Let us now praise the blessed yeast whisperers. Back in 2010, when most brewers were still shouting about IBUs and shoving pine cones into mash tuns, Chad Yakobson was quietly completing his master’s thesis on Brettanomyces fermentation and using it to conjure something far stranger and more sublime: Crooked Stave Artisan Beer Project. It began in Denver as an open-source experiment—a love letter to wild yeast and oak—and slowly fermented into one of the country’s most thrilling houses of funk. No stainless temples here. No gimmick hops. Just Colorado-grown barley floor-malted by Leopold Bros, spontaneous fermentation from the local air, and whole fruit—always whole fruit—macerated into rustic divinity. At first, they brewed nomadically, sneaking wort into barrels like monks smuggling sacred relics. Then came coolships, foeders, and their own brewhouse. And then came the heartbreak: Washington state lost them. Gone, ghosted, pulled from shelves in a swirl of distribution dust and silence. But now, just in time for high summer, they’ve returned. Re-oaked. Re-awakened. And this Saturday, Peaks & Pints pours a reverent flight of Crooked Stave’s finest — Peaks & Pints Beer Flight: Crooked Stave. The funk is back. And it’s beautiful.
Peaks & Pints Beer Flight: Crooked Stave
Crooked Stave Smooth Jazz Berry
6% ABV
Smooth Jazz Berry—Crooked Stave’s sultry, oak‑aged sour serenade saunters in for an all raspberries and vanilla in a slow‑dance under foedered ceilings. Picture this: crimson bramble fruit notes shimmying through a mild funk backbone, with lemon zest and hay flickers that keep it from veering into cloying dessert territory. The oak frames everything like a grand jazz solo—rich, sultry, unforced, with the vanilla smoothing edges so it never goes full screech. It’s a velvety, fruity whisper that lingers, like late-night regret after the last set. You don’t just sip it—you saunter in.
Crooked Stave Persica 2023
6% ABV
Now gliding into the taste glass: Persica—Crooked Stave’s radiant ode to Palisade peaches, sun-ripened and wild as a dream whispered by a fruit tree in heat. This isn’t juice—it’s a golden sour fermented with airborne magic, aged in oak puncheons until the peaches bleed poetry into the funk. It arrives like a peach bellini that’s been reading Rimbaud: tart, fragrant, elegantly herbal, with whispers of thyme and cellar funk dancing beneath a haze of soft fuzz and citrus light. The oak doesn’t shout; it sighs, lending texture and tannin to what could otherwise be mistaken for a midsummer hallucination. It’s the kind of beer that makes you want to speak in lowercase and roll through meadows barefoot.
Crooked Stave Nightmare On Brett
9.66% ABV
And then there’s Nightmare On Brett—Crooked Stave’s maleficent lullaby for the wild yeast faithful, a dark sour so brooding, so bourbon-kissed and Brett-haunted, it practically crawls out of the glass humming a Nick Cave ballad. Aged first in massive oak foeders, then locked away in Leopold Bros whiskey barrels, this demon symphony comes swirling with tart cherries, leathery plum, cocoa whispers, and an undercurrent of acidic berries gnashing their teeth beneath a halo of funk. It’s not a beer, it’s a possessed fruitcake conducting an oaky, chocolate-laced exorcism in your mouth. You don’t drink this—you surrender to it.
Crooked Stave Stave the Waves
7% ABV
Of course, we’re pouring Stave the Waves in this Crooked Stave beer flight—because sometimes you need a West Coast IPA that doesn’t just slap your tastebuds awake but whispers, “Pay attention, this is what clarity tastes like.” A coastal conspiracy between Crooked Stave and Beachwood Brewing, this Mosaic- and Nelson-blasted triumph is all dry snap and laser bitterness, hopped into being with Nelson Hop Kief—a cryo-concentrated lupulin elixir that’s basically liquid hop perfume, all grape-laced aromatics and zero vegetal fluff. It’s crisp, clean, and luminous with a kind of bitter transcendence that feels like the IPA equivalent of surfing in a tuxedo—buttoned-up malt structure, radiant with citrus snarl, and a finish so clean it could absolve your hazy sins.
Crooked Stave Orange Chocolate Baltic Porter
7.5% ABV
Enter Orange Chocolate Baltic Porter—Crooked Stave’s darkly playful encore, bold yet flirtatious, like a noir detective sipping a citrus-kissed cocktail by candlelight. Brewed in true Baltic Porter form, it rolls in heavy with a robe of liquid noir—molten cacao and dark-roast coffee aromas layered atop a touch of bitter orange peel that seems to wink at you from the rim of the glass. On the palate, it’s all velvet and voltage: bittersweet chocolate swirling with bright citrus bite, like orange zest scrawled in cursive across a truffle. Decadent without being cloying, a velvet glove concealing a citrus punch—the kind of beer that seduces your senses before delivering a well-mannered knockout.
LINK: Peaks & Pints beer and cider cooler inventory
