Named in honor of the whale that washed up in Breezy Point in New York City’s Queens borough in December 2012, Basil Lee and Kevin Stafford brewed their first Finback Brewery beer in 2014. The longtime homebrewers kept the homebrewing philosophy after they opened Finback in Queens’ Glendale neighborhood, collaborating with their friends who are trying to start breweries, other likeminded homebrewers, and then also with other people who have breweries. In 2020, they opened a second taproom in Brooklyn, and in 2022 opened a third taproom on Long Island. Today, Peaks & Pints presents an in-house flight of Finback beers — a flight we’re calling Peaks and Pints Beer Flight: Finback Brewery.

Peaks and Pints Beer Flight: Finback Brewery

Finback Schooling Behavior

6.5% ABV

Collaboration with Fast Fashion in Seattle, Schooling Behavior IPA is brewed with Cashmere, Cashmere Cryo, and Fast Fashion’s Anchovy hops. The soft, hazy IPA hits the nose with tropical fruit and spiciness, followed by grapefruit, lemon, papaya, and light floral notes.

Finback Yellow Cake

7.3% ABV

Milkshake IPAs are a type of hazy IPA brewed with lactose (milk sugar) and adjuncts such as vanilla, chocolate, peanut butter, coffee, but mostly passionfruit, mango, guava, peaches, and raspberries. Lactose does not ferment and convert into alcohol like other sugars, so it remains intact to give the beverage a sweet flavor. Rather than creating a balance between malts and hops, milkshake IPAs strike a balance between the sweetness of the lactose and the tartness of the fruit or adjunct. A collaboration with Crooked Run Fermentation from Sterling, Virginia, Finback’s Yellow Cake milkshake IPA is brewed with lemon, vanilla, and lactose.

Finback Fat Mango

7.6% ABV

Here’s another milkshake IPA collaboration, this time with Interboro Spirits & Ales from Brooklyn, New York. Fat Mango is brewed with mango, coconut sticky rice, and lactose, and then dry hopped with Falconer’s, Citra, and Mosaic for all the mango, a hint of coconut and a fruity finish.

Finback Whale Parking

8.2% ABV

Collaboration with North Park Beer Company from San Diego, this hazy double IPA is dry hopped with Nelson, Motueka, Kohatu, Rakau and Wai-iti. The Rakau hops take the flavor lead with full apricot, plum and mango notes.

LINK: Peaks & Pints beer and cider cooler inventory