Hard cider, when done right, can be as good as beer or wine. Better even. Think about what we’re working with here. Beer starts as starchy water. Wine starts as grape juice. Hard cider starts as apple juice. There are 7,000-plus apple varieties to choose from in various colors, shapes, and flavor profiles. Further, apples thrive across America. Cider was one of the most popular drinks in America from colonial times to the 20th century. In 1920, the 18th Amendment went into effect, Prohibition started, and cider was cast to the margins of drinking culture until the first half of
You fancy Unibroue Ale Gâteau Forêt-Noire! Fancy Pants Sunday: Unibroue Ale Gâteau Forêt-Noire Let me drink cake! I’m not going to lie. It’s been day. A middle of the night Proctor District power outage set me back hours before today’s Belgian beer day and all its keg coupler changes, flights to write and digital menu boards to fix. Throw in a couple flash floods, a leaking coupler, a couple crucial items not in their designated spots and a computer that interjects a string of e’s 22 times a day, and I need a beer — a
Belgians produce more than 1,100 varieties of beer, a few you can taste at Peaks and Pints’ second annual Carnivale de Belgian Beerloo today — an all-day nod to Belgian beers in conjunction with Peaks and Pints second anniversary week-long celebration, Cool Camp Week. Belgian beer is known for having quite the alcohol content. It can be pricey, but has quite the bang for the buck compared to our domestics. Each brand has their own special glass designed to accentuate the best attributes of the many types of beer. Many of the beers formulations go back hundreds of years, perfected
Peaks and Pints’ Cool Camp Week, a week-long celebration of our second anniversary, kicks off today with the Beer Industry Geeks Flight Battle featuring Rich Jamieson of Alpha Distributing and Mike Bosold of NW Beverages pitting from their respective catalog of breweries against each other. Each picked a sour, a lager, a double IPA, a scotch ale and an imperial stout with Peaks and Pints customers picking the best beer flight. That’s right, you judge; simply pick one of the two, $12 flights and enjoy the deliciousness. When the clock strikes 11 p.m. the rep who sold the most flights
Brothers Steve and Scott Houmes — who witnessed the leisure suits, 8-track tapes, Ziggy comics and yellow smiley faces in the ’70s — went on to become restaurateurs. In September 1996, they added craft beer to their lives when they teamed up with brewmaster “Big Daddy” Don Spencer and opened Silver City Brewery in Silverdale, Washington. The Houmes’ mission was to create happy, community-oriented restaurant and craft brewery. In 2004, the Silverdale Chamber of Commerce named Silver City Business of the Year. Smiley face. However, those living outside Kitsap County donned sad faces as MacFarlane’s Scotch Ale and the other
As the cat days of autumn crest upon the beer world, a familiar collective roar gathers volume. That’s right, it’s once again time for the seemingly perpetual beer complaint of mid autumn: Beers such as winter warmers and Christmas-themed beers are being released earlier than many believe they should, even though we’re still a couple months before the official start of winter. Yes, we’ve entered wet, often windy part of the year frequently devoid of sunshine, but without any of the charms that our customary 1-inch of snow can bring. Peaks and Pints will hang on to autumn, at least
Hey Cooler Baggers! Check out what’s in our cooler: Stone Mojay IPA, Midnight Sun Tundra Wookie, Brewery Ommegang Mother of Dragons, Midnight Sun Son of Berserker, Hale’s Piney IPA and Airways Space Church IPA. Peaks and Pints Six Pack 10.24.18: Nerds Who writes all the best-selling books? Nerds. Who directs the top grossing Hollywood movies? Nerds. Who creates the highly advanced technology that only they can understand? Nerds. And who are the people who run for the high office of the presidency? No one but nerds. Who put together today’s Peaks and Pints’ Six Pack? Nerds.
An avid homebrewer and former employee at Stone Brewing Co. in Southern California, where he worked in the communications department, Jacob Mckean founded Modern Times Beer in the Point Loma neighborhood of San Diego in 2013. For the first year Modern Times didn’t brew an IPA — and when they finally did, it wasn’t a West Coast hop bomb that helped put the San Diego beer scene on the map. Today, the brewery has a stable of year-round offerings, monthly special releases and rotating seasonal beers, as well as tons of special release and one-off batches — from hazy IPAs,
Located 500 miles away from the nearest state, there’s likely a lot you haven’t heard about Alaska. Sure, you could probably guess dog mushing is the official state sport, but did you know a 13-year-old boy designed the state flag? Again, not a shocker — 17 of the 20 highest peaks in the U.S. are in Alaska, but did you know Alaska has a law against giving a moose beer? Thankfully, there isn’t a law against Peaks and Pints offering you a beer brewed in Alaskan, which we are doing in today’s beer fight, Craft Beer Crosscut 10.23.18: A Flight
pFriem’s Mexican Lager is a nice, mellow, easy drinking Vienna lager that’s well-balanced, refreshing overall and pairs well with our spicy sandwich special today. Photo by Pappi Swarner Peaks and Pints spicy sandwich paired with pFriem Mexican Lager Spicy foods cause a burning feeling is because they contain an irritant, such as capsaicin in jalapeños. These irritants bind to receptors on the tongue, which signals to brain to counteract. If you’re reading this post, our guess is that you counteract with craft beer or cider for an initial wave of relief. But, capsaicin won’t dissolve in
Hard cider, once the prevailing nectar of colonial days past, is having a renaissance. Though it was knocked off the radar in the mid-19th century, the recent interest in craft beer has taken artisanal cider along for the ride. Hard cider is tapping into the beer and wine markets as well as the gluten-free trend, and it is developing an identity of its own. And for hyper-local aficionados, there’s no lack of appeal when it comes to regional varieties of apples influencing flavors from batch to batch. Enough chit-chat. Let’s get to drinking. Enjoy Peaks and Pints Monday Cider Flight
You fancy Jolly Pumpkin Forgotten Tales of the Last Gypsy Series II, Volume I Fancy Pants Sunday: Jolly Pumpkin Forgotten Tales of the Last Gypsy Blender Chef Celina Tio built her foodie following with TV appearances on shows like Top Chef Masters and Iron Chef America, but her profile in Kansas City has been on the rise since her days as executive chef at The American restaurant, where she received the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Mid-West Chef in 2007. She left in 2008 to launch a series of neighborhood fine dining spaces in Kansas
Happy National Apple Day! That’s right; Oct. 21 is National Apple Day. Apple pie. Apple sauce. Apple crisp. National Apple Day celebrates the apple in all its various forms and reminds us that apples are shiny, tasty, and healthy. “An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” “Apple of my eye,” and “as American as apple pie” are all very common phrases in our language. Be it good health, familiarity or love, all are used to denote something we hold to be very important to our concept of culture in America. They also call attention to a humble fruit that
In 1989, believing that Kansas City was suffering from light-beer fatigue, John McDonald launched Boulevard Brewing Co. with two more robust choices, Pale Ale and Bully Porter. In 1992 he introduced Unfiltered Wheat. McDonald is a pioneer in creating a craft beer culture in Kansas City and beyond, redefining American beer as Boulevard grew from a small-scale brewery to the largest in the Midwest. Boulevard’s two top-selling flagship beers, Pale Ale and Unfiltered Wheat, were instrumental in developing a market in Kansas City for craft beer. The latter makes up more than half of Boulevard’s business, helping the company become
Dexter, Michigan’s Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales is the first brewery in the U.S. to oak barrel-age 100 percent of its beers. Ron Jeffries — AKA Brewmaster Spooky, AKA Captain Ron — founded the Jolly Pumpkin with his wife, Laurie, in 2004, and their beers have since gained international recognition and received multiple gold medals at the Great American Beer Festival. Jolly Pumpkin takes great care in maturing their beers. Each brew is fermented in open-air tanks and aged in oak casks. The beers are then further matured in the bottle with the addition of more yeast, also known as bottle
Black Raven Grandfather Raven, Matchless The Jacket, Block 15 Story Of The Ghost, Reverend Nat’s Abbey Spice, 7 Seas Boobytraps CDA and Everybody’s The Cryo IPA sit in Peaks and Pints’ cooler. Peaks and Pints Six Pack 10.19.18: Hundred Acre Cooler Winnie the Pooh and all of his pals from the Hundred Acre Wood have to help their now-grown human pal rediscover his imagination in the flick Christopher Robin now playing at neighboring Blue Mouse Theatre. There’s an unusually, and refreshingly, abrasive aspect to Christopher Robin that raises it above the usual run of children’s movies.
Happy National Chocolate Cupcake day! Cupcakes can be traced back to 1796 when there was a recipe notation of “a cake to be baked in small cups” written in American Cookery, by Amelia Simmons. The earliest known documentation of the term cupcake was in 1828 in Seventy-five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats in Eliza Leslie’s Receipts cookbook. In England, they were (and still are) called fairy cakes due to their diminutive size (they tend to be smaller than American cupcakes). Australians refer to them as patty cakes. Cupcakes have been popular for decades, but in the past few years have become especially trendy
In 2006, Chris Nemlowill and Jack Harris flew to Virginia Beach, Virginia to salvage an 8.5-barrel Saaz brewing system and drive it across the country to install it in their soon-to-open Fort George Brewery in Astoria, Oregon. While traveling with the equipment strapped to a flat bed, they met up with a tornado that nearly spread the brewery across a Nebraska cornfield. This became the inspiration behind the name Vortex IPA. Before the tornado, though, their U-Haul broke down in Rabun County in northeastern Georgia. The tow truck diver said, “You’re not from around here are you?” They replied, “No,
For the most part, sour beers are divided (roughly) into two camps: beers that are long-fermented and aged in wood barrels, using a yeast strain called Brettanomyces and acidifying bacteria, such as Lactobacillus and Pediococcus; and beers called “kettle sours” that are acidified with bacteria prior to fermentation and spend their time in warm stainless tanks rather than oak barrels. Taking the barrel route normally demands at least six months of fermentation before bottling, and the beers often go through another fermentation process, while in bottle, which adds a few months (at least) before they get sold. Kettle-sours, on the
Peaks and Pints Six Pack 10.16.18: Tech N9ne Tacoma How fast is too fast? Rapper Tech N9ne’s supersonic lyrical delivery tests the boundaries of human comprehension. The Kansas City-based MC was bestowed his name thanks to his ability to spit out words with the speed of a TEC-9 semiautomatic weapon. Tech N9ne later gave his handle a double-entendre by stating the “tech” was short for “technique” and “nine” representing the number of completion — therefore his name signifies his total ability to rhyme like a champ. OK. Tech N9ne plays Tacoma’s Temple Theatre this Friday, Oct. 19. Stop by Peaks
Peaks and Pints has Three Magnets Coffee Tompkins, Revision Hops In A Can, Evil Twin Molotov Heavy, d’Achouffe N’Ice Chouffee, Aslan Simcoe Slice and Three Magnets WOOHOO! X in the cooler. Peaks and Pints Six Pack 10.15.18: Fly You To The Moon Peaks and Pints may never know the exact words Neil Armstrong and his wife, Janet, spoke in the hours before he boarded Apollo 11, but we think it was, “Dammit, Janet, I love you.” The latest Neil Armstrong flick, First Man, screens at The Grand Cinema. Ryan Gosling is Armstrong — from his days
The term “farmhouse cider” stems from traditional cidermaking days when cider was made on a farm and its adjacent orchard was where its fruit was grown, in very small batches, utilizing timeworn techniques. Many makers believe farmhouse cider is more than a region of apple origin or a fermentation method — it’s a philosophy that yields a beverage with a strong sense of place. Others believe farmhouse cider is generally produced from fruit grown onsite or just down the road. A true farmhouse cider is also unfiltered, unpasteurized and produced with minimal intervention from the cidermaker. Our cider flight today
Peaks and Pints celebrates second year with Cool Camp “Hey, guys, Double Mountain Brewery suggests we call our second anniversary brew and new house beer, Cool Camp IPA,” says Ron Swarner, co-owner of Peaks and Pints and the guy writing this story. “Sounds pretty cool,” replies Robby Peterson, my business partner and the cool guy whom overseas our kitchen, among other things. “Should make plenty of happy campers,” adds Justin Peterson, our third business partner, twin to Robby and the cool guy who overseas the business side to our bottle shop, taproom and restaurant in Tacoma’s Proctor District. Peaks and
Fancy Pants Sunday: Rodenbach Vintage 2015 The Beerumnati are abuzz about “sour beer,” as breweries increasingly try their hand at tart saisons, garnet Flemish ales and lambic-inspired fruit beers. This means that the word “sour” gets thrown around like sprinkles at a cupcake convention, but it applies wholly to Rodenbach Vintage. While the original Rodenbach is a blend of “young” and oak-aged red ale, the more than 200-year-old Belgian brewery’s limited vintage release is unblended, every ounce of it matured for two years in a single wine barrel. During the beer’s long slumber, live yeast chow down on residual sugars,
The Seattle Seahawks’ road to the playoffs will include a lengthy detour. The Seahawks will play in one of the NFL’s games that take place in London this morning, Peaks and Pints time. The Hawks will face the Oakland Raiders at 10 a.m. at the new stadium of the English Premier League’s Tottenham Hotspur soccer team in north London. Seattle will be the designated “road” team, meaning the Seahawks did not give up one of their eight home games for next season. In celebration, peaks and Pints will pour Craft Beer Crosscut 10.14.18: A Flight of English Beer. Traditional British
Drop by Peaks and Pints and grab Three Magnets Anything Gold Brut IPA, Silver City MxPx Best Life IPA, Pike Douglas IPA, Prairie Consider Yourself Hugged, The Bruery Mischief and Revision Elevation Calculation. Peaks and Pints Six Pack 10.13.18: Mission Possible Tom Cruise is back at the Blue Mouse Theatre with the sixth Mission: Impossible flick, Fallout, so we can all appreciate his perfectly preserved physiognomy. He actually broke his ankle during filming, causing what was announced as a nine-week halt in the production. But of course, he was back at it after only seven weeks,
Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergsø, the founder and man behind Evil Twin Brewing, was a physics and English teacher in his native Denmark before starting Copenhagen’s Ølbutikken, a highly regarded beer store. He’s also an evil twin himself. His brother, Mikkel Borg Bergsø, brews under the Mikkeller label. Jarnit-Bjergsø, however, has done his best to outshine the good twin. He founded Evil Twin in 2010 as a nomadic brewery. Like his brother Mikkel, Jarnit-Bjergsø would concocts a recipe for his beer and hand it to another brewery with some extra capacity. In 2012, Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergsø moved it to Brooklyn and relocated there with
In November 2017, Kim Sturdavant, brewmaster at San Francisco’s Social Kitchen and Brewery, had an idea that worked so well, the brut IPA has become one of the hottest new IPA varieties. Sturdavant used a special enzyme in the fermentation process to create a hyper-dry, Champagne-like finish. Brut IPAs are also lighter in color than other IPAs and tend to be effervescent and sparkling. They’re loaded with hop character, but have almost no bitterness, which makes them very refreshing. How is such a thing possible? In a nutshell, brewers use enzymes, which are proteins that convert the barley into sugars, which
Incorporated in 2009 as Noble Brewing Co., Brewmaster Curt Plants, Ty Barnett and Pratt Rather signed a lease in 2010 for the space it now occupies in Bend, Oregon. In 2011, just before opening their taproom, they changed the name to GoodLife Brewing because plenty of businesses used the name Noble and they wanted to set their enterprise apart. That same year the new brewery was awarded the People’s Choice Award for its new Mountain Rescue Pale Ale at the Bend Brewfest. Sweet As Pacific Ale, along with another one of the brewery’s early beers Descender IPA, continues to enjoy
Peaks and Pints Six Pack 10.10.18: Chocolate Malts and Fresh Hops What’s up, South Sound! I need a soldier that ain’t scared to stand up for me. Known to carry big things, if you know what I mean. LET’S GET TO DRINKING! BOMB! Prairie Artisan Ales: This imperial stout is aged on coffee, cacao nibs, vanilla beans and ancho chili peppers. It pours completely jet black with a foamy java head, leaving some lacing on the glass. The smell of chocolate malt, strong espresso, vanilla and a hint of pepper waft off this rich brew. Thick and creamy, it assaults
To craft a fresh hop tour de force, Bale Breaker Brewing Company and Crux Fermentation Project teamed up to simultaneously harvest fresh hops from two valleys in two states on the same morning, combining them into each other’s kettle that very afternoon. One rooster woke Team Bale Breaker summoning them to load two trucks of Simcoe hops from neighboring fields with one truck returning to their Moxie, Washington brewery while the other truck raced toward Crux in Bend, Oregon. The other rooster roused Team Crux to load up two trucks full of fresh Mosaic hops straight outta the Willamette Valley
Growing up surrounded by vineyards and winemakers, Adam Firestone (of Firestone Vineyard) always had an interest in combining the family business with beer making. He found the perfect business partner in his brother-in-law David Walker and the two founded Firestone Walker Brewing Company in 1996. In addition to winning gobs of medals for individual brews, these obnoxiously talented brewers from Paso Robles California, often take home the major hardware at competitions like the Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup — titles such as “Brewery of the Year” or “Brewer of the Year.” Peaks and Pints would be hard-pressed
Peaks and Pints Six Pack 10.8.18: Ten FIDY and friends It’s Columbus Day, the leaves are falling from the trees, and the sun is setting earlier each day. Whether you are mourning the end of summer or celebrating the approaching winter, fall is a great season for craft beer drinking. Head to Peaks and Pints for today’s suggested Six Pack. … A TERRIBLE IDEA HAZY IPA, 21st Amendment Brewery: A collaboration with fellow Bay Area brewery, Fieldwork Brewing, A Terrible Idea is a hop-forward hazy IPA that hits the nose with floral, dank and piney particles before sliding across the tongue
Fall is (finally) here! Between living up autumn life with apple and pumpkin picking, flannel everything, cold-weather recipes — and all of the aforementioned captured on your friends’ Instagram feeds — Peaks and Pints bets you’re ready for cider. The fall harvest brings farmers and communities together to celebrate another year of fruitful labor. It is a time of shorter days, cooler nights and great apples. Put down those Mexican lagers. Back away from the pilsners. Summer may have lingered a little longer than expected in Western Washington, but the times finally appear to be changing. Meaning that Peaks and
It’s a grand idea. Pairing the Tacoma Film Festival with Peaks and Pints. Lights! Camera! Pints! Rising from Commencement Bay like a 50-foot antediluvian beast, the 13th annual Tacoma Film Festival kicked off yesterday with full-length films, shorts, theme nights, filmmaker chats and happy hours through Oct. 11. The happy hour peaked Peaks and Pints interest, because of all the craft beer, cider and wine we house in our little lodge in the Proctor District. From 3-7 p.m. today, Oct. 5, we’ll host a happy hour before the screening of Thunder Road at neighboring Blue Mouse Theatre. In addition to
Abbey beers are that family of beers originally brewed by monks dating back to the Middle Ages, Peaks and Pints suspects, but certainly a common feature of monastic brewing from the 19th century forward. Included in that family is the dubbel — a medium-strength amber/brown ale that serves as a great platform for lots of fantastic malt flavors and fermentation characteristics, along with some supporting herbal/earthy hops. Dark fruit, burnt sugar, citrus esters, clove, a touch of banana and more all feature in what ends up being a surprisingly dry beer. The trick (there’s always a trick, isn’t there?) is
Peaks and Pints Six Pack 10.2.18: Fresh hops, Jolly Roger and Googly Eyes COWICHE CANYON FRESH HOP ALE, Fremont Brewing: This wildly popular small-batch fresh hop pale ale blends organic Citra and Simcoe hops grown exclusively for Fremont on a single farm at the mouth of the Cowiche Canyon Conservation area in Yakima. Cowiche Canyon Fresh Hop Ale is Washington state’s first Salmon-Safe certified beer. A portion of all sales fund the Cowiche Canyon Conservancy. 6%, 12oz GOOGLY EYES, Wander Brewing: This double IPA sees Mosaic, Cascade and Citra hops in the kettles for a bitter, earthy, orange-y, crazy mix
Dark and Stormy night at Peaks and Pints Funny how taste can trigger memories. A sip of Bordeaux and you’re shopping Saint Germain; a pint of Guinness and your semester abroad comes flooding back; just a drop of tequila and . . . well, that was your 21st birthday, and you haven’t touched the stuff since. Then, there is the Dark & Stormy, which consists of dark rum and ginger beer — sometimes with a sprig of mint, sometimes a wedge of lemon. It brings back memories of pirates and Bermuda. But unlike the gin and tonic, it’s a drink
Long-time environmentalist, community organizer and homebrewer Matt Lincecum brought his bank statement to a well-known real estate developer to lease space to his startup craft brewery in the middle of a recession in the “center of the universe” aka Seattle’s funky Fremont neighborhood. Apparently $10,000 and awesome homebrewed beers CAN get you somewhere. In August 2009, Lincecum kegged his first Fremont Brewing craft beer. Today, Fremont is regarded as one of the best craft breweries in Seattle with distribution throughout the state, as well as Oregon and Idaho. In addition to its reputation for consistent quality and innovation, Fremont Brewing
Peaks and Pints doesn’t pour the cocktails the Sterling Cooper staff drank all day and all night, but we can come close with craft beer. Many brewers have brewed craft beers that mimic mixed drinks. When beer is your job, you don’t necessarily want to go home and drink more beer. So it’s no shocker that on his or her down time, brewers like a stiff cocktail — which has led to craft beers that taste like cocktails; what a vicious, delicious cycle this is. The base is beer (usually, but not always, a strong one), but then the brewer
“It is indeed bad to eat apples; it is better to turn them all into a cider.” Benjamin Franklin recorded this comment when overhearing a Native American’s response to the story of Adam and Eve. One hundred eighty years before the United States, an iron screw likely was taken from a hard cider press and driven into the central mast of the Mayflower to prevent the ship from sinking. Indeed, hard cider played a pivotal role in the formation and of the early colonies in many aspects. The pilgrims relied heavily on apple cider for their basic survival needs — cooking, sanitary
Peaks and Pints Six Pack 9.28.18: All the hops Because Friday. FRESH FLUFF, Matchless Brewing:Fresh Fluff is made by subbing out all of the hops in Matchless’ hazy All Fluff IPA with fresh versions of themselves: fresh Citra in the whirlpool and fresh Eldorado in the dry hop for soft and fluffy with deep layers of melon, grass, citrus and tropical fruit. 6.2%, 16oz FRESH IPA, Fort George Brewery: Within 24 hours, over a ton of fresh Azaccas from Roy Farms were harvested, transported, and packed into Fort George’s brew tanks in order to create fresh flavors of citrus and
Last September, Peaks and Pints released The Hunt For Fresh Hoptoberfest on the masses, a month-long autumn beer party marrying up two popular seasonal beers — fresh hops and Oktoberfest. Women dressed in lederhosen. Men got fresh … hop beers. Hop farmers and malters began living together — mass hysteria! This year, Son of Fresh Hoptoberfest was unleashed at our bottle shop, taproom and restaurant in Tacoma’s Proctor District. The month-long Son of Fresh Hoptoberfest ends Sunday, but not without a Son of Fresh Hoptoberfest craft beer flight today. Enjoy bright, hop-hazy fresh-hop beers, just hours from field to kettle
MORNING FOAM FOR THURSDAY, SEPT. 27 2018: A seven-taster flight of craft beer news, from the fluffy head all the way down to the Grand Canyon, at least for Will Smith. … Peaks and Pints’ Son of Fresh Hoptoberfest is not only a worthy successor to last year’s fresh hop-Oktoberfest mash-up, Hunt For Fresh Hoptoberfest, but even better as we are not forcing our guests to listen to tuba music from open to close, not screening a pictorial celebration of German culture, 1740-1914, 1950-present and not hosting a wet-dirndl contest. Nope, through Sept. 31, we’re offering bright, hop-hazy fresh-hop beers,
