The Great American Ale Trail - Christian DeBenedetti [52]
Maui
MAUI BREWING CO.
910 Honoapiilani Hwy., No. 55 • Lahaina, HI 96761 (877) MAU-IBRE • mauibrewingco.com • Established: 2005
MAUI BREWING CO.
Kahana Gateway Center • 4405 Honoapiilani Hwy., No. 217 Lahaina, HI 96761 • Established: 2009
SCENE & STORY
What’s paradise without incredible beer? Exactly. When you tire of nearby Kaanapali Beach (if such a thing is possible), skip the tiki drinks and head for a taste of the best beer in the islands. Known by its unmistakable cans (especially the retro hula girl on Bikini Blonde Lager), Maui Brewing is the only microbrewery on Maui; in many ways it could be the natural heir to Primo, only with a far better beer, but the focus is more on quality than quantity. Founded by the outgoing Garrett Marrero and Melanie Oxley, Maui Brewing Company is nevertheless finding a bigger audience with each batch, having made four hundred barrels by the end of year one . . . and eleven thousand a year later in 2010, with double that planned for 2011 and 2012, putting their capacity on par with or ahead of Kona Brewing Company, part of the Anheuser-Busch-distributed Craft Brewers Alliance (which also includes Redhook, Widmer, and Goose Island).
There’s a tasting room at the brewery location, but the newer brewpub—a sleek, modern space with high ceilings and large U-shaped bar island—is a little more accommodating, open every day of the week from 11 a.m. to midnight. The pub serves Maui’s three year-round beers, all of them good: Bikini Blonde, Big Swell IPA, and the award-winning CoCoNut Porter—a far better beer than it sounds. Then there are ten more taps of brewpub-only and experimental offerings, a small number of which make their way to the Left Coast on occasion. Marrero, from San Diego originally, features guest taps like Stone alongside his own brews. Recently, Marrero’s experiments included a collaboration brew with Pizza Port and brown ale made with a famous local ingredient: the sweet Maui onion.
He sees it as part and parcel of a holistic, back-to-the-land lifestyle. “In these days of mass production of sub par, unnatural products, we need to get some attention back on knowing where your food and drink comes from,” says Marrero. “It is sad to see local farms across the country closing at an alarming rate when they really are the backbone of fresh, local, organic, and natural food products. It’s also fun to see people’s faces when you say ‘Hey, try my Maui Onion Beer,’ and they look at you almost cross-eyed: ‘Onion in beer? Weird . . . I have to try that!’”
PHILOSOPHY
Marrero preaches a mantra of environmental responsibility and stewardship, supplying local farmers with spent grain, growing hops at a local farm and in Lahaina (which will help reduce the impact of shipping hops from the mainland), making bio-diesel from kitchen by-products in the pub, and using photovoltaic panels to capture solar energy. “Hawaii is generally associated with tropical fruits, nuts, and flowers, and we try to draw from what the ‘aina (“land”) provides to make innovative and fun beers,” says Garrero. “We take traditional, sometime old-world styles, and give them new life or dimension by adding these agricultural products to the brew.”
KEY BEER
While it sounds like it might taste like a mouthful of Coppertone, Maui’s CoCoNut Porter, at 5.7% ABV, is actually a silky, slightly sweet delight, a blend of coffee and cocoa flavors mingled with hand-toasted coconut and a dash of spicy hops to balance it all out. Drink it in a sunny place—preferably Maui.
Big Island and Oahu
KONA PUB & BREWERY
75-5629 Kuakini Hwy. • Kona, HI 96740 (808) 334-2739 • konabrewingco.com • Established: 1994
KOKO MARINA PUB
7192 Kalaniana‘ole Hwy. • Honolulu, HI 96825 (808) 394-5662 • konabrewingco.com