There’s a special kind of lunacy — the good, delicious kind — that happens when two beers share a recipe but not a soul. Side-by-side comparisons are the beer world’s mirror maze, where nuance stops being theory and starts becoming ecstasy. It’s sensory science disguised as ritual: one sip reveals the slightest tweak — a handful more hops, a heartbeat longer fermentation, the breath of a different brewer’s philosophy. You swirl, you sniff, you surrender, and beer turns to dialect — identical ingredients speaking in wildly different tongues of malt and light. This isn’t just tasting; it’s meditation by way of mouthfeel, proof that even sameness hides a thousand quiet revolutions.
Peaks & Pints Side-By-Side Beer Flight
pFriem Family Brewers The Tao of Josh
7% ABV | West Coast IPA | Hood River, OR
The Tao of Josh exhales precision — a West Coast IPA so poised it feels like stillness disguised as sparkle. Conceived by pFriem as the origin point for its cosmic duet with Georgetown, it balances Mosaic, Citra, Nelson, Nectaron, and Krush Cryo in near-perfect alignment over a base of pale and pilsner malt. Grapefruit brightness meets white-grape restraint, the bitterness sharp but surgical, the finish a bell fading through mountain air. It’s clarity masquerading as chaos, control rendered luminous — Josh Pfriem’s entire brewing philosophy in one glass: enlightenment measured in microns, serenity poured cold.
Georgetown Brewing The Tao of Manny
7% ABV | West Coast IPA | Seattle, WA
Where Josh contemplates, Manny celebrates. Georgetown Brewing‘s The Tao of Manny doesn’t meditate — it grins, riffs, and cannonballs into the pint. Brewed with the same ingredients as its pFriem twin, this version emerges brighter, rounder, more alive. Tangerine and melon glide over pine rhythm, the bitterness pulsing like bass instead of sermon. It finishes crisp but mischievous — sunshine with swagger. Manny Chao’s Tao is the art of connection, proof that enlightenment doesn’t have to whisper; sometimes it laughs, clinks glasses, and hollers “cheers” before the head settles.
Russian River Brewing Pliny the Elder
8% ABV | Double IPA | Santa Rosa, CA
Russian River Brewing‘s Pliny the Elder is the ur-text of hop worship, the primal scripture every IPA since has quoted. Born from Vinnie Cilurzo’s 1990s rebellion, it all but invented the Double IPA — too strong, too aromatic, too joyously alive for its time. Simcoe, Centennial, CTZ, and Amarillo collide in a trinity of citrus, pine, and resin, tempered by a golden malt hum that keeps sermon from becoming scold. Each sip lands crisp, dry, holy — a reminder that modern bitterness began here, in one brewer’s audacious act of faith and foam.
Russian River DDH Pliny the Elder
8% ABV | Double Dry-Hopped Double IPA | Santa Rosa, CA
If the original Pliny was scripture, the DDH version is the ecstatic retelling — louder, wilder, lit from within by lupulin fire. Using the same sacred lineup of hops but double-dry-hopped into delirium, it erupts in waves of stone fruit, grapefruit oil, and resinous pine static. The bitterness preaches discipline, but the aroma riots. It smells like the Pacific Northwest in full bloom and drinks like revelation rewritten in hop ink. Somehow it remains elegant, balanced, transcendently alive — the Elder reborn as prophet, singing the same sermon through a megaphone made of haze and joy.
LINK: Peaks & Pints beer and cider cooler inventory
