6-Pack of Things To Do in Tacoma: Dec. 3-9 2024

Season’s greetings! There are plenty of hot times ahead during the South Sound’s coolest season, and Peaks & Pints’ 6-Pack of Things To Do in Tacoma will be unwrapping some treasures this season — including this week.

TUESDAY, DEC. 3 — HOPPY HOLIDAYS FOOD DRIVE: The Douville Home Group’s Hoppy Holiday Food Drive is back for its sixth year with 10 amazing Pierce County breweries/cideries helping the Emergency Food Network feed those in need. This past month, the county community has donated non-perishable food and hygiene items at their favorite participating brewery, cidery or Proctor District bottle shop, as well as made financial contributions at: www.hoppyholidayfooddrive.com. The final party happens Tuesday night at Peaks & Pints. There will be raffles, Beer Rep Holiday Choir, seasonal taps from each brewery/cidery, and the final weigh-in, where the brewery or cidery that brings in the most donations will receive the Hoppy Holiday Tap Handle Trophy. Join us in supporting local businesses by grabbing a frosty beverage while donating. It’s the best time of year to drink for a cause! 5-8 p.m., Peaks & Pints, 3816 N. 26^th St., Basecamp Proctor, Tacoma, no cover, donations accepted

TUESDAY, DEC. 3 — PEAKS AND PINTS BEER FLIGHT— ICE LIGHTS: After a couple months of avoiding the elements, isn’t it time you get a little bit of exercise? Ice skating is the perfect way to get yourself off the couch and get the blood moving again. Experience Sprinker Recreation Center’s ice rink transformed into a winter wonderland with more than 35,000 lights, animated displays, cascading lights on ice, and falling snow with a giant lighted tree in the center of the rink. They’re calling it “Ice Lights”, and it’s open today from 10:30 a.m. to 1:15 p.m., and again 6-9 p.m. You can also experience the thrill of driving bumper cars on ice. As part of your Ice Lights adventure, you can slide, spin 360 degrees, and bump your friends and family. Peaks & Pints created a flight of holiday beer to enjoy after the early or late sessions, which we’re calling Peaks and Pints 2024 Christmas Beer Flight Dec. 3: Ice Lights. You have no excuse now not to pry yourself away from the TV — even holiday programming. 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., Peaks & Pints, Tacoma

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 4 — GRIT & GRAIN PODCAST: The Grit & Grain beer podcast crew will record a double episode Wednesday in Peaks & Pints’ Event Room. At 3:30 p.m., Austin Patjens will discuss how to fiancé a brewery. Patjens, who is vice president of Small Business Development at Heritage Bank, will pull from his 10 years of credit underwriting, financial analysis, and relationship based commercial banking experience. At 4:30 p.m., the crew will drink and discuss winter beers. Winter beer is a slippery category that used to comprise of slightly boozy ales brewed with spices and dark fruits but has long since metastasized to include not only those traditional “winter warmers,” but also just about any damn thing a brewery’s marketing department feels like hanging a snowflake on. 3:30-5:30 p.m., Peaks & Pints, Tacoma, no cover

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 4 & THURSDAY, DEC. 5 — BANFF CENTRE MOUNTAIN FILM FESTIVAL WORLD TOUR: Adventure. For some, it is an irrepressible welling in the chest that will never go away no matter how many lakes canoed, rock faces climbed, horizons paddled after, peaks scaled, or miles of trail hiked. For others, adventure is something to marvel at — a celebration of man’s achievements. Most folks tend to admire the adventurers of the world, whether they are adventurers of the mind, the spirit or of the physical world. The Mountaineers, Puget Sound Outdoors and Edgeworks presents The Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival World Tour 2024/25 at the Rialto Theater for two nights. Banff showcases the best adventure films in North America year after year. Climbing, biking, skiing, snowboarding — it’s all up on the big screen, looming high and making you feel bad for sitting on your duff almost all year long. If you need inspiration to get out more often (as if this little tidbit isn’t enough), these gorgeous images should do the trick. 6:45 p.m., Rialto Theater, 310 S. Ninth, Tacoma, $35-$60 at Tacomaartslive.org

THURSDAY, DEC. 5 — SILVER CITY OLD SCROOGE PARTY: Well, it’s that time of year again. Christmas. We all know what that means. Twenty-four-hour marathons of A Christmas Story on TBS. Gaudy lights tacked onto just about every house in the suburbs. Overcrowded stores and that annual homage to Charlie Brown’s puny little tree. Oh, and then there’s our favorite — Old Scrooge: A Silver City Love Story at Peaks & Pints. It’s not hard to see how Silver City Brewery would be thought a good fit for their English barleywine to adapt the dearly beloved (and much lampooned) Dickens tale that has survived nearly two centuries of retelling if you count the Flintstone, Muppet, and Barbie versions. After all, Silver City owner Scott Houmes is as jolly as Fezziwig and his sales executives — Mike Lay, Paul Whitcomb and Sean Larson — are spirits in the material world. At last year’s Scrooge Party at Peaks, Lay’s Christmas Past levitated into our lodge-like room, his fiber-optic fairy gown glowing like memory, and Whitcomb’s 7-foot Christmas Present towered over the room, embroidered robe hanging coniferously from his shoulders, chortling as partygoers string tinsel on him. And Larson’s Christmas Future arrived obscure and menacing as always, a black-cloaked figure wordlessly drawing a world-shrouding night behind him. Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? Like last year, the tale in all its 21st-century Bremerton splendor will come to life courtesy of Silver City, which has been producing the Old Scrooge beer adaptation of the classic old ale and barleywine since 2009, replete with long boil time, cool fermentation, and extended aging. Old Scrooge Christmas Ale dark, malty ale offers notes of apple, cherry and apricot. Suffice it to say, it’ll warm your heart and entire body. 5-8 p.m., Peaks & Pints, Tacoma

SATURDAY, DEC. 7 & SUNDAY, DEC. 8 — ARTS AT THE ARMORY: Tacoma Arts Live, with help from the City of Tacoma’s Arts and Cultural Vitality Division, will host more than 100 local artists of all different mediums and disciplines under the historic roof of Tacoma’s Armory. This special event celebrates Tacoma’s rich artistic community while supporting our local economy. 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tacoma Armory, 1001 S. Yakima Ave, Tacoma, no cover