Sound series + craft beer … The Grand Cinema + Peaks and Pints = Olympic pRide, American pRejudice and pFriem Family Brewers The Valley + Narrows Brewing = Grape Jelly TUESDAY FILM SERIES It’s Tuesday, which means The Grand Cinema screens unique and thought-provoking films. At 2 p.m. and 6:45 p.m., the Tacoma indie movie house will show Olympic Pride, American Prejudice, a documentary that explores the hardships and achievements of 18 largely forgotten African American Olympic heroes who competed at the 1936 Summer Games in Berlin. After the 6:45 p.m. screening, Bernadette C. Ray
The nights are long. And cold. We decided to serve five beers as dark as the 5 p.m. sky for today’s Craft Beer Crosscut flight. The original “stout porters” of 18th century London were brewed for their heartiness in the face of harsh storage conditions; with any luck these five, 5-ounce pours will keep you just as well-preserved through the depths of winter. Peaks and Pints Craft Beer Crosscut for Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2017, spans the stout spectrum. … Against The Grain 35K 7% ABV, 26 IBUs Against the Grain’s bottles are full of attitude that jumps out at you
MONDAY, JAN. 16 2017: Tacoma events + craft beer … B Sharp Coffee House + Peaks and Pints = Speakeasy The Grand Cinema + Parkway Tavern = Infusion PROHIBITION BE DAMNED The Drys all like A game of bridge, And Wets are strong For Beveridge. That little ditty ran in the Ironwood Daily Globe June 8, 1920. The Ironwood, Michigan newspaper ran stories and poetry on Prohibition, which began on this date in history, 1920. The question on everyone’s mind is: Will the featured storytellers and open mic-ers at tonight’s Creative Colloquy session tell tale based on Prohibition? There’s no
Big Al Brewing closed its doors Saturday. MORNING FOAM FOR MONDAY, JAN. 16 2017: A seven-taster flight of craft beer news, from the fluffy head all the way to the bottom Russian neo-noir superhero craziness. … Eight years ago, the beer scene looked a lot different. Craft beer was exploding, and Big Al Brewing opened in White Center. But Saturday was its last call. Alejandro Brown, aka Big Al, closed his Big Al Brewing in White Center. Ecliptic Brewing’s award winning Capella Porter will finally be released in bottles. In 2016 Capella Porter won gold at
A five craft beer Cascade hop salute Today’s Peaks and Pints Craft Beer Crosscut flight is for the two bearded dudes wearing Sierra Nevada T-shirts arguing about the merits of Cascade hops in front of our cooler yesterday. If you had more than one American craft beer, chances are you’ve tasted Cascade hops. Named for the Cascade Mountain Range, Cascade hops — a crossbreed of English Fuggle and Russian Serebrianker — were developed by the U.S.D.A breeding program in Oregon and released to the public in 1972. Flavors of pine, citrus, and floral undertones give these
Ah yes, dear Peaks & Pints pals—the Snowpocalypse has descended like a frostbitten drama queen, draping the craft beer world in white silence and logistical chaos. Breweries lie still as monks in a winter trance. Brewers, those noble yeast whisperers, are reportedly stranded in snowbanks, muttering about mash temps and missing boots. Delivery trucks idle like abandoned sled dogs, and humans everywhere are finding increasingly creative, occasionally heroic ways to make it home—with beer, hopefully, still in hand. But fear not—amid the stillness, we see beauty: the cans artfully half-buried in snowdrifts, the crowlers posing like arctic explorers. Keep those
