Morning Foam: Dogfish Fruit-Full Fort, top 50 breweries, CatVideoFest GOOD MORNING, SOUTH SOUND! Wednesday, March 13, 2019 — William H. Macy turns 69 today!] Peaks and Pints Weather Guy has the trail conditions for Poo Poo Point today. Today’s Morning Foam was compiled while watching a Kelly Clarkson fan freak out. … PEAKS AND PINTS DRAFT HIGHLIGHTS FRUIT-FULL FORT, Dogfish Head: This is an aggressive attempt to punch up the fruit flavor in the brewery’s standard Fort — itself a Belgian style strong ale featuring raspberries. Additions of blackberry, elderberry and boysenberry (along with the original raspberry) pair with
Ecliptic Brewing 5 Beers for 5 Years: Brooklyn Brewery in Tacoma Back in early February when Peaks and Pints broke bread, or rather broke “Potato Paillasson, Smoked Sturgeon, Caviar,” during Ecliptic Brewing Co.’s “A Cosmic Brunch,” we pondered what to give the Portland brewery on their forthcoming fifth anniversary. If memory serves right, the first anniversary gift is paper, followed by cotton, lace, Grey Poupon and saxophones. Handing famed craft brewer John Harris a saxophone is weird; the man is steeped in Oregon’s rich craft brewing history. After beginning as a brewer at McMenamins’ breweries, he moved to Deschutes where
Happy National Milky Way Day! In 1923, Frank C. Mars created the Milky Way candy bar in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was named after a malted milk that was popular during its release. It sold more than $800,000 in its first year. There are two versions of the Milky Way bar: in the United States, the bar is made of chocolate-malt nougat topped with caramel and covered in milk chocolate; global Milky Way bar, the Mars Bar, is more similar to the 3 Musketeers bar, with no caramel topping. Peaks and Pints leans more toward the U.S. version as we dig
Morning Foam: Crux Freakcake, George Washington beer, urban evolutionary biology GOOD MORNING, SOUTH SOUND! Tuesday, March 12, 2019 — James Taylor turns 70 today! Peaks and Pints Weather Guy has the snow report for Mt. Baker. Today’s Morning Foam was compiled while watching something so very strangely satisfying.
Сбербанк. Прямо сейчас.
КРАСИВО! pic.twitter.com/h7P0f7ba3n
— Dmitry Blinnikov (@discojrnt) March 7, 2019
PEAKS AND PINTS DRAFT HIGHLIGHTS FREAKCAKE, Crux Fermentation Project: Ever since its debut in 2013 with the Tough Love barrel-aged imperial stout, Crux’s [BANISHED] series has represented the most avant-garde experimental side of the brewery. This year’s version of Freakcake [BANISHED] has hit Peaks and Pints’ Western red cedar tap log.
Morning Foam: Booming Rollers, Alesong & Friends, Lounder Than A Randall GOOD MORNING, SOUTH SOUND! Monday, March 11, 2019 — Lisa Loeb turns 51 today! Peaks and Pints Weather Guy has the forecast for the Olympic National Park today. PEAKS AND PINTS DRAFT HIGHLIGHTS BOOMING ROLLERS, Modern Times: To Peaks and Pints, Booming Rollers was named after those big, slow building, yet totally cruiseable waves that are perfect for longboarding. Only in this case, those easygoing sets are chest-high waves of Citra, since that’s exactly how Booming Rollers IPA goes down. It was a mellow longboard ride that kept giving
Peaks and Pints cider flight Tacoma It’s Monday, which means Peaks and Pints celebrates the taking of apples and pears and making them alcoholic and drinkable via a cider flight. Today, we focus on Portland, Oregon. While Portland is known for having more breweries than any other city in the world, amazing wines from the nearby Willamette Valley and a host of craft distilleries, the latest beverage trend in town is definitely hard cider. Sure, the city has a penchant for drinking, but maybe also because of Portland’s proximity to some of the world’s best apples that
You fancy, New Belgium La Folie Grand Reserve: PX. Fancy Pants Sunday: New Belgium La Folie Grand Reserve: PX Hailing from Andalusia, a large autonomous region of hills, rivers and farmland bordering Spain’s southern coast, Pedro Ximénez, also known also as “PX,” is a white wine grape varietal used in both a blending component and in its own right a varietal wine, which is an intensely sweet, dark, dessert style sherry wine with flavors of figs, molasses, roasted nuts and exotic spices. Pedro Ximénez was originally grown in the Montilla-Moriles DO region of southern Spain, and
Peaks and Pints Six-Pack 3.10.19: Happy March! You don’t hear it, do you? Bend an ear. No pitter-patter on the tin roof. Look outside. For a brief moment, it’s not chilly or drizzling. It’s not foggy or sleeting. The flagrantly unpleasant winter weather outside, weather that has slammed the South Sound since you kissed that stranger on New Year’s Eve, is on hold for a brief second. It’s 49 degrees outside Peaks and Pints World Headquarters. Beach day! Let’s grab a sixer and head to the beach! THE BREWED ABIDES, Pelican Brewing: Peaks and Pints drank this milk stout from
Weekend Beer Hustle: Black Malt Micro Fest, Peddler turns 6, Killer Ale release THE LOWDOWN ON WHAT’S ON TAP THIS WEEKEND >>> WEATHER REPORT Saturday: Mostly sunny in the South Sound. Highs in the mid to upper 40s. Nighttime lows near 30. Choc. milk finally stained teeth. I wanted to whiten them but got a tan instead. Sunday: Sunny, highs in the mid to upper 40s; lows near 30. Follow me on the Peaks and Pints Twitter feed! — Peaks and Pints Weather Guy SATURDAY-SUNDAY: Peaks and Pints Black Malt Mini Festival Enjoy a mini festival every Saturday and Sunday
Grain: the lifeblood of beer. Malt is grain that has been converted into sugar. That sugar is consumed by yeast to create alcohol; a process called fermentation. Grain becomes malt, which becomes beer. There are a wide variety of malts that brewers can use, all of which fall into two broad categories: malts, which can be steeped (good for extract brewing), and malts, which need to be mashed (all-grain brewing required). Roasted malts are any malts or grains that are roasted to a very high degree. The main purpose of roasting malts is to create unique colors, flavors, and aromas through intense Maillard reactions, the chemical reaction of amino acids and reducing
In ancient Europe, brewing was almost exclusively a woman’s role. The medieval times, however, brought about the frequency of brewing in monasteries to accommodate travelers, and as time passed, the number of female brewers dwindled, brewing in the home became rare, and commercial taverns became a predominantly male domain. Today, while women have since shed the label of “alewives,” they are continuing to infiltrate what has since become an XY-dominated scene by owning and running breweries. Women leading craft beer businesses certainly isn’t unusual. You likely know the names of the women in beer pioneers, such as New Belgium’s Kim
Hops are a perennial vine with the scientific name Humulus lupulus, which means “small wolf,” a reference to its aggressive climbing nature and tendency to take over other nearby plants. There are more than 120 different hop varieties used today. To be a true fan, the appeal of hops has to be more than just bitterness. Hops offer a range of flavors and aromas that resemble herbs, pine, tropical fruits like grapefruit and tangerine and more. Citra hops, well, the name says it all. A relatively new hop on the scene (released in 2008 by Hop Breeding Company of Yakima),
Morning Foam: Women’s Adventure Film Tour, Da Shootz!, new Block 15 GOOD MORNING, SOUTH SOUND! Thursday, March 7, 2019 — Bryan Cranston turns 62 today! Today’s Morning Foam was compiled while watching a cat and owl battle for the couch. … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJpLrKqsMV8 PEAKS AND PINTS BEER HIGHLIGHTS EMERGING SUNSHINE, Block 15 Brewing: Emerging Sunshine is a crisp golden IPA bursting with citrus, mango, and floral notes from Northwest grown Strata, Amarillo, Citra, and Centennial hops. Its crisp 2-row malt base is gently rounded out with additions of flaked barley and honey malt, while fermentation with American ale yeast lends Emerging
Putting fruit in beer isn’t new. The Mesopotamians were brewing with fruit thousands of years ago. But here in America, the first modern fruit beer was made 32 years ago at McMenamins’ first brewpub in Hillsdale, and featured some blackberries growing up the back fence. Fruitheads really didn’t have their day until Dogfish Head busted out Aprihop in 1999 with the tagline, “A fruit beer for hopheads or an IPA with a fruit problem.” Yes, some fruit beers can be palette-fatiguing after a sip or two. But fruit beers can also be as subtle, layered, and structured like fine wines,
Morning Foam: State of the City Address, Lucky Charms beer, Fremont’s new-ish pilsner GOOD MORNING, SOUTH SOUND! Wednesday, March 6, 2019 — Tom Arnold turns 60 today! Peaks and Pints Weather Guy has your mountain weather report. Today’s Morning Foam was compiled while watching a dog tapped in 80 inches of snow saved by another dog. PEAKS AND PINTS DRAFT HIGHLIGHTS CRYSTAL CLOUD POLARIZED HAZY IPA, Gigantic Brewing: Gigantic brewers who appear to be normal size have created a hazy IPA that appears to be clear. It’s juicy and soft, loaded with Citra, Mosaic and Crystal hops creating citrusy,
Craft beer labels put all other alcohol labels to shame. From aliens to psychedelic landscapes, breweries and their designers dream up the most colorful labels in all of the alcohol kingdom. Amidst the tattooesque cartoons of buxom women and questionable puns, Peaks and Pints noticed a theme repeatedly popping up on several craft beer labels: birds. It seems that craft beer aficionados love feathered (and not so feathered) creatures as much as wine lovers adore cats. Just which birds are featured on craft beer labels? Peaks and Pints is so glad you asked. Get out your National Audubon Field Guide
Ah, spiritual awakening. Peaks and Pints Six Pack 3.4.19: Yoga Beer You could post endless soft-core yoga porn pix on Instagram as you quote Rumi or Marianne Williamson or bland self-help platitudes you copped from Landmark Forum and “The Secret,” hashtagging brands of hemp-infused energy drinks and expensive yoga pants you sponsor/get for free, or simply hie thee to another awesome Peaks and Pints six-pack suggestion, invite some friends over for a yoga session then discuss the moves over these beers. Cheers! STUPID SILLY SOUR, Brasserie De Silly: No Belgian brewery has embraced Americas love for
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
Aloha 7 Seas Hula-Weizen! Local Suds: 7 Seas Hula-Weizen Let’s get this out of the way: The coconut isn’t a “nut” at all, but is rather the fruit of the coconut palm (if you want to get even more specific, it’s technically a “drupe” belonging to the same family of fruits as peaches, plums, mangoes cherries and olives). Call it what you will — from water to oil to sugar, coconut is STILL having a moment beyond the coconut water at the crossfit gym. 7 Seas Brewing released its second of six scheduled Bridge Series craft
Peaks and Pints’ barbecue pulled pork sandwich special pairs well with Matchless Brewing’s Pick-N-Pale Pale Ale. Peaks and Pints Pulled Pork Pick-N-Pull Peaks and Pints offers a pulled pork and coleslaw sandwich special today. Although this is a relatively simple dish to make, pulled pork has an intense variety of flavors. The savory meat, sweet onions, garlic and orange juice are complex enough, but then the addition of barbecue sauce and coleslaw take the flavor profile to another level. The varying flavors in the sauce, plus the fat from the pork, suggests that the dish needs
Go bananas today with craft beer to celebrate National Banana Cream Pie Day. Who made that designation is unclear, according to the website daysoftheyear.com. The major banana companies Chiquita and Dole are noncommittal about the day on their websites. Maybe for them, every day is banana day. But knowing that somewhere someone arbitrarily picked March 2 as National Banana Cream Pie Day was cause enough for Peaks and Pints to give the fruit its due by creating a beer flight of banana flavors. Yes, hefeweizens rule this beer flight as the top-fermenting Bavarian yeast Torulaspora delbrueckii, which German brewers refers
Seattle native Josh Pfriem began homebrewing while at Western Washington University in his early 20s then moved to Utah as a ski bum. He worked at Utah Brewers Cooperative for a few years before moving back to his old college town of Bellingham to brew at Chuckanut Brewery, where he helped win the Great American Beer Festival Small Brewpub of the Year in 2009. He moved to Hood River, Oregon to work at Full Sail but left in December 2011 to open pFriem Family Brewers — across the highway from Full Sail along the banks of the Columbia River —
In 2010 — with his Siebel Institute education, training in Germany and Belgium, and degree from Yale tucked under his arm — Ben Edmunds opened Breakside Brewery in the quiet Woodlawn neighborhood of Northeast Portland as a restaurant and nano-sized brewery. Breakside expanded to a 3.5 bbl brewhouse while winning their first medal at the Great American Beer Festival in 2011 where they have earned medals each year since. In late 2013 the brewery expanded operations to Milwaukie, Oregon with a 30 bbl production brewery. In 2014 Breakside was awarded with the highly coveted Gold Medal for American-style IPA at
Long before the Portland neighborhood of St. Johns finally hit its long-anticipated growth spurt, the Occidental Brewing Co. set up shop near the bridge and quietly started brewing some of the best German-style ales and lagers in Oregon. Thanks to an expansion into a Wursthaus, you can get a grilled brat, as well as a number of other options, to go with your Bohemian-style pilsner. Occidental Brewing Co. was founded in 2011 by Ben and Dan Engler. Focusing on largely traditional continental European beer styles, Occidental has won numerous awards. Peaks and Pints officially welcomes Occident to Tacoma tonight, pouring
It’s Twosday! Double Deschutes Brewery Reserve Series Five reasons to grab these two Deschutes Brewery Series sours from the Peaks and Pints cooler. … 1. Reserve series are where breweries really strut their stuffs. 2. Did you know that you can mix some beers? Well, you can. Here are two examples of what that tastes like. 3. These beers came all the way from Bend, Oregon. It would be a shame to ignore them.= 4. Big beers build big friends. 5. They’re delicious! THE AGES, Deschutes Brewery: Gueuze-inspired, mix of foeders and small format oak barrels
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. “Starting with the highest quality whole ingredients from local farms, we take no shortcuts in crafting our ciders. We never add
You fancy, Lindemans GingerGueuze! Fancy Pants Sunday: Lindemans GingerGueuze “Now, let’s party!” yells someone in the Destiny City Film Festival VIP Lounge, which also doubles as the Peaks and Pints’ no-named events room — when not filled with screenwriters and directors participating the film festival held at the Blue Mouse Theatre this weekend. If a director picks up a film camera inside the pop-up lounge, we imagine she or he would camera whip-pans to the Lindemans GingerGueuze bottle, our Fancy Pants Sunday star. Indeed, Fancy Pants Sunday is our weekly column that champions high ABV, complex
The Sixth Annual Destiny City Film Festival has been screening at the Blue Mouse Theatre in Tacoma’s Proctor neighborhood since Friday, Aug. 22. Festival Director Emily Alm presented more than 35 dynamic films from around the world, filmmaker Q&As, a free screenwriting panel and more. After the 2 p.m. screening of the documentary Earthrise — the story of the first image captured of the Earth from space in 1968 — followed by My Indiana Muse — a documentary on artist Robert Townsend and his muse, Helen — Peaks and Pints will host the closing party complete with a film inspired
Fort George Matryoshka variants at Peaks and Pints According to old-school spellcheckers Merriam and Webster, the term imperial means (1) anything relating to an empire or emperor, or (2) something of superior or unusual size or excellence. The first definition was what British brewers had in mind when they started making imperial stouts, and the second is why many American craft brewers are using the term for a variety of beer styles today. We call it an imperial stout because that’s become a brewer’s custom. It began in the 1700s when English brewers were favored by the Russian court. Catherine [the
You know the story. Longtime homebrewer Mike Montoney scores a brew system from closed Battenkill Brewing of Poulsbo, apprentices on a professional with Brad Ginn and Mark Hood of Sound Brewery, goes on to brew awarding-winning craft beers under the Rainy Daze Brewing brand. The story received another hit of joy when Rainy Daze’s Goat Boater IPA won Peaks and Pints’ Tournament of Beer: Washington State IPAs in 2017. Tonight, Peaks and Pints pairs Rainy Daze craft beer with Girl Scout Cookies, as well as host the can release party for Rainy Daze Pusherman IPA. In celebration of tonight’s festivities,
It’s not really 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
For beer nerds reared on hoppy IPAs and chocolaty stouts, sours are rarely a love-at-first-sip experience. Like stinky cheese and dry-aged beef, drinking sours means entering a realm where descriptors that sound off-putting — gym-sock musk and barnyard funk — can suddenly become holy grails of flavor and aroma. Sour beers can show rustic, earthy and winey notes. Some are rather light and elegantly acidic; some are darker and vinous, while others are exceedingly funky and sour. For our beer flight today we take a look at the tart and funky side of sours — the earthy side. Typically quite sour
Destiny City Film Festival — now with more beer The Destiny City Film Festival is a homegrown, true-Tacoma community event, inspired by our city’s nickname — The City of Destiny — and is built to showcase the best independent films from the Pacific Northwest and beyond housed in the Blue Mouse Theatre in Tacoma’s Proctor District. Curated by former Tacoma Film Festival director Emily Alm, the sixth version of this film fest kicks off Friday, Feb. 22 and runs through Sunday, Feb. 24 with the closing party at 3:30 p.m. at Peaks and Pints bottle shop, taproom and restaurant. After
Apples were among some of the first crops grown in colonial America. Potted seedlings and bags of apple seeds were brought over on the Mayflower. The Bible-thumping Puritans were not teetotalers. Apple orchards in colonial America usually meant one thing: hard cider. Apples flourished in the fertile soil and friendly climate, and soon apples were a key part of most colonial farms and menus. When a young George Washington ran for Virginia’s House of Burgesses in 1755, he didn’t shell out for drinks — and lost the election in a 271-to-40 landslide. Undeterred, Washington ran again in 1758. And this
Look around at today’s craft beer world: A tidal wave of new breweries is concocting a tsunami of new beers. New brews — especially anything labeled IPA — arrive at a dizzying pace — many hazy, some with lactose and more and more with no residual sugar. They’re frequently “dropped” in special, limited releases and then disappear. People gobble them up and look for the next “new.” This trend bugged beer author Stephen Beaumont, concerned over the decline of flagship beer sales. Flagships are core beers that breweries produce year-round, generally meant to be readily available, lining store shelves and
Valentine’s Day conjures up visions of classic couplings: Romeo and Juliet, John and Yoko, sweet fruit and chocolate. Combine those latter two with some beer, and you have a three-way that will warm the cockles of the most demure drinker. In celebration of the Hallmark holiday, Peaks and Pints presents a beer flight with that shares the flavors of the usual Valentine’s day gift: chocolate covered fruit. Indeed. While the bitterness of an especially hoppy beer might not be ideally suited (unless, of course, you were recently dumped – when bitterness might be appropriate), there are a number of offerings
Peaks and Pints Tournament of Beer: Northwest Pilsners nominations open Czech this out! In April 2019, Peaks and Pints will host the Tournament of Beer: Northwest Pilsners. Chosen through the nomination process below, the top 64 vote getters — the cream of the crispness — will compete Monday through Friday on our website, April 5-27. Through online voting, Washington and Oregon pilsner drinkers will pick daily winners until the best pilsner in the Pacific Northwest is crowned. It’s just like March Madness, only with way more Saaz hops. The soft water-to-grainy malt battle of Northwest pilsners grand champion will be
You’ve heard the old saying, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” Well, the same sort of goes true for when life gives you snow. When Mother Nature dumps loads of the white stuff onto your neighborhood, then make the most of it with by drinking lemon-forward craft beer, or something. Using lemon in beer is nothing new, but, perhaps because it is labor intensive and costly to add fresh citrus zest to a beer, it is still rare. The most straightforward way to brew lemon craft beer is to add a small amount of lemon juice to the beer
Tacomans awoke to find their cars are being held prisoner in the slushy clutches of residential streets. The light, fluffy snow that fell like crazy this past week morphed into a nasty, oatmeal-ish, wheel-grabbing goo when temperatures broke above the freezing mark and snow turned to rain today. Slush can be just as dangerous as ice because there can be bits of ice in that slush for slippery sliding situations. Also, wind and speed will send giant slabs of ice on the tops of car and trucks into the air. Plenty of back roads are still iced over, especially in
Apples were among some of the first crops grown in colonial America. Potted seedlings and bags of apple seeds were brought over on the Mayflower. The Bible-thumping Puritans were not teetotalers. Apple orchards in colonial America usually meant one thing: hard cider. Apples flourished in the fertile soil and friendly climate, and soon apples were a key part of most colonial farms and menus. The popularity of cider in America grew as the nation’s territory expanded. Then, the Temperance movement and popularity of German lager squashed the hard apple cider movement … until 2013. Zealous connoisseurs grow dissatisfied with the