Peaks & Pints March Six-Pack Highlights Pine IPAs, Tequila Barrels, and Yakima Haze

Pine resin, tequila barrels, and a Tacoma Beer Week collaboration walk into a bottle shop. That's not the setup to a joke; it's the actual contents of Peaks & Pints' latest New Beer Six-Pack, authored by Ron Swarner and landing at the Tacoma craft beer taproom and bottle shop with the kind of range that makes a cooler worth lingering in front of. Six beers, six styles, one very clear thesis: the Pacific Northwest has range.

E9 Brewing Browns Point Cascadian Dark Ale (6.8%)

The most locally rooted pour in this six-pack carries some serious community credentials. E9 Brewing built this Cascadian Dark Ale in collaboration with Dustin Striplin of the Brown's Point Homebrew Club, timed explicitly for Tacoma Beer Week, and the result threads pine resin and grapefruit zest through cocoa-dark malt shadows, finishing crisp, dry, and defiantly Northwest. At 6.8% in a 16oz pour, it splits the difference between a session you could nurse and a beer that actually has something to say. The homebrew-to-production pipeline doesn't always yield something this dialed in, but the CDA format, roasty base cut with aggressive hop character, suits the collaboration well.

Single Hill Brewing Groundswell Hazy IPA (6.5%)

Yakima doesn't need much of an introduction in hop-literate circles, and Single Hill Brewing's Groundswell Hazy IPA leans into that geography with conviction. Peaks & Pints describes it as "a golden fog of mango pulp, orange zest, and soft tropical bloom," all pillowy texture and low-bitter glide, "like Yakima sunshine rolling in slow motion." That last phrase does a lot of work, and it earns it: the 6.5% ABV sits in that comfortable hazy sweet spot where the beer feels full without tipping into slog territory. If you want to understand what the Yakima Valley's hop output tastes like when it's treated with care rather than just volume, this is a reasonable starting point.

Wayfinder Beer Jaws of Damnation Japanese Rice Lager (5.3%)

The name is a little menacing for what is, by design, a study in restraint. Wayfinder Beer's Jaws of Damnation is a Japanese Rice Lager at 5.3%, and Peaks & Pints says it "keeps it razor-clean and quietly lethal," presenting a pale shimmer of soft grain, floral whisper, and rice-crisp snap that "drinks like cold river water under bright sun." The Japanese rice lager style lives and dies by its clarity and finish, and "quietly lethal" captures something true about beers that seem simple until you've had three. The lightest ABV in this six-pack doesn't mean the least interesting; it means the most technically demanding to execute well.

Fort George Brewery Riip at Your Own Risk West Coast IPA (6.7%)

Fort George Brewery teams with Riip for a West Coast IPA that doesn't hedge on its identity. Where the Groundswell leans into haze and tropical softness, the Riip at Your Own Risk comes in sharp: "A bright blade of grapefruit zest and pine resin slices clean through the haze," per Peaks & Pints, delivering a crisp, coastal snap that "drinks bold and brilliantly bracing." At 6.7%, it's the style done with classic West Coast conviction, the kind of beer that defined a movement before the New England hazy took over the conversation. Collaborations between established regional breweries and smaller brands sometimes produce something generic; this one, at least on paper, sounds like Fort George doing what Fort George does and pulling a partner along for the ride.

Mirage Slasher Black IPA (6.9%)

Black IPAs occupy a peculiar corner of the style map: too roasty for pure hop heads, too hoppy for stout loyalists, and beloved by the people who live in that overlap. Mirage Beer's Slasher comes in "inky as midnight vinyl yet flashing with grapefruit peel, pine resin, and rye-spiced snap," with cocoa shadow layered beneath what Peaks & Pints calls a double-dry-hopped storm that finishes "crisp, sharp, and gloriously Northwest." The double-dry-hop is the detail that tips this from an interesting stylistic exercise into something with genuine hop punch. At 6.9%, it's the highest ABV among the IPAs in this pack, and the rye-spiced snap adds a structural complexity that separates it from a Black IPA that's just an IPA with food coloring.

Ravenna Brewing Company Luna Tequila Barrel-Aged Imperial Stout (13.5%)

And then there's this. Ravenna Brewing Company's Luna lands at 13.5% ABV, the undisputed anchor of the six-pack and the one pour that demands a different kind of attention. It's a Tequila Barrel-Aged Imperial Stout, which means the base beer, already a roasty, chocolate-forward imperial, has spent time in barrels that previously held tequila. The result, per Peaks & Pints, wraps dark chocolate and roasted malt in tequila-kissed agave warmth, threading ancho chile heat and cinnamon-vanilla silk into what Swarner calls "a slow-burning midnight reverie." The ancho chile is the curve ball here: barrel-aged stouts with vanilla and cinnamon are well-trodden territory, but adding dried chile heat to an agave-forward barrel program creates a flavor architecture that sits closer to a Mexican hot chocolate than a standard barrel-aged stout. This is a sipper, obviously, not a half-pint-then-another situation, but at 16oz it's also not stingy.

Taken together, this six-pack works as a kind of cross-section of what's moving through Pacific Northwest craft beer right now: homebrew club collaborations tied to local beer festivals, Yakima Valley haze done right, lager precision from a Portland brewery with a reputation for technical excellence, West Coast IPA refusing to be declared dead, a Black IPA that still has believers, and a barrel-aged imperial stout that pushes into tequila and chile territory. Peaks & Pints describes their taproom as a place "where brew nerds can wave their geek flags," and this particular six-pack is exactly the kind of lineup that makes that tagline feel earned rather than aspirational.