Ah, the aluminum cylinder. Maligned by purists, underestimated by connoisseurs, reborn by craft alchemists into objects of art, rebellion, and outright joy. Today, on National Beer Can Appreciation Day, Peaks & Pints invites you to crack the code — and a few cold ones — in tribute to the can: that portable, recyclable miracle that once carried only the pale shame of macroswill, but now gleams with the mythos of Dale’s, the legacy of Rude Parrot, the ethereal florals of Fair Isle, the pastel phantasmagoria of Great Notion, and yes, the sheer audacity of a 32-ounce campfire-festooned crowler filled with hop-kissed glory. This flight isn’t just a toast — it’s a pop-top pilgrimage through the history, innovation, and unrelenting weirdness of craft beer in its most iconic form.
Peaks & Pints National Beer Can Appreciation Day Flight
Oskar Blues Dale’s Pale Ale
6.5% ABV
Ah yes, the humble beer can — once maligned, now canonized — and no modern relic better deserves your reverent, slightly tipsy attention than Dale’s Pale Ale, the aluminum messiah of the craft revolution. In 2002, when everyone else was still fetishizing bottles like they were artisanal perfume, the mad geniuses at Oskar Blues shoved a bold, pine-laced pale ale into a can and detonated a movement. Hop-forward, caramel-backed, and wrapped in unapologetic Americana, Dale’s is more than a beer — it’s a gleaming, recyclable act of rebellion and a love letter to riverside coolers, mountaintop sunrises, and van-life daydreams. This was not only the first American craft beer in a can — it also claimed the title of the very first stovepipe 19.2-ouncer. Respect.
7 Seas Rude Parrot IPA
5.9% ABV
Ah, the parrot returns — loud, feathery, unapologetically citrusy — and with it, a can that helped put Washington on the aluminum map. In 2023, 7 Seas Brewing brought back the beloved Rude Parrot IPA, and frankly, we’re thrilled the bird never learned to behave. First canned way back when everyone else was still bottling like it was 1899, Rude Parrot was the first Washington craft beer to dare the metal path, ushering in a new era of portability, freshness, and pop-top irreverence. Brewed with Nugget, Simcoe, Citra, and Cascade hops, it’s a tropical-pine punch to the beak — crisp, brash, and endlessly sessionable. On this most sacred of beer-can holy days, we raise a can to the parrot that squawked first.
Fair Isle Fyn
4.6% ABV
Fyn is what happens when rustic restraint meets can-clad elegance — a brett-fermented saison dry-hopped with Motueka and Loral and kissed with lemon verbena, because of course it is. It’s earthy but lifted, funky yet flirtatious, like a farmstead dinner party where the DJ spins ambient French disco and the goats have opinions. And the vessel? A tall, slim 12-ounce can — like most of Fair Isle Brewing cans — the kind that looks like it should be sipped in a meadow or served with a linen napkin. Fyn doesn’t just sparkle — it shimmers with controlled wildness, like someone polished the barn floor and let the yeast waltz. At 5.1% ABV, it’s all about grace and texture: herbaceous, lemon-zest bright, with a mineral finish that could teach your chardonnay a thing or two. On this most exalted of aluminum-themed Tuesdays, we lift this Fair Isle stunner to the light and toast the can as a canvas, as vessel, as lowercase revolution.
Great Notion Over Ripe
7% ABV
Craft beer enthusiasts strolling the Peaks & Pints cooler today might be forgiven for thinking they’ve wandered into some pastel-hued fever dream of the afterlife — because suddenly, skeletons. Not the Grains of Wrath kind (though they bring their own brand of metal menace), but the delightfully deadpan creations of Great Notion Brewing’s illustrator-in-residence, Chad Eaton. His bone-baring alter ego Moss now haunts the halls of hops, draped across many Great Notion cans, including Over Ripe — a hazy IPA so drenched in tropical decadence it practically sloshes when you look at it. Papaya, cantaloupe, guava, mangosteen — yes, mangosteen, the Queen of Fruit herself, strutting her Southeast Asian swagger through a nebula of juicy hops. It’s not just a beer, it’s a fruit-forward séance in aluminum form. And on this day of all days, we bow not just to the liquid, but to the art — the skeletal mirth, the mangoed madness, the can that stares back.
White Bluffs Urban Breeze IPA
7.1% ABV
And finally, we arrive at the glowing heart of the flight, where tradition meets improvisation and the firelight flickers off a 32-ounce beacon of possible aluminum love: the Peaks & Pints Campfire Crowler. First, White Bluffs Brewing Urban Breeze IPA, a West Coast meditation of El Dorado, Strata, and Idaho 7 hops — think grapefruit rinds tossed in pine needles, mango drifting on mountain wind. You’ll get a 5-ounce taste in the flight, poured straight from our Western Red Cedar Tap Log, but if you want to take this breeze home, you’ll need to crowler up. Born before the pandemic but canonized during it, the crowler became our communal lifeline — a silver totem of togetherness when togetherness wasn’t allowed. On this Can Appreciation Day, we raise not just the tiny, the tall, and the trailblazing, but Peaks & Pints Campfire Crowler — a big, beautiful draft-to-go time capsule, art-wrapped and animal-approved.
LINK: Peaks & Pints beer and cider cooler inventory
