Tournament of Northwest IPAs: Final Vote and Tonight’s Party
PAPPI SWARNER: Oh, the carnage! Oh, the humanity! Oh, the late kettle additions!
MATTHEW USHER: The prodigious Northwest-style IPA throwdown finale is on! Voting for the Peaks & Pints Tournament of Beer: Northwest IPAs Championship Game is live. Hello Tournament tribe! I’m Peaks bartender Matthew Usher. After three weeks of voting, you have picked the most popular Northwest-style IPAs in the Pacific Northwest. What began as 64 Cascade hop and malt-slinging IPAs has been narrowed down to two!
SWARNER: … I apologize for the delay. I was looking up, “prodigious.” Hi everyone. I, Peaks co-owner Pappi Swarner, wrangled the public nominations into our annual beer-style Tournament — this year, Northwest-style IPAs. This year was a blast! But it’s not over yet.
USHER: Look at yesterday’s Final Four action, then vote on the Championship Game. It was our heaviest hitter Final Four in the Tournament’s nine-year history. And it didn’t disappoint.
Friday, April 25, Final Four Northwest IPA Games results
FINAL FOUR GAME 1: WASHINGTON REGION
Georgetown Brewing Lucille IPA (#1 seed) vs. E9 Brewing Realize Real Lies (#2 seed)
SWARNER: Our Kitchen called it the game of the Tournament, which is hard to argue with two breweries that know how to distribute the word and tasty IPAs. When the last pint was poured, and a million lead changes, E9 Brewing grabbed 51 percent of the vote and moves on to today’s Championship Game.
FINAL FOUR GAME 2: OREGON REGION
Fort George Brewery Vortex IPA (#1 seed) vs. Boneyard Beer RPM IPA (#1 seed)’
USHER: Could this be Boneyard Beer’s third year in a row of having a beer in the Tournament of Beer Championship Game? The two previous years, E9 Brewing’s Don of Time Pale beat Boneyard’s Bone-A-Fide Pale in 2023’s Tournament of Pales, and Triplehorn’s Folkvang Red beat Diablo Rojo in last year’s Amber Championship Game. Boneyard has another chance. It beat Bend Brewing’s Tropic Pines IPA in the Hot Break Eight. It battled hard against Fort George’s Vortex IPA for the Oregon Championship yesterday. Vortex held the lead through the game, finishing with 55 percent of the vote at the buzzer.
Saturday, April 26, Northwest IPAs Championship Game
The titanic Northwest-style IPA throwdown finale is on! Voting for the 2025 Tournament of Beer: Northwest IPAs Championship game is live. (See below)
After three weeks of voting, you picked the most popular Northwest IPA in Oregon and another in Washington. What began as 64 hop-slinging IPAs has been narrowed down to E9 Brewing Realize Real Lies IPA and Fort George Vortex IPA.
Welcome to the big dance. Online voting will end at 5 p.m. Voting will resume at 6 p.m. live at the Tournament of Beers Party at Peaks and Pints, 3816 N. 26th St. in Tacoma’s Proctor District. Ballots will be handed out as raffle tickets for sweet prizes, including the Yeti Cooler plastered with most of the participating breweries. The live vote will close at 8 p.m., tallied, and the Northwest IPA champion will be announced at 8:30 p.m.
E9 Brewing Realize Real Lies IPA vs. Fort George Brewery Vortex IPA
This is Washington vs. Oregon, people. This is for IPA bragging rights for the Pacific Northwest.
Player: Realize Real Lies (#2 seed)
Team: E9 Brewing, Tacoma
Player Stats: In the early ’90s, Dusty Trail converted the historic Engine House No. 9 bar into a brewpub at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Pine Street, officially becoming the first microbrewery in Tacoma. Dick Dickens grabbed the Engine House reins in 2002, bringing in head brewer Doug Tiede. Heads turned, and medals were hung. In 2011, The X Group added the Engine House to their local restaurant empire, with Shane Johns and Donovan Stewart running the kettles and hanging even more medals, primarily for their sours and saisons. In May 2019, they separated the brewery from the restaurant and opened a 15-barrel brewhouse in Tacoma’s Historic Brewery District. Since then, they have cranked out an endless supply of new, delicious IPAs, including Realize Real Lies IPA with late additions of Columbus and Citra, and finishes with double dry hopping of Columbus, Mosaic, and Simcoe hops for dank green notes of blueberry, mango, grapefruit, pine, and Apricot.
ABV: 6.5%, Hops: Columbus, Citra, Mosaic, Simcoe
Player: Vortex IPA (#1 seed)
Team: Fort George Brewery, Astoria
Player Stats: In 2006, Chris Nemlowill and Jack Harris flew to Virginia Beach, Virginia, to salvage an 8.5-barrel Saaz brewing system and drive it across the country to install it in their soon-to-open Fort George Brewery in Astoria. While traveling with the equipment strapped to a flatbed, they met up with a tornado that nearly spread the brewery across a Nebraska cornfield. This became the inspiration behind the name Vortex IPA. With a hearty, unfiltered, unpasteurized organic malt spine that makes way for Simcoe, Apollo, Comet, and Chinook hops, this Northwest IPA has a medium body with a resinous mouthfeel, more grapefruit than pine, and finishes with lingering hop bitterness.
ABV: 7.2%, Hops: Apollo, Cascade, Mosaic, Simcoe
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LINK: Tournament of Beer: Northwest IPAs explained
LINK: Tournament of Beer Headquarters
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