What it is
Four Peaks is the brewery that Arizona beer starts with. Three friends opened it on December 11, 1996 in a red-brick, mission-style building on 8th Street in Tempe, a mile east of Mill Avenue, that had been a creamery and then Borden’s ice plant since 1892. Their Scottish-style amber, Kilt Lifter, became the best-known beer in the state, the one on tap at every airport bar and resort pool, and the company grew into a second brewery on Wilson Street, a Sky Harbor taproom and, in December 2015, a sale to Anheuser-Busch InBev that still divides the people who drink it.
None of that changed the room. The 8th Street pub is a long bar under the old creamery’s high ceiling, copper and steel tanks behind glass, a patio that fills on game days, and a bartending staff with a longer tenure than most of the restaurants in Scottsdale. In 2016 the pub spread into the creamery’s 1915 office next door, which had been the Gin Blossoms singer Robin Wilson’s recording studio for twenty years. There are brewery tours on Saturdays and a weekend brunch from nine.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Because Scottsdale’s own breweries, Goldwater on Scottsdale Road and Fate among them, are the children of this one, and our breweries and beer note says so in its first paragraph. A pint here is the reference. It is also the best place in the East Valley to be after an ASU game, ten minutes’ walk from the stadium, and the brunch is a Tempe habit that Scottsdale people acquire and keep.
The practical version
Twenty minutes from Old Town: Scottsdale Road south across the river, where it becomes Rural Road, to 8th Street, then east three blocks. Free lot across the street. Open daily from eleven, to ten or eleven at night, with brunch from nine on Saturday and Sunday. Order the Kilt Lifter first and then whatever the pub brewed itself. Book the Saturday tour ahead on a football weekend, or come on a Tuesday when the bar is the regulars’.
When to go
Weekday afternoons are the pub at its best: the bar half full, the tanks visible, the bartenders talking. Fall Saturdays with a home game are the other version, a line out the door and the patio in full voice, which is a fine thing once and a reason to come on Sunday otherwise. Weekend brunch from nine is a Tempe institution with a wait by ten. October has the haunted-brewery tours, which are about the building. The pub’s seasonal releases follow the calendar, with a pumpkin porter in fall and a lighter run in summer, and the cask ale, when there is one, is the thing to ask about in any month.
What to order
- Kilt Lifter. The six-percent Scottish-style ale, malty and clean, that put the brewery on the map. Drink it once as a baseline.
- 8th Street Pale Ale and Hop Knot IPA, the hop side of the house.
- The pub brews. The 8th Street system still makes small batches that never leave the building; the chalkboard and the bartender know what is on.
- The food. Beer-bread sandwiches, pizzas and the enchiladas are what the regulars eat; the brunch menu is its own thing.
The tour
Saturdays, booked through the website, an hour that covers the creamery’s history, the ice-plant walls, the 1915 office and its studio years, and the pub’s own brewhouse. It is the best brewery tour in the Valley because the building is older and odder than the beer.
The neighborhood
8th Street east of the campus is Tempe’s quiet brewery district, and the pub anchors it. The stadium and the arena are a ten-minute walk west along the campus edge; Mill Avenue is a mile beyond, and the walk between them through campus on a cool night is the best way to do both.
The story
The building came first. A creamery company built the brick plant on 8th Street in 1892 to make butter and ice for a farm town that had neither, and Borden ran it for decades after; it went on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, long before anyone thought of beer. Andy Ingram, Jim Scussel and Randy Schultz founded Four Peaks in 1995, when Arizona had a handful of brewpubs and no brewery of consequence, and opened in the creamery on December 11, 1996. Kilt Lifter, a Scottish-style ale in a state that drank light lager, was the unlikely hit; by the 2000s it was the beer the state knew and the brewery was its biggest. A Scottsdale pub opened in 2004 and lasted until 2020. The Wilson Street production brewery opened in 2012, and the Sky Harbor taproom in 2013, so that most visitors’ first Arizona beer is now a Four Peaks at the gate.
On December 18, 2015, Anheuser-Busch InBev announced it was buying the company, the first Arizona brewery to go to a global owner, and the argument about what that meant has not ended. Production climbed, to about 98,000 barrels in 2022, mostly at Wilson Street, and the 8th Street pub kept its own brewhouse and its own beers. In 2016 the pub expanded into the creamery’s 1915 office next door, which Robin Wilson of the Gin Blossoms had run as Uranus Recording Studio from 1994 to 2015, a reminder that Tempe’s two great exports of the 1990s were a band and a beer and that they shared a wall.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale drank Four Peaks for a decade before it brewed anything of its own, and the city’s taprooms, Goldwater, Fate and the rest, are its children. Our breweries note tells that story and the happy hour guide explains why Kilt Lifter is the default pour at half the resort pools in town. The lexicon entry on Four Peaks covers the mountain on the label.
Getting there
Scottsdale Road south across the 202 and the river, where it becomes Rural Road, to 8th Street; turn east and the pub is three blocks along on the left, with a lot across the street. From North Scottsdale take the 101 to the 202 west and exit at Scottsdale/Rural. The light rail stops at University and Rural, a ten-minute walk; a rideshare from Old Town is about twenty minutes and is the right way home after the tour.