Even if you’ve never voluntarily listened to a 14-minute Allman Brothers guitar solo while staring philosophically at a ceiling fan, this is still peak peach season — that glorious late-summer window when the fruit world briefly loses its collective mind and everything starts smelling faintly of sugar, sunlight, and sticky fingers. Peaches are everywhere right now: collapsing into cobblers, sliding across vanilla ice cream, exploding inside pastry crusts, drifting through beer glasses, staining paper napkins at roadside fruit stands while somebody nearby inevitably puts on Eat a Peach like it’s federally required by August law.

And honestly? Good. Let the peaches have their month.

Because peaches carry history the way old jazz clubs carry cigarette smoke — layered, wandering, impossible to fully scrub out. The fruit originated in China thousands of years ago, cultivated so long ago it predates most modern ideas of civilization entirely. Spanish explorers hauled peaches to the Americas in the 16th century, and somehow the fruit kept moving westward and outward like delicious botanical folklore. By the 17th century peaches had landed in England and France, where Queen Victoria reportedly received fresh peaches wrapped delicately in fancy cotton napkins because apparently even royalty occasionally wanted juice running down their wrists like everybody else.

Meanwhile, Indigenous tribes across North America carried peach pits during travel and trade, planting them as they moved across the continent — a kind of wandering orchard magic, quietly reshaping the American landscape one seed at a time.

Now peaches rank as America’s third most popular fruit, which somehow feels both impressive and deeply unfair considering how transcendently good a perfect peach can be. Apples are reliable. Bananas are practical. But peaches? Peaches are reckless. Peaches are summer operating without adult supervision.

And nowhere does a peach hit harder than in Washington state, where the proper way to eat one is standing outside near the tree or at a roadside stand somewhere east of the mountains, the fruit still warm from the sun like it’s been quietly charging itself all afternoon. You dust off the fuzz with your shirt, take one bite, and suddenly your hands are sticky, your chin is dripping, and you briefly understand why poets have careers.

Of course, Peaks & Pints believes the best way to drink a peach is through beer.

Which is why Peaks & Pints Beer Flight: Peaches exists — liquid orchard weirdness, fuzzy-skinned nostalgia, summer sweetness, tart edges, farmhouse funk, stone-fruit perfume, and enough juicy beauty to make you consider buying a record player solely to justify playing old Allman Brothers albums while staring wistfully out the window at absolutely nothing.

Peaks and Pints’ Beer Flight: Peaches

Kings & Daughters Flora & Fauna

5.8% ABV

Kings & Daughters brewed this IPA with Sarah’s Simon’s new book, Flowers, Feather, & Animal Friends, in mind. Flora & Fauna starts life as a New England style IPA then receives a grand addition of peach, apricot, and sweet cherry puree. Expect stone fruit to be the dominant flavor but don’t count the hops out as they certainly assert themselves in this hazy IPA with a balanced bitterness and inviting fresh hop flavor.

Urban Family Disambiguation

9% ABV

This wood-aged sour has a strong theme of stone fruit. Urban Family Brewing aged their foeder-soured golden base into barrels with Collins Family Orchards donut peaches and yellow nectarines. After two years of fruit conditioning, these barrels were blended to create this latest wood-aged stone fruit sour. After bottle conditioning, this golden, sparkling peach and nectarine sour has potent flavors of peach skin and flesh, slight oak, and hints of tropical fruit from the donut peaches.

Block 15 Revolve 2023

11% ABV, bottle

In celebration of their 15th anniversary in April, Block 15 Brewing brought back this bière de Champagne brewed Northwest-grown grains cellared two years with Brettanomyces in peach brandy barrels and bottled, riddled, and discouraged in the méthode traditionnelle. Expect fruity peachy and sweet, but tart and wild yeast funky goodness with an amazingly thick mouthfeel and effervescent.

Block 15 Peach Punch (You in the Eye)

7% ABV

A collaboration with hazy masters Great Notion Brewing, Block 15 Peach Punch (You in the Eye) is a luscious fruit forward hazy IPA fermented with peaches and apricots. Designed and brewed at Block 15, Peach Punch is dry hopped with a 1-2 knockout punch of Galaxy and Mosaic hops that’s a little more apricot than peach. As the beer warms the fruitiness mellows out, and hops start to shine.

Wander Yummy Bits IPA

7.2% ABV

Wander Brewing Yummy Bits is an extra juicy hazy IPA brewed with Juicy yeast, double dry hopped with Strata and Idaho 7 hops, and fermented with peaches for a heavy sweet peach tea vibe.

LINK: Peaks and Pints beer and cider cooler inventory