Sometimes a performance politely stays in its lane; Tacoma Arts Live’s Lemon Sessions: Migrations, Forced & Chosen detonates the lanes entirely. On Thursday and Friday, Sept. 18 and 19, 7:30 p.m. at the Tacoma Armory Parade Floor, fiddles braid into Cuban trios, Andean heartbeat meets Persian verse, Filipino lullabies cross the ocean on a tide of projected color while Tacoma poet Claudia Castro-Luna stitches sky-high lines across the parade floor. Produced by Tacoma Arts Live and hosted by Silong Chhun, painted alive by Deepti Agrawal, Fulgencio Lazo, and Saiyare Refaei, it’s less concert than kaleidoscope, less lecture than living archive—a ritual of leaving and arriving, of what we carry and what we shed. Tickets $18.50–$47 at tacomaartslive.org, and worth every lemon-bright note of it.

So today we chase that same voltage in the glass—a Lemon Sessions Flight built around all the different ways lemon sneaks into beer. Sometimes it’s coaxed from oak and wild yeast, sometimes it’s literal peel and zest, sometimes it’s woven with herbs or conjured by a fresh hop strain, and sometimes it’s blasted wide open by Citra’s singular citrus punch. Think lemon meringue glow in a farmhouse ale, lemon-rind snap in a spontaneous sour, lemon-spark haze in a fresh hop pale. Five beers, five dialects of the same bright language—Peaks & Pints supplies the zesty passport; you bring the curiosity (and maybe a ticket stub still warm from the Armory).

Peaks & Pints Lemon Sessions Flight

Russian River Beatification

6% ABV | Wine Barrel-Aged Spontaneous Sour Ale | Santa Rosa, CA

Santa Rosa’s Russian River Brewing doesn’t brew Beatification so much as set it free—wort left overnight in a coolship to capture whatever the night air delivers, then aged in wine barrels until it transforms into something luminous. It pours golden and alive, layered with citrus tang, green apple snap, wild funk, and a cutting finish like lemon rind through autumn air. Both earthy and ethereal, Beatification drinks like a benediction in a glass—chaos tamed into radiant clarity.

Funky Fauna Forest Fizz

4% ABV | Wild Saison with Lavender & Lemon | Sisters, OR

Forest Fizz isn’t so much a beer as it is a meadow caught mid-exhale, a lavender breeze corked in a bottle, a lemon sunbeam fizzing its way across your palate. Funky Fauna ferments this wild saison with the kind of reverence usually reserved for sacred groves — oak barrels, farmhouse funk, whispers of wild yeast — before layering in French Provence lavender and bright lemon until the glass positively gleams. Effervescent, airy, featherlight, yet threaded with sly saison tang, it drinks like lying in tall grass at the forest edge while bees hum their honey liturgy. Nature doesn’t usually sparkle, but when it does, it probably tastes like this.

pFriem Lemon Zest Farmhouse Ale

6.2% ABV | Farmhouse Ale | Hood River, OR

Hood River’s pFriem Family Brewers spins sunshine into glass with Lemon Zest Farmhouse Ale, a saison built on pilsner malt, wheat, and spelt, then lit up with actual lemon peel until it glows like citrus confetti. The first sip is all bright zest and apricot shimmer, chased by grassy spice, a whisper of earth, and the gentle funk of farmhouse yeast. At 6.2 percent with just 29 IBUs, it finishes creamy, tart, and ridiculously refreshing—less beer than bottled daylight, a lemon hymn brewed for clinking glasses long after the sun has dipped behind the Gorge.

Ilk Beer Fresh Hop Strata Pale (2025)

5.2% ABV | Fresh Hop Pale Ale | Olympia, WA

Olympia’s Ilk Beer proves fresh hop season doesn’t always need to shout—it can also hum, buzz, and strum like a porch guitar with a cracked string. Built on pale and pilsner malt with a touch of oats, this pale lets Strata do the singing: strawberry murmur, lemon spark, a sly wink of cannabis funk drifting through the glass. Light on its feet at 5.2 percent, it drifts across the palate like dusk settling over wet grass—clean, grassy, gently creamy—and disappears before you’ve even thought about pouring another.

Seapine Citra Hazy IPA

6.6% ABV | Hazy IPA | Seattle, WA

Seattle’s Seapine Brewing lets Citra do all the talking in Citra Hazy, and the language is pure citrus electricity—lemon brightness, orange zest, tangerine sweetness, all piled high in a glowing, slightly clouded pint. Bitter enough at 65 IBUs to keep the juice in check, it still rolls soft and plush on the palate, like citrus curd whipped with hop resin. At 6.6 percent, it’s a lemon-forward haze that doesn’t just nod to the orchard, it practically squeezes itself into the flight—proof that Citra alone can light the stage with as much voltage as an entire hop chorus.

LINK: The Lemon Sessions is included in the 6-Pack of Things To Do in Tacoma

LINK: Peaks & Pints beer and cider cooler inventory