In the early ’90s, Dusty Trail converted the historic Engine House No. 9 bar into a brewpub at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Pine Street, officially becoming the first microbrewery in Tacoma. Dick Dickens grabbed the Engine House reins in 2002, bringing in head brewer Doug Tiede. Heads turned and medals were hung. In 2011, The X Group added the Engine House to their local restaurant empire, with Shane Johns and Donovan Stewart running the kettles and hanging even more medals, mostly for their sours and saisons. Four years ago, they separated the brewery from the restaurant and opened E9 Brewing in Tacoma’s Historic Brewery District. Today, Stewart runs the sales division while Johns oversees a top-notch crew of brewers. This past spring and summer, E9 has had a permanent tap handle at Peaks & Pints after their Don of Time won this year’s Tournament of Beer: Northwest Pale Ales. Today, we salute E9 with an in-house beer flight that we call Peaks and Pints Beer Flight: E9 Beer.
Peaks and Pints Beer Flight: E9 Beer
E9 Berliner-nut
3.9% ABV
Berliner Weisse is a rare thing: a sour beer intensely flavored and the embodiment of refreshment. Its tartness is generally mild; its carbonation high; its soft, wheaty flavor refreshing. Even Napoleon was a fan — a popular story says he dubbed the beer style “the Champagne of the North” while occupying the German capital in 1809. E9 Brewing and Chuckanut Brewery brewed a Berliner Weisse that they barrel fermented for a light, floral and delicious, easy-drinking sour.
E9 Petite Belle
5.2% ABV
Petite Belle explores the obscure Franco-Belgian style, grisette, a type of farmhouse ale that dates to the late 1700s or early 1800s in southern Belgium. As with the saison, which originated as a beer made for farmhands, the grisette was seen as a beer intended to quench the thirst of miners. Grisettes are made with a combination of wheat and barley and are often fermented with saison yeast. Good grisettes are intended to be light with subtle character; so, to appreciate them means you’ll need to accept a toned-down farmhouse ale. E9 Brewing Petite Belle fits that description well as it’s brewed with pilsner malt, along with wheat and flaked oats that give it body in what would otherwise be a very light beer. It’s fermented with a saison yeast, which offers phenolic yeast character and hints of peppery spiciness, yet everything is kept light and subtle.
E9 Charivari
5.7% ABV
Festbier, sometimes called wiesn, festibiere or Oktoberfestbier — a name that can only be used by breweries in Munich — has taken the place of Marzën in the beer tents dotting the Theresienwiese (Therese’s meadow) in Munich during the two-week Oktoberfest celebration. E9 brewed a traditional Bavarian-style festbier just in time for Peaks & Pint’s annual Fresh Hoptoberfest fresh hop and Oktoberfest celebration. Charivari offers subtle complex bready notes and light sweetness that complements a grain built around Pilsner malt.
E9 Ghost Within
6% ABV
The Ghost Within follows Margot (Michaela Longden), a young woman suffering from severe memory loss who sets out to solve the twenty-year-old mystery of her sister Evie’s death. Returning to her family home, a series of terrifying encounters with her sister’s ghost begin to bring her lost memories back. E9’s Ghost Within is hopped with a spooky amount of Enigma, Nelson, Citra, Strata, and Estate Comet, E9’s Ghost Within IPA hits the nose with a punchy aroma of herbaceous tropical tea, gooseberry, citrus, and grassy dank strawberry tangerine.
E9 Miles Beyond
6.5% ABV
This IPA is a Nelson bomb — meaning E9 brewed with New Zealand Nelson Sauvin hops, which offer aromas straight of white wine, gooseberries, fast grass, and citrus. They also used Rakua and Citra hops for cool undertones of papaya, tropical stone fruit, and just a little New Zealand piney dankness. Wheat and oats add some haze. And Barbarian Yeast contributes flavors of juicy stone fruit, apricot, and peach.
LINK: Peaks and Pints beer and cider cooler inventory
