Peaks and Pints will host Puyallup River Brewing Road To Maui at 5 p.m. Saturday, July 21.

Road To Maui? Well, grab a pint of Puyallup River Brewing’s Hazey’s Comet IPA and follow along. …

Eric Akeson and Joe Haugen first met in early 2010, at the Tacoma Boys store in South Hill Puyallup. The two struck up a friendship when Akeson would bring Haugen samples of his home brews. They instantly hit it off — a delicious Oktoberfest style ale didn’t hurt the friendship. Haugen, the beer and wine specialist for Tacoma Boys, was thrilled to hear Akeson had a brewery in the works and promised shelf space. Haugen went on to work for a wine distributor. Akeson opened Puyallup River Brewing Co. in 2011 from his South Hill home’s backyard. He launched the Puyallup River Alehouse three years ago yesterday in downtown Puyallup.

Their friendship went to the next level two years later when Akeson opened the Puyallup River Alehouse then invited Haugen to lead his bartending team, pouring Blonde Saison, Pineapple Paradise Saison, Mud Mountain Milk Stout and other Puyallup River Brewing beers that were producing smiles and winning gold medals.

Akeson tired of all the distraction that came with a taphouse, closed the pub and hired Haugen to rep his craft beer to the masses.

That’s when the “Road Shows” began. Akeson and Haugen dug up a few Vaudeville routines and were a huge hit with distributor, retails and tavern patrons. Haugen recalls, “The gags weren’t very funny, I guess, but the retails laughed because Eric and I were having such a good time — and I guess it was clear that we liked each other.”

The title of this first Road Show was the Road to Puyallup, obviously. It was a hit. Akeson dressed like Ezra Meeker, the Puyallup Valley pioneer who became the first hop farmer in the region. By the early 1880s Meeker is a wealthy hop merchant with a branch in London selling hops on the world market, so the duo would take on English accents as they described their Hop Pioneer, a hazy double IPA dedicated to Meeker and others who came to Puyallup via the Oregon Trail and made the Puyallup Valley the “Hop Capital of the World” in the mid-1800s.

The Road Show series really started to hit its stride with Road To Sumner. One day, when they called on Stuck Junction Saloon in downtown Sumner, the duo attempted a stunt they pulled multiple times in their first road show — a version of “pattycake” that ends with them attacking the nearest bartender — but when the bartender ducked, Haugen cracks, “He must’ve poured in Puyallup too,” winking at everyone in the bar. That kind of fourth-wall-breaking would become the norm for the Road series, which quickly developed a formula that carried over even into lesser latter-day entries such as Road To Roy and Road to Orting.

Although Akeson and Haugen weren’t locked into types in the way that Laurel & Hardy or Abbott & Costello were, they did fall into the same dynamic over and over in their visits. Akeson would be the cool-headed mastermind, who’d chat up hops, malts and specific gravity. Haugen would be the hyper chatterbox, who’d let himself get talked into delivering the aroma and flavor profile. After the most meta of the Road Shows, Road to Ruston, Haugen lets Akeson have it, reciting a litany of all the time their pitches went badly for him personally. Akeson pleaded with Haugen to continue, promising to return to the original formula — quickness. They were so ready with a quip that clients barely had a chance to finish laughing at an Akeson line before Haugen had topped it (and vice-versa). And when they weren’t making “jokes” per se, they both just talked in a humorous way.

That’s where the road leads to Peaks and Pints bottle shop, taproom and restaurant in Tacoma’s Proctor District. Akeson and Haugen will present Road to Maui their latest Road Show centered around the brewery’s release of From Kihei With Love IPA, a 6 percent ABV hazy IPA.

“We’re still working on our presentation, but I’ll most likely concentrate on the all Galaxy and Motueka hop profile, which has two-and-a-half-pounds of hops per barrel, the extremely low IBU number and all whirlpool kettle hops with pineapple, orange and passionfruit and the huge dry hop,” says Akeson.

“Me?” quips Haugen, “I’ll concentrate on the trip to Maui Eric took for a family wedding that inspired the IPA. I’ll act out how he fell in love with the white sand beaches, his reaction when a sea turtle startled him snorkeling and his hula performance during a luau. He asked me to stay away from his bike ride down from the top of volcano Haleakalā.”

“When you were born Joe, the doctor said to your mother: ‘Congratulations. You have an eight-pound ham,” replies Akeson.

In addition to whatever Akeson and Haugen get themselves into Saturday at Peaks and Pints, know that a keg of Hop Pioneer IIPA, Mud Mountain Milk Stout, Hazey Comet IPA and English Pale Ale will be part of the show.

PUYALLUP RIVER BREWING ROAD TO MAUI, 5-8 p.m. Saturday, July 21, Peaks and Pints, 3816 N. 26^th St., Basecamp Proctor, Tacoma no cover