The Best Damn Hawaiian Beers and Grinds

It's our last day here, and about time too: I've exhausted the local beer supply. Well, not exhausted precisely, but I've been power-levelling in Untappd like a WOW nerd on an IV drip.

But before winging my way home in a metal sausage, crammed cheek-by-jowl with what Nietzsche would call, "the botched and the bungled," it's time to sum up my trip with the best of the best, le creme de la creme, el supremo nacho grande, the proverbial big kahuna.

If you are possessed of a pair of legs, git yo' ass down to 4Kings for ono local grinds. Seriously, we hit this place twice in three days, and I forget why we didn't go three times. Probably because we were doing something boring like climbing a mountain.

If/when you're in Honolulu, hit the place up and order yourself something called "the not your normal loco." It's a fresh mahi-mahi patty topped by two eggs and smothered in shiitake mushroom gravy, brown rice and salad on the side. You can see it in the background on Katie's plate, but I didn't get a shot from the time I went because the food disappeared down my throat like my last name was Dyson. I think I ate part of the plate.

But you're not in Hawaii now. You're in Vancouver, or Surrey, or (God have mercy on your soul) Chilliwack. If so, you could care less about a hole-in-the-wall that's four thousand kilometres away. But that's just because you haven't eaten there. Yet.

I've got more bad news. Since coming here, I figure I've sampled near two dozen local brews. I've checked, and you can't get any of them here. Yet.

There were wheatbeers and hoppy IPAs and coffee-infused porters; ice-cold lager after a hot day's hike, a cascadia-hopped ale on a breezy marina. But of all the deliciousness that eased many a long afternoon, there's only one clear winner.

This is Maui Brewing Company's Coconut Porter, and the tagline at the bottom of the can reads "...like hot chicks on the beach," by which I assumed they mean, "thing that you've developed perfect 20/20 peripheral vision for." So that's a little confusing, but I'll run with it.

Coffee is a natural pairing for the dark roasted malts of stouts and porters. Coconut, toasted coconut in particular, is a little more subtle, but it adds length to the taste and hint of exotica to the nose. Now here's the good news: head south of the border as far as Seattle, WA, and you'll find these little four-pack jewels hidden in cold beer and wine stores. It's far and away the best the Islands have to offer.

Now, I'm headed back to local beers and rain rain rain. First stop, Cook St. Liquor Store!

Hot Damn of the Week: Kona Brewing

In many ways, BC gets some of the best beer in the world. Our local brewers produce knockout Imperials, kickass IPAs, big-bosomed Belgians and stuff that can be described by no other adjective than baconjam.

But there's 24 hours in every day, and those Untappd badges ain't gonna earn themselves. Meaning being, sometimes you've got to drink outside the box, and when it comes to playing the field, our brothers to the South make the yardsticks by which our Canadian beers are measured by. Although generally we whip those Yankee bastards *cough-golden-goal-cough*.

However, as apparent from previous posts, I'm on holiday in the US and A, and that means I'm very excite to have access to beers that I won't be able to get at home. Sometimes those beers are Pabst Blue Ribbon, and I could give a fu- I could care less. But sometimes those beers are from the premier brewery on the Hawaiian Islands.

While my pick for visiting haole remains Maui Brewing Company's Coconut Porter, if you're a beerthusiast the Island's pride and joy is the Kona Brewing Company. Think of it as the Granville Island Brewing Co. except with surfboards instead of craft pottery. Today we were lucky enough to visit a Hawaii Kai based branch brewpub.

With 14 beers in all, that's a lot of suds that don't drift over to our section of the Pacific. That might not be such a tragedy if it was just Longboard Lager that we were deprived of, but wouldn't you welcome a pint of Coco Loco, or Pipeline Porter? I know I would.

After the taster, I settled for a Cascadia Ale (the irony in flying all this way to drink beer hopped from home practically clangs) whereas Katie, the queen of beer mixology, decided on something dubbed an Almond Joy: Kona-coffee flavoured porter mixed with coconut-infused dark ale. Frankly, it's delicious.

What else was on tap? Three porters, a steam lager, a solar-produced golden ale, two wheat-beers, several mixed ales, and they'd just run out of an IPA.

You can get Longboard and Pipeline across the border in WA. Here's hoping somebody brings it northward of the 49th ASAP. As a side note, should you find yourself in Waikiki, make your way down to 4Kings Kitchen, and order yourself either the Loco or the Mochiko Chicken. It's worth the entire flight.

Aloha, You Poor Frozen Sods.

The first thing that hits you in Hawaii is the humidity. After leaving behind crisp air and snow-capped North Shore mountain vistas at YVR, the sweaty, hibiscus-scented Honolulu night instantly lets you know that there's a chilled bottle of lager out there, oozing fat beads of condensation like a corpulent secret agent undergoing interrogation.

But first things first. Minor mystery solved.

Q: when does a Molson Canadian actually taste good?

A: when served at 29000 feet. For free.

Remember when they fired all those people, and instead of benefits, Air Canada hired Celine Dion to come and ululate hypersonically to boost morale? Yes, well. Never failing to disappoint, Air Canada Flight whatever-it-was left the terminal an hour late with no hot water on board. As a sop to the hundreds crammed into a tube-shaped sardine can that was about to take to the air and spit in God's eye, we all got one free drink. Beer choices were Molson Canadian, which is pretty weak, or Heineiken, which is a Dutch word meaning "urine".

I went with the Molson.

You'll notice that I've paired "The Best Canada Has To Offer" with a roast beef sandwich. Air Canada has seen fit to interpret "roast beef sandwich" as "a loaf of bread cut in half and filled with an entire head of lettuce, some gristly meat from a cow that probably died before British Columbia entered the Dominion, and a slice of cheese so thin you could read the newspaper through it".

On the other hand, surrounded by squalling toddlers, breathing desiccating, recirculated air crammed with the flatulence of innumerable butts and drifting clouds of avian influenza, with the guy behind me kicking my seat like he was a retired Russian folk dancer and the lady on the left coughing like a tubercular Victorian, that beer tasted like dew from the Garden of Eden.

Anyway, I'm ensconced in Ohau now, and good news everyone! I've just been to the beer store.

Admittedly, there's not much in the way of Hawaiian beer out there. Here's a mixer six I just grabbed.

Nothing particularly special here except the coconut porter. It's delicious, and if you're stuck in an office reading this, why not drop by Swan's on your way home and knock back a pint of Victoria's own tropical mix on a wet-coast favourite?

Currently, I'm drinking a Torpedo from Sierra Nevada, and yes, I know, why bother with a Californian beer when in the tropics? But while I may be surrounded by lizards and birds of paradise and street signs with more vowels than consonants, Hawaii is America, and it gets all the good stuff from the mainland. This was a regular 9-buck sixpack.

I also have some Longboard Lager.

That ought to cover me for Sunday.

Stay tuned, I brought something special from a very cold place.

-Aloha