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.

A Kilt Made of Grass Leaves

I'd wager this is the only bottle of Innis & Gunn on the whole island of Oahu. Well, was the only bottle.

This libation is a little treat I promised myself weeks ago as a reward for hitting the magic 2000 page hits and 100 twitter followers. Unfortunately the following happened:

Teh Interwebs: "You have 100 Followers!"

Self: "Hooray!"

*runs to fridge*

Self (reaching for bottle opener): "Well, I'd really like to thank my Mom, and Jeebus, and.. uh..."

Teh Interwebs: "You have 99 Followers!"

Self: "What!?!?"

Teh Interwebs: "You have 100 Followers!"

Self: "Yes, well. Yeah. That's right. 100, baby! Wooo! Wooo...."

Teh Interwebs: "You have 98 Followers!"

Self: "What!?!? No no no, I didn't mean that vegan thingy!"

Teh Interwebs: "You have 97 Followers!"

Self: "Brrraaaaaaaaaaaghgghghhghhgh!"

After a little Crying Game style shower-sobbing, I returned to the keyboard, determined not to be over-eager again, but to instead maintain a solid lead before claiming victory. It was worth it.

If you'd like to hear a fair-n'-balanced review of Innis & Gunn's Highland Cask, head over to Ian's place for a nice assessment of its honeyed character. For me, I must confess that the delicious oaky overtones so familiar in an I&G offering were also tinged with the tincture of victory. Additionally, I'm on holiday and having just visited the Arizona memorial, I was greeted by a Navy band playing the Hawaii 5-0 theme. As Jim Ribble says, "You can't make this stuff up!"

Truly though, it's not so much a personal accomplishment as a tip o' the hat to thee, noble reader. As a sometime journalist, I'm ever-cognizant that a writer is nothing without an audience. In fact, emblazoned above my keyboard is the motto, "Nobody has to read this crap," a lesson well-learned from Tim Radford.

So to you, who lends legitimacy to my drunken ramblings by actually reading them, a bend of the elbow, and a hearty Sláinte! My original 100th follower, @hilaryipes will be getting a special beery-type present from me.

For those of you numbering between 101-150, I've got good news. Using the hallowed tradition of eenie-meenie-minie, one of you is getting a present too. Stay tuned.

Now, here are a bunch of ducks. One of them looks like the Hamburglar.

The Best Little Beerhouse in Hawai'i

Look what a pathetic haole I am, trying to spell Hawaii with an apostrophe and everything, like I was a local. I may be the whitest person in creation.

Anyway, if there's one complaint about living in a tropical paradise (and I turned pro at Complaining a long time ago), it's that the micro-beer culture here is pretty invisible. Let's be polite and call it nascent. However, I've remarked before on the scavenger hunt nature of your average beerthusiast, and just because my brain is on holiday doesn't mean my liver is. Far from it.

A bit of careful googling resulted in a path being beaten to the Liquor Collection, a shoebox-sized store that has a heart of pure beer. And they have fine wines and stuff. Who cares.

Admittedly, it did require a little navigation to get there (Honolulu was apparently laid out be a guy with a spirograph), the traffic was terrible, and the music on the only reasonably-good radio station kept getting interrupted by DJ Tokesalot trying to string his four remaining tar-coated synapses in line long enough to read the surf report. "Hey, so... there's- what? Oh yeah."

Thirty seconds of silence.

"Dude?"

Anyway, here's the haul:

I know dan has laid out a field guide to beer bloggers already, and this falls firmly in the reprehensible Trophy-Hunter category, but just look! Pick of the litter? Probably the Basha, or maybe the Idiot IPA. You are what you drink. I left more on the shelf too: Delerium Tremens, Infinium, Abyss and some more crazy Beerdog stuff. I gave the proprietor my best Arnie impersonation. He thought I was asking for a bock.

Also, how cool is this: they give you a buck off for buying "real" beer, and they don't carry Coors. Rad.

Penance. Volume 2

There are 244 steps here. I know. I counted them.

So here's the painful truth about beer: it's probably the quickest way to make yourself fat. Given the carb content, the (my) inability to stop at just one, and the nature of alcohol metabolism (primarily converted to acetate immediately), beer is definitely an important part of the Dr. Nick Riviera diet for dangerously underweight individuals.

However, seeing as I haven't brought my mumu with me, there's still a way to have your cake-in-a-can and drink it too. See, there's no such thing as a beer belly. While excessive beer consumption may result in swapping your six-pack for a keg, you can simply balance it out with a little light exercise. Based on how much I consume, "light" exercise won't cut the dijonnaise.

Today's excursion was a 5 km hike in air of such high humidity, we were practically breathing water. In fact, I'm pretty sure I just saw Kevin Costner swim past the window. The reward was not a spectacular view, nor a rippling physique (although bits of me do ripple in the breeze), but the satisfaction that I earned my libation this eve.

Bit of a slog, though.

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