When Peaks & Pints swings open its cedar doors each November, the city still feels like it did that first day in 2016 — cranes rising, murals blooming, espresso in every hand, and beer as the unofficial civic language. The ghosts of the old Heidelberg stacks are long gone, but their spirit lingers in the mash tuns and ambition of every South Sound brewery. Pierce County’s beer scene isn’t just alive; it’s self-inventing, pint by pint, laugh by laugh. Tacoma’s glass is still half full and climbing.

Back then, local beer was raw and radiant. E9 Brewing Co. brewed out of its century-old firehouse, turning patience into poetry. Narrows Brewing balanced above the tide, sun, and stainless in perpetual duet. Odd Otter poured laughter and lagers downtown like a small revolution. Across the bridge, Wet Coast Brewing wrote its Gig Harbor prologue in cedar and steel, while 7 Seas Brewing resurrected the Heidelberg’s bones into a temple of can-born sustainability. Harmon Brewing, Wingman Brewers, Pacific Brewing & Malting, Tacoma Brewing were still stirring wort; Sig Brewing was still a dream.

Today’s flight — 2016 Locals — celebrates those survivors and innovators. The beers are new, but the roots run deep: Odd Otter’s playful darkness, Narrows’ tidal calm, E9’s espresso-soft wisdom, Wet Coast’s tropical precision, and 7 Seas’ hop-bright pride. Together they form a living toast to Tacoma’s craft-beer soul — hardworking, unpretentious, gloriously unfiltered, and still brewing toward whatever comes next.

Join us at 6 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 1, as we fling open the lodge doors and raise a raucous toast to nine deliriously delicious years of beer, cider, and community — the stuff that keeps Tacoma weird, wonderful, and properly hydrated.

Peaks & Pints Ninth Anniversary Wednesday 2016 Local Beer Flight

Odd Otter The Oddfather Black Lager

4.8 % | Schwarzbier | Tacoma, WA

In 2016, Odd Otter Brewing Company was Tacoma’s lovable misfit — a pocket-sized downtown brewery where pints came with laughter, board games, and the faint smell of rebellion. The military-adjacent founders brewed like poets with too much caffeine and not enough restraint, turning their Pacific Avenue taproom into a clubhouse for the creatively thirsty. The Oddfather Black Lager is their quiet triumph: smooth, roasty, unexpectedly elegant. Cocoa and coffee murmur through a crisp lager body — darkness dressed in silk. It’s proof that “odd” and “excellent” have always shared the same DNA.

Narrows Brewing Winterized Oatmeal Stout

6.5 % | Oatmeal Stout | Tacoma, WA’

Back in 2016, Narrows Brewing was a multiple families’ dream, steering a 15-barrel brewery perched on pilings above the tidal hush of the Narrows waterway. Guests drank with a view: 700 feet of guest dock stretching below, the twin bridges beyond catching the sunset like steel cathedrals. Inside, former Ale Asylum brewer Joe Walts helmed the tanks with quiet precision while his assistant Zach Dowling — still there today — learned the rhythm of Tacoma’s salt-kissed air. Winterized Oatmeal Stout is their hymn to the gray season — roasted barley and cocoa drifting through an oat-soft body, sturdy as the dock beneath your feet. It doesn’t shout. It simply endures — quiet warmth against endless rain.

E9 Brewing O’Leary’s Nitro Coffee Stout

7 % | Coffee Milk Stout | Tacoma, WA

In 2016, E9 Brewing Co. was Tacoma’s revered elder — still brewing out of the brick bones of Engine House No. 9, but already earning fame for its wild ales, barrel aging, and uncompromising devotion to craft. O’Leary’s Nitro Coffee Stout is its black-velvet reminder of restraint — Caffè Vita coffee folded into chocolate malt and lactose, poured on nitro until it sighs like midnight silk. Each sip hums with espresso calm and quiet confidence — the flavor of Tacoma grown wise.

Wet Coast Brewing Nectaron Single Hop IPA

6.2 % | American IPA | Gig Harbor, WA

In 2016, Wet Coast Brewing Co. was still the new kid on the South Sound block — a one-year-old Gig Harbor upstart pouring bright ambition into pints of approachable Northwest comfort. The taproom smelled of cedar, stainless, and possibility, its regulars mostly neighbors who’d traded ferry rides for fresh pours. Nearly a decade later, the brewery still wears that same easy confidence, now flexing with its Nectaron Single Hop IPA, which showcases New Zealand’s most exuberant export: peach, lychee, and citrus bursting like laughter over Puget Sound. The malt backbone stays graceful, letting the hop sing. It’s small-town craftsmanship gone symphonic — proof that polish never killed soul.

7 Seas Brewing Loza Farms Uno Más IPA

6.4 % | American IPA | Tacoma, WA

In 2016, 7 Seas Brewing had just flung open the doors of its massive new Tacoma home — a modern cathedral of steel and cedar carved into the old Heidelberg Brewery in the city’s resurgent Brewery District, its tanks gleaming with ambition under the hum of downtown light rail and revival. Founders Mike Runion and Travis Guterson were riding the crest of the can-revolution, preaching sustainability and Pacific Northwest pride one aluminum sermon at a time. Loza Farms Uno Más IPA channels that energy — a Comet-hopped tribute to Yakima Valley’s only Latino-owned hop farm. Grapefruit, citrus peel, and wildflowers flare over a clean malt canvas. It’s a beer of gratitude and motion — proof that Tacoma’s brewing heart beats louder with every pour.

LINK: Peaks & Pints beer and cider cooler inventory