Born in Massachusetts and raised in Connecticut, New Englander Steve Luke spent the summer of 2005 between his junior and senior year at Colby College in Maine sweeping floors and making boxes at Allagash Brewing Company. Upon graduating with a degree in sociology and economics, Luke accepted a job washing kegs at Captain Lawrence Brewing Company in the Hudson Valley. He then moved to Boston to work in the marketing department at Harpoon Brewery. After graduation, Luke returned to Allagash as a brewer, and later became head brewer of Cambridge House Brewpub in Connecticut, where he had freedom to play with the pub’s recipes. In 2010, Luke moved to California to attend UC Davis’s brewing school. With a degree in hand, Luke followed his now-wife to her Seattle residency program. He became head brewer of Rogue’s Issaquah Brewhouse, and one year later, the head brewer of Elysian Fields. The January 2015 Anheuser-Busch acquisition of Elysian Brewing pushed brewer Steve Luke into his dream of owning his own brewery. Luke quickly opened Cloudburst Brewing, with his director of sales Noah Schellhammer, just north of Pike Place Market and word quickly spread that Seattle had a new house of hops. People still jam pack the small taproom attached to the 7,200 square-foot brewhouse, although some relief was had when Cloudburst opened a second location just off Shilshole Bay in Ballard. In the summer of 2020, Luke was nominated for a James Beard Award, one of the most prestigious culinary awards in the world. Today, Peaks & Pints presents an in-house flight of Cloudburst beer — a flight we’re calling Peaks and Pints Beer Flight: Cloudburst. Editor’s note: The below descriptions of Cloudburst beer were written by Cloudburst as only they can do. Cheers!

Peaks and Pints Beer Flight: Cloudburst

Cloudburst No Experience Needed

6.4% ABV

Why would we brew an IPA with Mandarina, Hallertau Blanc, Callista & Huell Melon – a bunch of meddling newer German hop varieties that do great in fruit forward pale lagers but don’t have the power, analytics, or experience to carry something as important as a “Cloudburst IPA” recipe? Because they are RICH in history, with a privileged lineage and VERY IMPORTANT parents, and they’re blindly LOYAL to our cooler. Like, some of them have been in our cooler for years, just cheering us on as YES MEN when we use other varieties. And yeah, occasionally their shadowy affiliated company makes a HUGE DONATION to us. With times like these, we wanted to buck the trend and go with some OUTSIDERS that we owed. The end result tastes of RIDICULOUS tangerine, IDIOTIC white grape, and INSANE honeydew melon – which is kinda WEIRD, but at least it won’t destroy humanity, our country or the entire world?

Cloudburst Corporate Overlords

6.6% ABV

Welp, it’s been almost 10 YEARS since AB-Inbev purchased an important, local Seattle brewery and it appears to be going really well. Like, beer-business-geniuses-with-#noregrets well… NOT! HAHAHAHA! The largest brewing entity in the world slowed down its purchasing spree 5ish years ago, and it’s been a fucking DOOZY ever since. In the last couple years, they’ve offloaded half of those breweries for massive losses to a Canadian MNC that specializes in weed (and makes decisions like they’re stoned AF), they’ve shut down multiple existing locations (including two in WA), and they’ve discontinued/consolidated brands galore. We can go on… and on… FOREVER… but, we’d like to use the rest of this description to encourage you to shop small. When you buy beer at small retail outlets, locally owned and operated bars and restaurants, and brewery tasting rooms, a much larger % of that money goes directly to people that work and live right here. According to the BA (2023 data), there are roughly 459 craft breweries in this state with an economic impact of $1,956,000,000. THAT’S ALMOST 2 BILLION DOLLARS. There’s a lot of “doom and gloom” in the craft beer segment these days – and yes, most of us have seen better years – but your continued support to all the little guys makes a huge difference! As a thank you, we hope you enjoy this delicious IPA brewed with Simcoe and Krush hops.

Cloudburst Snoozefest IPA

6.6% ABV

We love Citra. You love Citra. Citra is life. But JUST Citra? We used to not know about that. In our egregious opinion, single hop beers tend to be kinda boring and one dimensional – that’s why we avoided making one for quite some time. BUT THE FIRST TIME WE DID IT, IT WAS FIRE. SO WE MADE IT AGAIN. AND AGAIN. And yes, it comes with the same twist. We used 10 different types of Citra hops – that came from 9ish separate farms over FIVE different crop years, and was processed in 3 different ways (T-90, Lupomax & Cryo) and packaged at 3 different facilities. And guess what?! It’s not that boring! It’s kinda interesting! ACTUALLY IT’S REALLY FUCKING AWESOME. If you snooze, you win?

Cloudburst Unrecoverable Error

7% ABV

Welcome. It is time to reboot another double dry-hopped New Zealand style IPA compressed with Nelson Sauvin and Riwaka hops, along with a hard drive of Mosaic. Ah fuck, but first it appears that we need to update our software. Ughhh. PROCESS initiated. Corrupted data? Calculation to fail? NO. NEVER. Unable to create a requested mechanism? GET FUCKED SLOW OLD COMPUTER. Oh WOW amazing and helpful, a link to a troubleshooting guide telling us all about external media and encryption software and some third party applications. SWEET. Hello AI pop up window that talks in circles. Wait what is UNRETRIEVABLE?! Ok welp we’re just going to terminate this description and crush this tropical beer. Also, this computer.

Cloudburst Vampire Empire

8% ABV

Wanna know when Baltic Porters were cool? Back when vampires ruled the world, or at least like, Eastern Europe. Facts are FACTS. What? You thought vampires only drink blood? Pshhh that’s some modern Hollywood half baked hot take. Get in the know – there are legit historical documents that have stated they drank all sorts of stuff, especially beer and one not dissimilar to this dark nectar of the night. It’s rich and fruity and chocolatey and strong and so smooth – we dare you to not sink your teeth into it. Plus there’s no holy water or garlic or sunlight used in the brewing process, making it still vampire friendly to this very day WE SEE YOU JERRY ALWAYS COMING IN RIGHT BEFORE CLOSE.

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