Holy Mountain Brewing is in their final stretch to open a taproom at 7009 Greenwood Ave. N. in Seattle’s Phinney Ridge residential neighborhood. The new location will offer a pet- and kid-friendly spacious environment with sidewalk seating available when weather permits. Expect rotating Holy Mountain taps with proper half liter mugs of lager poured from their side pull tower, housemade hop waters and spritz-inspired drinks, Whitewood Cider and Timber City Ginger pours, and sweeping views of the Puget Sound and Green Lake from the rooftop will be the backdrop for some intimate dinners in the future. Until then, Peaks &
Fat Orange Cat, Hoof Hearted, and Nightmare Brewing return to Peaks & Pints — and they brought friends. Peaks and Pints New Beer in Stock 6.16.23 It’s the weekend, and Peaks & Pints has a ton more delicious beverages in our 850+ cooler. We also have plenty of tasty options on draft to enjoy while shopping the cooler. Cheers! Fat Orange Cat Welcome To Harga: New England-style double IPA greeted by copiously amounts of Nelson and Motueka for notes of grass and Sauvignon Blanc grape juice blowing in the breeze, 8.5% Fat Orange Cat Walkabout Tangelo
Stillwater is the brainchild of Baltimore native Brian Strumke, whose past life as an internationally renowned electronica DJ and producer led him down a path to crafting some of the world’s most unique and highest rated beers slapped with haute couture can and bottle labels. A homebrewer turned pro in 2010, nomadic brewer Strumke slapped his Stillwater sticker on many a brewery’s cooler around the world before the pandemic nudged him to place roots at the Talking Cedar Brewery & Distillery in Thurston County, Washington. Today, Peaks & Pints presents an in-house flight of Stillwater beers — a flight we’re
The Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium’s conservation fundraising unit, Drinking For Conservation, hosts an Australian Wildlife benefit at Peaks & Pints tonight. For every draft pull from 6-9 p.m., Peaks will donate 50 cents to the Wildlife Conservation Network Australia. To set the tone, Peaks will tap several beers brewed with Australian hops. Galaxy, Ella, Vic Secret, Enigma, Eclipse, and Topaz and many other Australian grown hops bring wild, tropical, and overwhelming bright, fruity characteristics. Today, Peaks & Pints presents an in-house flight of craft beers brewed with said hops — a flight we call Peaks and Pints Beer Flight:
Craft beer is best fresh. If you drink a fresh hop IPA the day it is bottled or canned, it will be at its peak. Never again will it taste so good. Day by day, by degrees, its lushness will fade. Beer, unlike vinegar and Pop Tarts, is not a fixed food product. So why then do brewers barrel-age beer? Because the barrel’s porous, wood allows for very slow oxidation, which can make darker, malty beers more complex. The barrel’s former resident — the wine or bourbon or whatever that first made its home there — is also important. While
First, today’s weather in Tacoma calls for cloudy skies becoming partly cloudy in the afternoon with temperatures reaching 69 degrees. Second, stouts are better suited than many light-colored beers for pairing with summery foods like charred vegetables and barbecued meats. Think about it: Their earthy flavors and rich, toasted aromas mimic the ones already billowing out from your backyard grill. And stouts benefit from the weather — as the beers warm, their complex, smoky undertones begin to unfurl. Since Fremont Brewing just released their annual The Rusty Nail bourbon barrel-aged stout, Peaks & Pints presents an in-house flight of three
Cider became the most widely consumed alcohol in Northern Europe and Great Britain for a very long time. When the English settled in America, they brought cider apple seeds with them. By the late 1800’s cider production began to decline due several factors including the increased consumption of beer and later, prohibition. Luckily, cider has made a massive revival and is available everywhere in excellent quality and variety … and with other fruit in addition to apples. Once considered a maligned novelty, fruit other than apples is now one of the arenas where cidermakers experiment most, uh, fruitfully. Normally condemned
New beer arrivals in the Peaks & Pints massive cooler. Peaks and Pints New Beer in Stock 6.11.23 Hello Sunday. Hello Peaks and Pints New Beer in Stock 6.11.23. Aslan Brewing B Proud: A dry, citrusy IPA brewed to benefit Bellingham Pride and Pride month, 6.5% Avery Brewing Island Rascal: Lusciousness of a Belgian-style wheat ale with juicy of passionfruit, 5.4% Bale Breaker Brewing Clarity Rarity #11: A hazy IPA featuring aromas of pineapple, melon, nectarine, pine resin, and citrus from El Dorado, Simcoe, Citra, and Mosaic hop additions, 7.1% Fair Isle Brewing Hanami: Saison steeped
Childhood friends Jim Solberg and Roger Worthington reunited in 2008 to create Indie Hops and reboot Oregon State University’s hop-breeding program with a huge donation. They were determined to do something new and enlisted Shaun Townsend, a PhD in breeding and genetics, to lead the effort. They gave him the mandate of breeding a hop that could flourish in the Willamette Valley, produce a hop with associated with strawberry, passionfruit, grapefruit, bubble gum, sage, and cannabis. Eventually X-331 emerged, which was later named Strata. Today, Peaks & Pints presents an in-house flight of beer brewed with Strata hops — a
Peaks and Pints New Beer in Stock 6.8.23 It’s Thursday and that means it’s time for fresh delicious new arrivals to the Peaks & Pints cooler. Swing by, grab a pint and shop Peaks and Pints New Beer in Stock 6.8.23. We’re here until 11. Cheers! Belching Beaver Brewery Death By Blueberry: Wheat ale brewed with fresh blueberries, 4.5% Belching Beaver Fall of Troy: This Mosaic hop laden double IPA is smooth and juicy with notes of orange and vanilla, 8.8% Birrificio Italiano Tipopils: The OG Italian pilsner dry hopped with Spalter Select for special citrusy, lemon-zest touch, 5.2% E9
After being relentlessly hounded by a spamming ice cream marketer — which conjured up horrific mental imagery of biting the bottom of an ice cream cone off and the chocolate ice cream covering the white shag carpet — we are capitulating. We will inform you that today, Wednesday, June 7, is National Chocolate Ice Cream Day. In the spirit of National Chocolate Ice Cream Day – which has yet to be declared an official holiday – Peaks & Pints is playing to your craft beer. Luckily for us craft beer lovers, there are many delicious and unique chocolate beers being
Fort George Brewery 2023 3-way IPA Version Two is brewed with Kölsch yeast (Kaiser German Ale yeast from Imperial Yeast) in purple-ish cans. Version Two kegs will be on tap at Peaks & Pints Friday, June 9. Photo courtesy of Fort George Brewery Fort George hosts Fort George Brewery 3-Way IPA v2 Party “It’s not a Kölsch,” says Fort George Brewery in an Arnold Schwarzenegger voice from the movie, Kindergarten Cop, which was filmed in Fort George’s hometown of Astoria, Oregon. We’ll be back to address that statement. … Peaks & Pints will host a release
Pride is the civil rights movement of our generation. Fifty-three years ago, this summer, New York City bar patrons of many genders, sexualities, and racial identities trapped a group of police officers inside the Stonewall Inn after they shut down the bar in yet another routine raid. Riots continued the following two nights as the LGBTQ community spread word that something unique was happening in Greenwich Village. But whatever happened that night lit a spark that lasted for several days and propelled America’s gay rights — the Gay Liberation Movement – forward. Every June, Pride Month, we celebrate their uprising
The Puget Sound is Washington’s largest saltwater inlet and is connected to the Pacific Ocean via the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Admiralty Inlet. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration defines “Northern Puget Sound” as bounded to the north by the international boundary with Canada, and Mukilteo to the south. Peaks & Pints points out these boundaries to define our Monday in-house flight of Northern Puget Sound ciders, which includes Bellingham Cider and Lost Giants Cider Co. in Bellingham, Garden Path in Burlington, and Elemental Hard Cider in Arlington. Drop by Peaks & Pints craft cider and beer bar,
For years, Miller High Life has used the “Champagne of Beers” slogan. Last April in Belgium, that appropriation became impossible to swallow. At the request of the trade body defending the interests of houses and growers of the northeastern French sparkling wine, Belgian customs crushed more than 2,000 cans of Miller High Life advertised as such. The Comité Champagne asked for the destruction of a shipment of 2,352 cans on the grounds that the century-old motto used by the American brewery infringes the protected designation of origin “Champagne.” And while it is kind of funny in its own American-branding, ham-fisted
People worldwide have known how to make cider for thousands of years. Archaeological evidence shows that ancient European and Asian cultures used apples to make a crude version of cider as early as 6500 B.C. The art of cider making improved over the years as people developed a better understanding of the factors that impact cider flavor. During the sixth century, a profession of skillful brewers was established in Europe. These people made beer-like beverages and cider. By the 16th century, Normandy became one of the largest cider-making areas in the world. Experimentation with different types of apples ensued, which
Peaks and Pints celebrates World Cider Day Peaks & Pints presents a World Cider Day celebration Saturday, June 3 at our craft beer and cider bar, bottle shop and restaurant in Tacoma’s Proctor District. We’ll triple our cider taps on our Western red cedar tap log from open to close. People worldwide have known how to make cider for thousands of years. Archaeological evidence shows that ancient European and Asian cultures used apples to make a crude version of cider as early as 6500 B.C. The art of cider making improved over the years as people developed a better understanding
In England, ESBs fall into a category known generically as “bitters” as ESB stands for “extra special bitter.” The English bitter workaday session brew, which is also knows as an English pale ale, has been brewed and enjoyed in the UK for centuries as an alternative to milds and IPAs. English pale ales are richly flavored, medium bodied with residual malt and defining sweetness, earthy, herbal English-variety hop character, and medium to high hop bitterness. The yeast strains used in these beers lend a fruitiness to their aromatics and flavor, referred to as esters. Today, there are three kinds that
Amarillo wasn’t so much developed as it was discovered. In 1990 Virgil Gamache Farms found this strain growing next to a field of Liberty hops. It still took 13 years from discovery for it to be publicly released. Amarillo is a citrus bomb with notes of lemon, orange, and grapefruit thanks to its off the charts Myrcene oil content. It’s amazing on its own but works fantastically with other citrus and tropical hops. If it were socially acceptable to drink beer in the morning, one with Amarillo hops would be the perfect way to start the day. Wake up to
It’s not white. And it’s not necessarily Belgian. But Belgian white beer — witbier in Flemish, bire blanche in French — is undeniably flavorful and refreshing. White beer originated in the eastern part of the province of Brabant, about 25 miles southeast of Brussels. The city of Louvain and the nearby village of Hoegaarden (pronounced “who garden”) were famous for their white beers. The more than 400-year-old style nearly went extinct in the mid-20th century, until Pierre Celis single-handedly revived the witbier in 1965 from his barn in Hoegaarden. Just as German wheat beers are sometimes called weissbier, witbiers are
In 2002, Navy veteran Mike Hinkley opened Green Flash Brewing in Vista, San Diego County, California, with investors Cindy and Matin Blair and Pam and Philip Palisoul. They struggled. The brand’s rise followed the 2004 hiring of a veteran brewer, Chuck Silva, with a portfolio of distinctive recipes, including the West Coast IPA. In 2011, the company left its small Vista brewery for a massive Mira Mesa plant, giving it a seven-fold increase in production capacity. In 2014, Hinkley purchase of Alpine Beer adding several legendary beers, including Nelson and Duet, to his portfolio. In 2015, he opened a barrel-aging
In 2002, after eight batches, Manny Chao and Roger Bialous high-fived in their Seattle backyard after nailing their Manny’s recipe — a pale ale that went on the be Seattle’s beer. Chao was the first employee at Mac & Jack’s Brewing where he learned the craft beer business from washing kegs to selling beer. Chao and Bialous relocated their Georgetown Brewing Company from their garage to the historic Seattle Brewing and Malting Plant, where Rainier Beer was once produced. In 2008, the duo relocated the business to a larger Georgetown neighborhood space keep up with Manny’s demand. Today, Peaks and
Peaks and Pints New Beer in Stock 5.28.23 Keep the long weekend going with Peaks and Pints New Beer in Stock 5.28.23! Aslan Brewing Disco Lemonade: Berliner weisse with hints of lemon, 4.5% Block 15 Brewing Fresh Flow: Summertime IPA with a soft malt base beneath a tidal wave of exotic tropical and juicy citrus hop varietals, 6.5% Block 15 That’s the Badger: English pub style ESB that balances complex malt notes of toasted nuts and caramel with a mellow hop bitterness and a gentle, spicy hop flavor, 5.4% 450 North Brewing Bug Blaster Slushy XL: Fruited sour with red
Middle Memorial Day Weekend weather forecast calls for 71 degrees and partly cloudy, dipping into the lower 50s tonight. Whether you’re pitching a tent at Ohanapecoch, glamping at Guemes North Homestead, or just hanging out in your backyard, the odds are there will be a fire to sit around after dinner. As you sit around your appropriate blaze, you’ll want something to drink. Peaks & Pints suggests five beers ready for a night of flannel, stories, and glowing embers, or just enjoy at our craft beer and cider bar, bottle shop and restaurant. Either way, Peaks and Pints Beer Flight:
The unofficial start of summer is officially here. As the amuse bouche of the summer season, Memorial Day weekend brings with it all the sweet signs of the warm weather to come in the greater Tacoma area. From barbecues and baseball games to road trips and chill nights around a campfire, there are so many excuses to celebrate over the (much needed) long weekend. While you relax over the next few days, make sure to include a few local sips as well. Peaks and Pints has gathered five Tacoma brewery beers for today’s in-house beer flight. Stop by our craft
Craft beer is best fresh. If you drink a fresh hop IPA the day it is bottled or canned, it will be at its peak. Never again will it taste so good. Day by day, by degrees, its lushness will fade. Beer, unlike vinegar and Pop Tarts, is not a fixed food product. So why then do brewers barrel-age beer? Because it’s porous; wood allows for very slow oxidation, which can make darker, malty beers more complex. Wood can also host microflora, bacteria that add the sourness to wild ales and lambics. The barrel’s former resident — the wine or
Astoria’s Fort George Brewery has brewed 3-Way IPA since 2013, featuring two different craft brewery collaborators every year. This year, Anchorage Brewing from Anchorage, Alaska, and Cellarmaker Brewing from San Francisco, California, shared ideas and techniques with Fort George founder Chris Nemlowill, and after many beta test batches, blind tastings, lab tests, aroma analysis, color checks, last Saturday’s Lupulin Ecstasy Festival in Astoria, and long conversations, what pours from Peaks & Pints’ Western red cedar tap log, as well as what sits in our 850+ cooler, is the first of three 2023 3-Way IPAs. This year, Fort George will offer
The owners of Channel Marker Cider — Zack Lough, Nicole Lounsberry, and Chris Irish — named their Seattle Ballard neighborhood cidery for their mutual love of sailing. Channel markers are nautical navigation aids for mariners. “The name is meaningful to us since we met sailing the Pacific Ocean and find inspiration on and near the water,” the trio state on their website. Lough, a sailor, would ride out a hurricane season in New Zealander by making Sauvignon Blanc at a winery, which sat across the street from a New Zealand cidery. He eventually added cidermaking to his life, which he took pro
Hops are a resinous, sticky green flower (and from what Snoop Dogg taught us, so too is that sticky icky icky — weed). The hops used in brewing are the flower of a climbing plant that’s a member of the hemp family. They grow on bines (not vines) that can reach more than 16 feet tall. The hop flowers contain lupulin, a sticky substance that contains essential oils, bitter acids, and resins, and that is released when boiled. Hops are added during the brewing process and play an important part in balancing the flavors and aroma of the beer, as
Kyle and Mirandas Carbaugh founded their downtown Greeley, Colorado brewery Wiley Roots Brewing in 2013. Five years later, they expanded into a new production facility adjacent to their taproom, increasing their production space from 800 square feet to more than 5,000 square feet. Shortly after construction was complete, the brewery expanded its self-distribution efforts along the Denver-Metro and Colorado Springs regions by working with the delivery arm of WeldWerks Brewing Company. Since January 2020, Wiley Roots has slowly grown their distribution network, led by a portfolio of popular mixed-culture sour ales, East Coast IPAs, New England IPAs, imperial stouts, and
In 1917, Harry Burnett Reese worked on a dairy farm owned by the Hershey Company, which morphed into a job in the company’s candy factory. While some folks like to tinker with electronics in their basement, Reese hid beneath his main floor, experimenting with different candy formulas to make extra money to care for his growing family. He created the H. B. Reese Candy Company in 1923, selling various confections. One day, one of his family members got his or her chocolate stuck in his peanut butter. The rest, as they say, is history. When World War II hit, Reese
Geoffrey Barker and Andrew Pogue met as members of the North Seattle Home Brew Club. They both love saisons and sours. They traveled to mixed-fermentation guru Jester King in Austin, Texas, where they added to their friendship circle. The duo spent years looking for a place to launch their brewery. Eventually they landed in a former home of an orchid retailer, a boxy, lightly industrial building at 936 Northwest 49th Street, in the thick of Ballard’s brewery district. With the help of Jester King, Barker and Pogue opened Fair Isle Brewing in January 2020 focusing on mixed-culture and wild beers,
The 17th annual American Craft Beer Week is under way and picking up speed. The Brewers Association — a nonprofit group recognized as the central foundation for craft beer in America — designates a week in May to celebrate small and independent craft breweries. This year, May 15-21 serves as an opportunity to get to know your local brewers. Beer was once the unfussy option, the tonic of the masses. On Cheers, Norm simply orders beer — no need for a name, because beer was just beer. In contrast to the perceived snobbery of wine, beer was meant for drinking,
Since 2015, the Zehner family has made delicious, crushable cider, many from a dry-hopped apple base to pull out citrus aromas at their Incline Cider Company. The Auburn-based cidery with a popular Tacoma taproom uses 100 percent fresh pressed apples, no added sugar, no carbonated water, and the result are ciders that are balanced, not too sweet and super flavorful. In 2019, they opened the Incline Cider House in Tacoma’s Historic Brewery District. The traditional-style bar allows a true cider experience by offering 16 tap handles of eight to 10 of Incline’s own ciders, and additional rotating Washington and Northwest
Celebrate mom, grandma, your best friend’s abuela and any mother figure in your life this Mother’s Day. There are so many great ways to say “thanks” to that special person, from epic brunch buffets to bottomless drinks to indulgent dinners. Then, there are those moms who all they really want is a day off to do whatever they want — nap on the couch, take a hike, grab an afternoon beer session with girlfriends. So maybe the best gift you could give Mom is to take the kids out for the day. Then, return to cook her dinner, or do
Lagers have seen a resurgence of late. Almost every brewery makes at least one, from the American light lagers modeled on Bud, Miller, and Coors, to the ever-present pilsner, to more interesting varieties such as dunkels, dopplebocks, maibocks and marzens. This wasn’t the case five years ago, however, for several reasons. For starters, since lagers typically take at least a month to ferment, as opposed to two weeks for ales, most quickly growing breweries focused instead on keeping their taprooms full of the more popular hoppy ales. Lagers can also be finicky if a brewery lacks specialized equipment, and they remind
The 2023 World Beer Cup Competition took place on Wednesday, May 10 in Nashville, Tennessee. Often called the “Olympics of Beer”, the global competition is organized by the Brewers Association, the not-for-profit trade association for America’s small and independent craft brewers. This year’s competition saw 10,213 entries from 2,376 breweries, across 51 countries. Those entries were judged in Nashville by 272 judges hailing from 26 countries. Out of 307 medals awarded, Oregon and Washington breweries brought home 35 World Beer Cup medals, including multiple-medal winners Icicle Brewing, Grains of Wrath, 10 Barrel Brewing, Bend Brewing, and Sunriver Brewing with Fair
It’s Maibock season, darling—the glorious, fleeting moment when Germans collectively raise a stein, bid auf wiedersehen to the glum gray of winter, and welcome spring with a lager that straddles the solstice like a sun-dappled Valkyrie in a flower crown. Since 1614, the Hofbräuhaus in Munich has led the ritual: last week of April, first keg tapped, hearts thawed, lederhosen aired out. And the beer? Oh, the beer. Maibock (pronounced “my-bock,” as in my goodness, this is drinkable) is no timid wallflower. It’s malt-forward, full-bodied, strong enough to whisper warmth into chilly spring nights, yet floral and flirtatious enough to
Hill Farmstead Brewery in Greensboro, Vermont, founded by Shaun Hill, is rooted in family history that extends back to the 1780s. In college, Hill started a homebrew club in college and fantasized about coming back to Greenboro and launching a brewery, which he did in 2010. Unlike most Vermont breweries, his jaw-dropping operation rests on a beautiful, secluded farm in the middle of nowhere. The rural ambiance and gorgeous architecture, combined with their fine ales, makes for a true one-of-a-kind experience. To connect with the personal stories and family history, Hill names his beers after the people in his family
In late 2010, Corvallis homebrewers Aaron Sarnoff-Wood and Lee Larsen filled a gap in the college town’s drinking scene — cider. The duo opened 2 Towns Ciderhouse crafting unique ciders brewed with the traditional English and French-style’s tannic apples, Oregon grown, of course. Named after the cities of Corvallis and Eugene (Larsen’s a Beaver; Sarnoff-Wood a Duck), 2 Towns believes “… that the long history of cidermaking demands respect and deserves to be done right,” states the cidery’s motto. Since it’s Monday, and Peaks & Pints offers a to-go cider flight on this day every week, enjoy Peaks and Pints
Peaks & Pints knows we’ve featured hazy IPAs in our to-be beer flight column before, but as a refresher, we’ll run through the difference between a regular, clear IPA and a hazy. To be honest, IPAs nowadays have a broad interpretation, so it’s not quite an apples-to-apples comparison. But, in layman’s terms the hazy tends to go lighter on the bitterness and fruitier and juicier (without adding juice). It’s that flavor that tends to make non-IPA fans, fans of the hazy — and with an influx of new hazy IPAs to the Peaks & Pints cooler, we thought we’d take
Peaks and Pints New Beers in Stock 5.6.23 It’s Saturday and time to stock up on new craft beer for the Seattle Mariners and NBA playoffs plus tomorrow’s Seattle Kraken Stanley Cup Playoffs game and the Seattle Sounders. 7 Seas Brewing Blackberry Sour: Gose ale brewed with blackberry puree for a tart, fruity, and refreshing sour ale, 4.8% Block 15 Brewing The Past – 15th Anniversary Amber Ale: Corvallis Brewing Supply and Joel Rea were instrumental in Block 15’s beginning and development as a community brewpub. From supplying their first home brew kit to providing knowledge and encouragement as we
“Cinco de Mayo,” Spanish for “the sink is full of mayonnaise.” OK, not really. We made that up, which is only fitting, because the idea that May 5 is a big holiday celebrated throughout Mexico is also made up. This yarn was spun by some PR hack for Corona beer back in the ’80s when the company was looking for a way to get Americans to drink more beer. Since this is not an especially hard task, they didn’t work especially hard on the idea, not even hard enough to note that Mexico’s real Day of Independence is Sept. 16.
Today is May 4 — which may not mean a lot to a lot of people, but it’s a special date for serious Star Wars fans. May the 4th (as in “May the Force be with you”) is the day on which we celebrate all things Star Wars-related. And what better way to celebrate the date than by drinking space-themed craft beer while watching Star Wars from your couch. Where in the universe can you find such beer, padawan? Embrace your inner Jabba (or related Hutt) and stop by our little craft beer lodge for our space-themed, to-go beer flight
