Old Scrooge: A Silver City Love Story

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, which will turn the first page at 5 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 5.

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.

Encore: In addition to Silver City’s Old Scrooge Christmas Ale 2024, and Bourbon Barrel Aged Old Scrooge Christmas Ale 2024, Silver City will pour their Pilsner, Dark Lager and Ridgetop Red at Peaks & Pints Thursday.

OLD SCROOGE: A SILVER CITY LOVE STORY, 5-8 p.m., Thursday, Dec. 5, Peaks & Pints, 3816 N. 26th St., Basecamp Proctor, Tacoma

LINK: Peaks & Pints beer and cider cooler inventory