Great Notion goes full fever-dream mode: cheesecake berries dripping in vanilla, dank haze humming in the corner, michelada spice kicking the table, and cosmic fruit sours glowing like neon candy. Peaks & Pints New Great Notion Six-Pack 4.28.26 This six-pack feels like a sugar-rushed daydream drifting through haze, spice, and savory tang — berries, churros, dank hops, michelada mischief, and an early May The Fourth all colliding in one gloriously unhinged Great Notion mood swing. Great Notion Brewing Double Strawberry Raspberry Cheesecake Fruited Sour: A decadent swirl of ripe berries and vanilla cream melts across a
Mosaic is the modern IPA hop that behaves like it has five passports and a fake mustache. Officially, it’s Mosaic HBC 369, developed by Hop Breeding Company and released in 2012. Its lineage is part famous parent, part sturdy backbone: Simcoe on one side, a Nugget-derived male on the other. That family tree matters. Simcoe brings citrus, pine, tropical fruit, and a little dank charisma; Nugget contributes bittering muscle, earth, and structure. The result is a hop named for exactly what it does — throws a whole mosaic of aroma at the taster glass: berry, citrus, stone fruit, tropical fruit,
Point Defiance in full breath — trails, trees, and the quiet reminder that places like this don’t just happen, they’re chosen. The Daily Outside: Parks Bond Vote, FeederWatch, Fleet Feet Puyallup 4.28.26 Tuesday’s Daily Outside moves between decisions and details — from ballots that shape the parks to the birds in your backyard to the miles that reset your evening. Parks, ballots, and the civic machinery behind all those trails Parks Tacoma — Proposition 1: 2026 Park Bond Tuesday, April 28 Special Election — ballots due by 8:00 p.m. Metropolitan Park District of Tacoma $155 million
Vice Beer co-owner Michael Perozzo raises a pint of his Ribbit Robot Hazy IPA after winning the Peaks & Pints Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries Saturday night. Mashing-In News: Vice Beer wins Tournament, CBC 2026 Recap GOOD MORNING, SOUTH PUGET SOUND! Tuesday, April 28, 2026 — Ann-Margret turns 83 today! The craft beer world wakes up humming — from helles-fueled festivals and industry-wide gatherings to legacy bars holding the line and quiet deals reshaping how the beer actually gets to your glass. Grit & Grain Covers Berlin, Beer Tours, and Industry Trends Grit & Grain
New arrivals don’t knock. They show up a little dusted with travel, a little charged with possibility, carrying whatever orchard, grove, or hillside they just left behind. This Monday flight is exactly that — the freshest drops to hit Peaks & Pints, five ciders still humming with first impressions, each one bringing its own accent of apple, bloom, berry, or citrus into the room. There’s no grand theme beyond curiosity and timing, just a clean snapshot of what’s new and worth your attention right now — from sharp, orchard-true clarity to floral wanderings, bramble bursts, electric citrus, and a final
Vice Beer co-founder Michael Perozzo raised his Ribbit Robot: Super Krush IPA in victory. Peaks & Pints Kitchen Kylee, left, and bartender Nicole call the Championship Game. Peaks & Pints Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries Winner and Recap It starts simply enough: grain, water, hops, yeast. But somewhere between those four elements and the first pour, something else takes over — place, memory, loyalty, the quiet gravity of a brewery that becomes yours without asking permission. This year, we didn’t chase a style. We chased something bigger. In February 2026, we
Structures Brewing has always carried itself like a quiet rebellion — born in Bellingham with a chef’s palate, a brewer’s restraint, and zero interest in shouting just to be heard. Since 2015, they’ve stacked medals and respect with a kind of calm inevitability: early Best New Brewery nods, Great American Beer Festival hardware, and a steady national hum around beers that don’t just meet style, they bend it slightly, reshape it, make it their own. Lagers with backbone. Haze with intention. Big beers that somehow keep their composure. And this year? Structures has moved through the Tournament of Beer like
Sun-chasing, slightly dramatic, and already plotting your best sandwich. Photo courtesy of Saša Radojčić The Daily Outside: Point Defiance Bird Walk, Growing Tomatoes 4.26.26 Sunday’s Daily Outside slows things down — a little patience, a little listening, and the quiet reward of noticing what’s been there all along. Old-growth quiet, borrowed binoculars, and the sudden authority of a woodpecker Parks Tacoma — Point Defiance Bird Walk Sunday, April 26, 2026 9:00–11:00 a.m. Point Defiance Park — Five Mile Drive Entrance 5771 Five Mile Drive, Tacoma Free | Drop-in | Outdoor bird walk | All ages welcome
From April 3–25, 2026, Peaks & Pints unleashed a beautifully unhinged experiment: 64 of the Pacific Northwest’s finest breweries, thrown into a malty, hop-slick, occasionally irrational cage match we call the Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries. The people chose the field back in February — nominations, loyalties, vendettas, that one brewery you swear tastes better because of a memory you can’t quite explain. And then the bracket began to eat itself. Some fell quietly, like a pint left half-finished. Others went down swinging — maybe a faulty mash paddle, maybe just bad timing, maybe they ran headlong into a
Wander around with the Tacoma Tree Foundation as they answer wonderings regarding the trees at historical Wright Park. The Daily Outside: Fishing Derby, Wright Park Trees, Drop-in Hikes … 4.25.26 Saturday’s Daily Outside moves between patience and planting — lines in cold water, boots on trail, hands in soil, and the quiet sense that spring is something you participate in, not just observe. Cold water, early lines, and the long patience of opening day Mineral Lake Lions Club — Mineral Lake Fishing DerbySaturday, April 25, 2026 (continues Sunday)All dayMineral Lake / Lion’s Den Campground113 E Front
Peaks & Pints Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries Championship Game Sixteen days in, and the bracket stops negotiating. This is where everything either breaks open… or locks shut. No more room for soft edges, no more space for “almost.” Just two games, two decisions, and one of them came down — once again — to the thinnest margin this tournament has seen. Let’s weed through the malt. Friday, April 24, Final Four Results GAME 1, WASHINGTON REGION 13. Vice Beer vs. 3. Stoup Brewing Vice does it again. At 51 percent, the Vancouver underdog slips through by the narrowest
Peaks & Pints New Beer Six-Pack 4.24.26 Friday’s suggested six-pack of new beer feels like a slow drift from sunlit patios to hop sermons and back again — lime, peach, honeyed breeze, and a cascade of citrus and resin, all somehow sharing the same strange, delicious afternoon. Bale Breaker Brewing La Más Buena Mexican Lager with Lime: Sunlit lime zest and soft corn sweetness flicker across a crisp, easy glide, as Bale Breaker keeps it breezy, clean, and quietly refreshing, like tacos, shade, and nowhere else to be, 5%, 16oz. Little Beast Brewing Rest In Peach Fruited Sour Ale: Sunlit
Four remain, and suddenly everything leans in — the room tighter, the light a shade lower, the decisions carrying a weight they didn’t have a week ago. What started as a wide, unruly chorus — votes, debates, late-night refreshes, the occasional “this is absolutely rigged” — has narrowed into something quieter and far more serious. No more hiding in the noise. No more lucky momentum. Just four breweries, each dragging along its own gravity — history, heat, hometown pride, that one perfect pint you still measure everything against. Two move on. Two fall away. From here, every sip feels like
Peaks & Pints bartenders Grace and Phaedra discuss the tight Washington games yesterday. Peaks & Pints Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries Final Four April 24 Four breweries. That’s it. After weeks of votes, arguments, late-night refreshes, and at least one “this is rigged” accusation about a publicly nominated, publicly voted tournament, we’re here — the part of the bracket where everything feels heavier and somehow more fragile at the same time. Because this is where the math disappears. No more big fields. No more hiding behind momentum or early-round chaos. Every brewery left has already
Finnriver Buckhorn Dry in our Campfire Crowler — crisp orchard apples, a clean Northwest snap, and just enough wild edge to feel like the breeze coming off Buckhorn Mountain on a clear day. Enjoy the Buckhorn after today’s outdoor events. The Daily Outside: Salt Air, Small Wild Things 4.23.26 Thursday’s Daily Outside leans toward the water in two ways — one close and contained, one wide open — where the inland sea shows itself in quick flashes of motion, from tank glass to lighthouse views. Hermit crabs, darting fish, and the small wild drama of snack
Finnriver Farm & Cidery doesn’t just make cider — it tends to the whole conversation. Soil, salmon stream, orchard row, pollinator drift — all of it folded into a philosophy that believes apples are only the beginning. Tucked into the Chimacum Valley on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, Finnriver has built its name on organic fruit, patient craft, and a quiet insistence that cider should reflect the land it comes from. The result is something grounded yet expressive, a style that can move from bone-dry precision to floral wanderings without losing its center — always rooted, always alive. There’s a certain kind
Peaks & Pints bartenders Casey and Monica can’t believe the crazy Stoup vs. Holy Mountain game yesterday. Peaks & Pints Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries Great Eight April 23 And now it cuts. Eight breweries remain, and the bracket has officially shed its manners. No more wide lanes, no more soft landings — just sharp edges and the kind of matchups that make you stare at your phone a little too long before tapping. This is where things stop being abstract. It’s no longer about résumés or reputation or how many medals line the wall.
This one drifts from velvet midnight indulgence to sunshine-in-a-can refreshment, with a quick detour through citrus chaos just to keep things interesting. Peaks & Pints New Beer Six-Pack 4.22.26 From bourbon-soaked midnight desserts to sunlit lagers and citrus-snap chaos, Wednesday’s New Beer Six-Pack drifts between velvet decadence and breezy refreshment, a lineup that refuses to pick a mood and tastes better for it. AleSmith Barrel-Aged Speedway Stout Islander Joy: A tropical midnight indulgence unfurls with bourbon warmth, dark chocolate, and coconut cream drifting into vanilla-laced silk, as AleSmith Brewing lets Vietnamese coffee anchor the decadence in a
“Let every individual and institution now think and act as a responsible trustee of Earth…” John McConnell drops this line like a clean bell in a noisy room — a hopeful, slightly idealistic call to arms that still feels like it might actually work if we’d all just stop doomscrolling long enough to listen. It’s the kind of sentiment that asks you, gently but firmly, to do better — in your habits, your choices, your quiet daily negotiations with the planet that keeps letting you wake up. Which, frankly, hits a little smoother than Agent Smith’s famously icy takedown in
Peaks & Pints bartenders Phaedra and Mitchell celebrated their sweet 16s. Peaks & Pints Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries April 22 And now it tightens. Not politely. Not gradually. No gentle easing into the next round like a well-behaved lager sliding into the glass. No — this is the part where the bracket cinches like a bootlace pulled too hard, where the room gets a little louder, the opinions a little sharper, and suddenly everyone’s acting like they’ve been a lifelong devotee of whichever brewery is currently up three percent. For more than two weeks,
On this Free Entrance Day, visitors can enjoy full access to participating state parks without a Discover Pass. The Daily Outside: Earth Day, Open Gates, Hands in the Soil — Earth Day April 22 Earth Day arrives less like a headline and more like a gentle widening — trails without tolls, gardens asking for hands, water holding stories just beneath its surface — a day that invites you to step outside and remember where you are. A campus hum of ideas, action, and small hopeful sparks UW Tacoma Earth Day Celebration Wednesday, April 22 • 11
Sixteen remain in the Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries, and the room feels different now — tighter, quieter, like something just leaned in and asked you to pay attention. For more than two weeks, this thing has unraveled beautifully: votes cast like vows, texts fired off in all caps, friendships wobbling over pint glasses, the simple question of “best brewery” turning into something oddly personal, faintly chaotic, and completely Tacoma. This is where identity shows itself. The Sweet 16 doesn’t care how you got here — only what you bring with you now. Legacy collides with momentum, precision brushes
Peaks & Pints bartender Matthew explains his theory on why Cloudburst could make a run for the Championship game. Peaks & Pints Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries April 21 Sixteen remain. For more than two weeks, we’ve asked a simple, completely reasonable question: What is the best brewery in Washington and Oregon? And you’ve responded like it’s anything but reasonable. Vacation days have been used. Neighbors have started feuds. Friendships have been “reconsidered.” At least one person has threatened to sell their wine cellar out of principle. It’s been… a lot. And now look at
The Daily Outside — Monday: Small moments, local miles, and just enough structure to reset the week. The Daily Outside: Backyard Birds, Neighborhood Miles 4.20.26 Monday’s Daily Outside keeps things close to home — a little attention at the feeder, a little motion through the neighborhood, both of them reminders that you don’t have to go far to feel like you went somewhere. Backyard birds and the quiet thrill of getting the ID right FeederWatch at the Tahoma Bird Alliance Office Monday, April 20, 2026 • 2–3 p.m. Tahoma Bird Alliance Office 2917 Morrison Rd W,
6-Pack of Things To Do in Tacoma: April 20–26 2026 April in Tacoma kicks the door open with a pollen-dusted grin and a pint in each hand — brackets tightening like drumheads, cider humming with orchard clarity, Earth Day stretching green fingers into every corner of the city, wrestlers flying through midair mythology, and somewhere in the swirl, a reminder that the best way to understand a place is to step into it and let it unfold. Peaks & Pints Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries Second Round Finale | Monday, April 20 The bracket tightens and suddenly everything carries
There are breweries that release beers, and then there’s Great Notion, which every April leans all the way into the strange little holiday orbiting 4/20 — not with subtle nods, but with a full, fruit-soaked, hop-saturated celebration of altered perspective, excess, and playful rebellion. Their annual 420 drop has become something of a Portland ritual: a rotating cast of hazy triples, smoothie sours, and “dank”-leaning IPAs that blur the line between beer and sensation, each one built to feel a little surreal, a little indulgent, a little like the rules quietly packed up and left town for the weekend. And
Grit & Grain Podcast sits down with Holy Mountain Brewing brewers Dan Cady and Meghan Michels. Mashing-In News: Holy Mountain Brewers, World Cup Beer GOOD MORNING, SOUTH PUGET SOUND! Monday, April 20, 2026 — George Takei turns 89 today! The craft beer world hums today with a kind of beautiful tension — brackets tightening, taps opening, legacies returning, and the quiet sense that everything from hop fields to global stages is shifting all at once. Tournament of Beer Nears Sweet 16 Showdown Tournament of Beer’s Second Round concludes April 20 with four pivotal matchups determining which
Peaks & Pints bartenders Mitchell and Monica call the final Second Round action. Peaks & Pints Tournament of Beer: Best PNW Breweries April 20 Today, the field tightens again. By midnight, we cut it to the Sweet 16 — a bracket that no longer guesses, no longer experiments, just moves. From here on out, every round gets sharper, faster, and far less forgiving. And then it comes quick. Fewer breweries. Heavier votes. No room to hide. But that’s ahead. Right now, it’s the final day of the Second Round. No easing into it. No catching up
Sunday settles into Tacoma like a low, velvet chord, and over at Kilworth Memorial Chapel the long-running Blues Vespers returns — that quietly sacred collision of music, poetry, and just enough soul-searching to make you sit up straighter in your own life. Tonight at 5 p.m., The Jay Mabin Band takes the stage with special guest Paul Green, dialing in a set that leans smoky, soulful, and just a little bit electric, the kind of blues that hums through the pews and lingers in the rafters, stitched together with reflection and a poem or two under the steady hand of
Touch a Snowcat at Crystal Mountain Ski Resort today. Photo courtesy of Christian Buergi The Daily Outside: Low Tide Tour, Meet the Cat Crew … 4.19.26 Sunday unfolds like a quiet recalibration — scraps to soil, tides to touch, machines to marvel at, forests to understand — a day that reminds you everything is connected if you slow down long enough to notice. Overview of Composting Methods, where your leftovers stage a quiet, earthy comeback Overview of Composting MethodsHosted by Pierce County Earth Matters SeriesSunday, April 19, 2026 • 10 a.m.–noonThe Farm at Franklin Pierce Schools,
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
