And just like that, the steins clink hollow, the brass fades, the caramel malts retreat to memory. Peaks & Pints Fresh Hoptoberfest: The Ninth Pour has run its 30-day delirium — fresh hops glowing neon beside toffee-laced Oktoberfests, harvest colliding with history in one long month of froth. Today, we close the curtain on the Märzens and Festbiers, those malty anchors between summer’s exhale and winter’s dark inhale. But don’t mistake this for the end of fresh hop season — those lupulin bombs will keep thrumming through our IPA lines for weeks yet, proof the fields aren’t done singing.
So consider today’s flight a send-off and a sampler: two Oktoberfest swan songs, three fresh hop firecrackers, one last toast to the Ninth Pour before it slips into legend. Raise one, drink deep, and remember — the harvest never really ends, it just changes verses.
Peaks & Pints 2025 Fresh Hoptoberfest Finale Flight
Great Notion Oktoberfest
5.8% ABV | Märzen | Portland, OR
Great Notion, usually the patron saint of fruit haze and pastry theatrics, dials back the spectacle here. Their Oktoberfest is a reverent hymn in Vienna malt — glowing amber, layered with bread crust and caramel warmth. Hallertau Mittelfrüh, Mandarina Bavaria, and Sterling hops stitch in quiet floral and herbal grace. It’s malt as cathedral, hops as stained glass, a pint that feels less like a festival gimmick and more like Bavaria sung straight, no remix.
Maritime Pacific Windfest
6.5% ABV | Märzen | Seattle, WA
Windfest has been Ballard’s autumn soundtrack for decades — a Märzen draped in caramel and biscuit, Saaz and Vanguard giving it that subtle floral lift. At 6.5 percent it fills steins with easy rhythm, the kind of beer that carries a brass band without breaking stride. But this year the pint tastes different: George and Jane Hancock, who launched Maritime Pacific in 1990, retired in 2025, passing the helm to Rooftop Brewing. The Jolly Roger Taproom, the sliders, the classics like Jolly Roger Ale endure — Windfest now doubles as a farewell toast to the Hancocks, whose work built Seattle beer’s backbone.
Everybody’s Fresh ’N Chronic (2025)
6.9% ABV | Fresh Hop IPA | White Salmon, WA
Each harvest, Everybody’s in White Salmon resurrects Fresh ’N Chronic like a ritual offering, and the 2025 edition is a Citra-charged blaze. Citrus oil, grapefruit zest, mango flesh, and lime peel come together in a pint that hums like orchard fruit wired to an amplifier. Sticky, green, fleeting, it captures that narrow window when hops still pulse with field heat. This isn’t just a beer you drink; it’s a beer that tattoos September on your tongue.
Gold Dot Wet Hop Slim Digs
7.4% ABV | Fresh Hop West Coast IPA | McMinnville, OR
McMinnville’s Gold Dot takes its flagship West Coast IPA and hauls it through the fields for a wet hop reawakening. Citra, Centennial, and Simcoe land fresh in the kettle, their oils popping into grapefruit rind, lime leaf, mango, and stone fruit, all snapped taut over pine resin. At 7.4 percent it’s bold but balanced, a pint that feels like standing in the bine rows as the sun burns off morning dew. Wet Hop Slim Digs is immediacy in liquid form — once the cones fade, so does this.
Lumberbeard Hoptaneous Combustion (2025)
6.8% ABV | Fresh Hop West Coast IPA | Spokane, WA
In Spokane, Lumberbeard doesn’t brew Hoptaneous Combustion so much as unleash it. Wet hops hit the boil and the whole thing goes volatile: grapefruit peel sparking off pine, lemon oil igniting into green haze, flashes of tropical fruit scattering like embers. The malt skeleton is stripped to essentials, just enough to hold the fire. At 6.8 percent, it’s bright, lean, wired — a beer less poured than detonated, proof the harvest sometimes chooses to roar instead of sing.
LINK: Peaks & Pints beer and cider cooler inventory
