This Wednesday, July 23, the Grit & Grain Podcast descends into the hallowed, cedar-scented halls of Peaks & Pints for a rare, soil-to-glass summit: a double live recording with Brian Estes of LINC Malt and Rikki Welz of HAAS hops, the elemental conjurers of barley and bitterness, from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. in Tacoma’s Proctor District. To honor this communion of terroir and terpenes, of loam and lupulin, we present a flight brewed in their image — a five-glass tribute to the flavor architects working quietly beneath your pint. This is not a beer flight. This is an edible syllabus. This is what happens when malt farmers and hop scientists meet at the crossroads of art, agriculture, and obsession, and your tongue gets to tag along.

Peaks & Pints LINC and HAAS Beer Flight

Lumberbeard Kiwi Krispi

4.9% ABV

Ah yes, Kiwi Krispi — Lumberbeard Brewing’s lean, luminous sunbeam of a pilsner, back from whatever summer slumber party it wandered off to, now freshly dressed in 100% local grain from LINC and Cold Stream and spritzed with Nelson Sauvin and Motueka like citrus zest over a mountain stream. This is not your granddad’s pilsner, unless your granddad was a grain-forward minimalist with a crush on New Zealand. It’s lemon peel and lime blossom, the snap of cool mineral malt, and just enough hoppy flirtation to keep things bright and breezy. A pilsner for hammocks, rooftop lunch breaks, and spontaneous day trips to anywhere green.

pFriem Kölsch

4.7% ABV

Of course, pFriem Kölsch is impossibly clean, achingly balanced, and elegant in that old-world-meets-Cascadian way — but did you know its quiet perfection is powered, in part, by LINC’s White Wheat malt? That’s right: this Rhine-inspired featherweight doesn’t just walk the Cologne line, it does so with the subtle grit of Eastern Washington grain humming beneath its noble-hop finesse. Weyermann may provide the pilsner malt, but the wheat is ours. Local. Bright. Whisper-soft. Like lemonade filtered through silk. In this Haas-and-LINC flight of agricultural alchemy, pFriem Kölsch is the refined diplomat — fluent in tradition, fluent in terroir, politely asking you to slow your damn life down.

Douglas Lager

4.7% ABV

Douglas Lagered Beer isn’t here to reinvent the wheel — it’s here to remind you why the wheel matters, especially when it’s rolling on 100% Baronesse Pilsner malt from LINC, grown under Spokane skies and whispering golden-grain gospel into every crisp sip. Hopped with Oregon-grown Lórien (no relation to elves, but nearly mythic), this lager is a love letter to simplicity: soft crackery malt, floral lift, mineral finish. It’s the kind of beer you drink while mowing the lawn, writing your memoirs, or building a canoe — a lager that doesn’t demand attention but absolutely earns it. On this Haas-and-LINC celebration, Douglas Lager is the quiet professional: old soul, new standard, all PNW.

Single Hill Brewing Feral Joy

6.3% ABV

Feral Joy is what happens when Single Hill Brewing and the mad hop scientists at Haas whisper “what if…” into a field of Citra, Loral, and the experimental wizardry of HBC 1019. The result? A radiant, tropi-dank IPA that smells like a fruit cart crash-landed in a wildflower meadow — all mango, papaya, orange pith, and green stems, anchored in soft citrus earth. It’s expressive, unruly in the best way, and unmistakably alive. Feral Joy doesn’t just showcase hops; it gives them a stage, a spotlight, and a fog machine. On this flight of Haas and LINC greatness, it’s the rockstar botanist — crop science with swagger.

Equilibrium The Juice Awakens

8.2% ABV

Ah, The Juice Awakens — not a beer, but a double dry-hopped intergalactic revelation, a hazy Jedi mind trick brewed by Equilibrium and Great Notion that rewires your cerebellum in citrus code and pulpy prophecy. This is what happens when you hand a lightsaber to Haas hop science: Citra Incognito®, Citra Lupomax®, and a bounty of raw Citra, Strata, Eclipse, and Krush form a hop council so potent it practically levitates the glass. On the nose, it’s a burst of pineapple tang, melon Pez, and key lime smoothie served in a nebula — on the tongue, it’s juice-forward enlightenment cloaked in tropical velvet and dank mirth. This is what the Force tastes like when the brewers are MIT-trained alchemists and the hops come wrapped in Haas’s finest lab coats. Drink it, you must.

LINK: Peaks & Pints beer and cider cooler inventory