Wednesday, Aug. 20, Tacoma becomes a stage with a split spotlight: Matt McLaren and Erina McLaren both taking their turns, one in Peaks & Pints’ Events Room and the other under Old Town Tacoma’s cedar sky. You could call it a family double feature; we call it proof that beer and music are never far apart when the McLarens are involved.
Matt is the brand manager at Orcas Distributing, which means he spends his days making sure the region’s most boujee and far-flung beers find their way to your glass. He’s also one of the co-hosts of the Grit & Grain Podcast, Tacoma’s ongoing love letter to the brewing world. Fittingly, he’ll be in Peaks & Pints’ Events Room at 3:30 p.m. today, steering a conversation on fresh hops — those annual green miracles that arrive like Christmas in August for brewers and drinkers alike.
Meanwhile, Erina takes the evening slot, 6:30 p.m. at Kim Archer’s Old Town Summer Concert Series in Old Town Park, with her folk-Americana soul that threads country ache and pop shimmer into songs so personal they feel like borrowed diary entries. She’s fresh off her single “Oh My Love” and will let her voice fold into the twilight air like incense, a kind of cathedral service where the pews are picnic blankets and the pulpit is just the Tacoma summer sky. Expect harmonies that crack the air open, guitar lines that hum like cicadas, and the kind of presence that makes even the breeze slow down to listen.
So yes, Wednesday is the McLarens’ Setlist: beer, podcast, and music all tangled in one Tacoma day. Which is why Peaks & Pints built this flight entirely from the Orcas catalog Matt curates — a liquid mixtape to sip while you plot your route from Events Room to Old Town. Consider it the opening chords before the encore.
Peaks & Pints McLarens Setlist Flight
Mortalis Hydra (Peach + Blueberry + Strawberry)
7% ABV | Fruited Smoothie Sour
For the first time, Orcas Distributing has unleashed this Hydra series beast on Washington soil, and honestly, the state may never taste the same again. Since opening its doors in 2018, Mortalis Brewing has gone from garage experiments to cult altar—beloved by zealots of fruit-forward delirium and impossible, experimental styles that shouldn’t work but absolutely do. This Hydra head thrashes with peach glow, blueberry dusk, and strawberry sugar, pouring a luscious crimson that looks like it might stain your soul. It drinks like a smoothie, a sorbet, a pagan festival of fruit—sweet and thick, then pulled back into balance by a sly, tart bite that keeps you awake and grinning. Mortals may call it beer, but you’ll swear it’s some mythic nectar brewed in defiance of restraint, finally delivered to Washington like contraband joy.
Japas Cervejaria Oishii
4.7% ABV | Witbier / Blanche
Brewed by three Japanese-Brazilian women who somehow managed to bottle both continents’ restless creativity, Japas Cervejaria‘s Oishii is equal parts Tokyo zing and São Paulo sunshine. It’s a witbier, yes, but with ginger flaring like a struck match over the soft cradle of wheat and orange peel, the way Japanese cuisine knows just when to whisper and when to singe. Its very name means “yummy” in Japanese, and it’s as light, crisp, and mischievously aromatic as a breezy summer haiku written on a Rio sidewalk. And here’s the kicker: Orcas Distributing has brought these Japas beers to Washington for the first time, meaning your taster glass suddenly doubles as a passport—halfway across the globe in a single sip, equal parts heritage and rebellion, culture clash turned liquid joy.
Larrabee Lager Summerbräu
5.3% ABV | Japanese Rice Lager
Larrabee Lager‘s Summerbräu lives in the Orcas catalog like a quiet little lightning bolt, a Japanese-style rice lager that tastes like someone pressed the reset button on your entire palate. It’s herbal, crisp, and stripped-down clean—an aesthetic that co-owner Kate Milne unpacked beautifully on Episode 131 of the Grit & Grain Podcast, where she and her crew reminded us that minimalism is not absence but grace. This is a beer that doesn’t shout; it exhales, letting the rice do the whispering and the breeze do the rest. One sip and you get it: some brews aren’t made to impress the crowd, they’re made to slip into the back of your mind and stay there like the hook of a perfect summer song.
Anchorage Be Not Afraid
6.4% ABV | Hazy IPA
Anchorage Brewing doesn’t really “make” hazies so much as it sculpts them out of light and fruit haze, whispering to Citra, Mosaic Cryo, Motueka, and Nelson Sauvin until they surrender their juiciest secrets. Be Not Afraid is one of those soft-focus miracles: apricot nectar, pineapple lushness, grapefruit snap, all sluicing through the glass like some tropic fever dream set to cathedral reverb. It’s been nestled in Orcas Distributing’s book for years now, an enduring hymn to why the Pacific Northwest never needs to apologize for its IPA obsession. Silky, radiant, unapologetically juicy—this is not a beer so much as a bright commandment: fear not, sip deep, and let the haze do the preaching.
Monkless Meet Your Maker
9% ABV | Belgian Dark Strong Ale
Meet Your Maker is less beer and more cathedral hymn, a Belgian dark strong ale so rich and resonant it feels like incense curling through stained glass. Monkless Belgian Ales layers raisin, date, and dark plum with caramel, chocolate, and coffee until the whole thing drinks like a liquefied monastery feast—equal parts prayer and sin. There’s no monk in sight, of course, just Bend, Oregon, brewers laughing at dogma while brewing beers worthy of canonization. Silver medalist at the 2025 Oregon Beer Awards, this is the one you pour when you want silence at the table, when you want eyes to roll back just a little, when you want a bottle to remind you that gravity is optional and reverence is delicious. Monkless founder Todd Clement unpacked this ethos on Episode 94 of the Grit & Grain Podcast, and for years, Orcas Distributing has proudly carried their beers—proof that some devotions belong in the book permanently.
LINK: Erina McLaren’s show is part of the Peaks & Pints 6-Pack of Things To Do in Tacoma
LINK: Peaks & Pints beer and cider cooler Inventory
