If today’s NFL conference championship games are anything like last weekend’s divisional rounds, then hold onto your craft beer tight because it could be another couple of thrillers. The Bengals travel to Arrowhead Stadium to take on the two-time defending AFC-champion Kansas City Chiefs, in what will be Cincinnati’s third-ever appearance in an AFC Championship Game. Cincinnati won both of its previous AFC Championship appearances — vs. San Diego in the 1981 season, and vs. Buffalo in the 1988 season. On the NFC side, the Los Angeles Rams host the San Francisco 49ers in a battle of NFC West rivals. The 49ers enter the NFC Championship tilt with a 75-67-3 series lead. The Rams are showing up after blowing out the overmatched Arizona Cardinals and then nearly, really, almost blowing it against the Buccaneers in what would have been one of the greatest collapses in franchise history. The winners of both games today advance to Super Bowl LVI on Feb. 13 at SoFi. Stop by Peaks & Pints and grab our Championship Game themed beer flight — Peaks and Pints Pilot Program: NFL Championships Beer On the Fly — and a sandwich to enjoy at our Tacoma Proctor District craft beer bar, bottle shop and restaurant, or take them to-go for couch viewing.
Peaks and Pints Pilot Program: NFL Championships Beer On the Fly
AFC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME BEER
Hoof Hearted Fitness Freak
14% ABV
CINCINNATI BENGALS, OHIO: Funnier than saying “Hoof Hearted” Brewing are the Ohio brewery’s can art. The cans’ artist, Thom Lessner, met Hoof’s head brewer Trevor Williams in the second grade. Lessner met another Hoof co-owner, Jarrod Bichon in the fourth grade, and eventually met the last owner, Ryan Bichon. They’re all on the same zany page. Lessner doesn’t brew the delicious craft beer, but he take’s their beer name — influenced by hops, hair metal, and video games — and runs with it — recently toward John Cusack’s Better Off Dead movies. Williams and Jarrod Bichon, a wine salesman and welder, respectively, met at Ohio State University in 1995 and basically drank craft beer across the nation. They opened Hoof Hearted in 2011 in a barn just northeast of Columbus, Ohio, in Marengo — the middle of nowhere. Their Fitness Freak is a massive imperial stout brewed with vanilla, maple, and Sumatran Hoof Hearted Coffee.
VERSUS
Boulevard Whiskey Barrel Stout
11.8% ABV, 32 IBU
KANSAS CITY CHIEFS, MISSOURI: 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 the fifth-largest specialty brewery in the nation. Roughly one-third of Boulevard’s Whiskey Barrel Stout is freshly brewed beer; the rest is aged for up to a year or more in both first and second use whiskey casks. Whiskey rules the nose, with some hints of dark chocolate. Robust flavors of vanilla, espresso, whiskey, chocolate, and roasted grain are balanced by hints of date and plum, with just enough hops to round it all out.
NFC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME BEER
Stone Sublimely Self-Righteous Black IPA
8.7% ABV, 90 IBU
LOS ANGELES RAMS, CALIFORNIA: They don’t brew in Pasadena. Stone Brewing Co. is headquartered in Escondido, and they brew in San Diego, Richmond, Virginia, and in Berlin, Germany. But Stone’s small Pasadena hideout pours all their beer and does growler fills, bottle sales, merchandise, and keg rentals. AND, Stone Brewing began as the collaboration of beer lover/homebrewer Steve Wagner (Stone’s President and original brewmaster) and beer geek/rock and roll entrepreneur Greg Koch (Stone’s executive chairman) after a mutual friend introduced the two in Los Angeles in 1989 when they were both working in the music business. Stone began playing with black IPA recipes in 2006, and first released their version as the brewery’s 11th Anniversary Ale. It was later re-branded as Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale and went on to win the bronze at the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) in 2010. This hop-heavy IPA is brewed with dark malt so that it pours black with a surprising punch of bitterness balanced by smooth malty character.
VERSUS
21st Amendment Fireside Chat
7.9% ABV, 45 IBU
SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS, CALIFORNIA: In 2000, Nico Freccia and Shaun O’Sullivan founded 21st Amendment Brewery in the South Park neighborhood of San Francisco, California. As avid beer enthusiasts, Freccia and O’Sullivan were determined to establish an ongoing celebration of the overturned 21st Amendment to the Constitution and gave their brewery the amendment’s namesake to commemorate it. Their Fireside Chat winter ale give a nod toward Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Depression-era radio addresses. (Franklin Roosevelt won the 1932 presidential election based on his promise to repeal the 18th Amendment. He did so incrementally, beginning by legalizing the sale of beer, and ending with the 21st Amendment, the first and only time an amendment to the Constitution has ever been repealed.) On the nose, all the typical winter warmer flavors are accounted for: roasted malts, cinnamon, ginger, caramel, clove, and a smidgen of orange peel. Big notes of cinnamon and ginger lie in wait up front, with a touch of subtle orange peel and some clove with a big ginger sendoff, washing in some cinnamon, bread notes and subtle chocolate, too.
LINK: Peaks & Pints cooler inventory
