kailua-kona hawaii

Febrewary: Wailua Wheat

~ lobablanca

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Brewer: Kona Brewing Company
Location: Kailua-Kona, Hawaii
Type: American Pale Wheat Ale
ABV: 5.4%

Today was a reminiscing day, denizens. It’s been like a heat wave the past two days, with temperatures reaching into the mid-50s both days. After nearly two solid weeks of temperatures barely getting out of the single digits and sometimes going into negative numbers? Plus, snow sometimes every other day? I felt like breaking out the sunscreen and the flip-flops.

Instead, I put on the hoodie I bought in Kauai last April and enjoyed the fact that I only had to put on my winter coat to go outside, and not the two coats, two scarves, two sets of gloves, and knit cap that I’ve been wearing every other time I dared to venture outdoors. And this evening, when I finished my workout and came upstairs for dinner? I brought with me this little beauty from my beer fridge.

I wrote about Kona Brewing Company once before, in my review of their KoKo Brown for Darktober. As I said, though, this month wouldn’t be all about dark beers (mostly, but not completely). In my Darktober review, I mentioned a few of Kona’s other beers that I liked. I hadn’t had this particular brew at the time. If I had, I definitely would have raved about it as well.

With a clean layer of foam, white as the caps of cresting waves, and a color as golden as the glow of sunlight starting yet another glorious Maui morning, this beer is nothing like what I expected to enjoy. But dark beers aren’t really par for the course in Hawaii (although they can be found…and they are delicious)…so when in Maui, go with what the locals like, eh?

Right off the bat, I guess I should confess that all my consternation about “fruity beers” is apparently a lie. I only dislike some fruit-flavored beers. Others, though? Others utterly astound me. So it was with Wailua Wheat, which carries with every sniff and every sip a beautiful passion fruit sweetness that is perfectly balanced and never overwhelms. This ale does have a bit of a thin mouth feel in contrast with the bold passion fruit bouquet, but this might also be my mouth balking at the foreign feel of a light beer.

Mingling wonderfully with the beer’s natural wheatiness, the passion fruit is what ultimately makes this beer both delicious and dangerous. You’ve no idea you’ve just downed an entire pint until you pick up your glass for another happy swig, only to discover that you’re staring at the coaster through the distorted emptiness of the glass bottom. It’s a good thing that this isn’t a high-ABV beer, because one could easily make it through an entire six-pack of this ale in one sitting and not even realize it.

Even a dark beer lover like me understands that every beer fan should have a few light go-tos. I would tag Wailua Wheat as a perfect summer afternoon sipper…even if it is the middle of winter and snow and more single-digit temperatures are in the 24-hour forecast. Actually, that’s all the more reason to drink this beer. Forget about the blah. Embrace the aloha.

Darktober 9: KoKo Brown

~ LobaBlanca

Brewer: Kona Brewing Company
Location: Kailua-Kona, Hawaii
Type: American Brown Ale
ABV: 5.5%

Ah, Hawaii. It’s such a lovely place and takes such a long time to reach from the East Coast, that I’ve decided to stay a little bit longer. You don’t mind, right?

I’ve also decided to stick with a coconut theme, since it’s such a delightful notion to me, this coconut and beer combination. I’m typically not a big fan of fruit-flavored beers, liking only a select number from the ones I have tried. This, however, works for me, for some completely strange reason. Guess that’s why I was so willing to give another coconut beer a try. This time we’re going from porter to ale with Kona Brewing Company’s KoKo Brown.

Cinnamon oak colors catch light easily through a diaphanous gilding of ecru foam. This is not a heavily carbonated beer by any means. It also possesses a predominantly coconut nose, a strong indication that this time around, coconut will not be sharing its screen time.

To this end, KoKo Brown is a far more divisive flavor than yesterday’s CoCoNuT PorTeR, because it possesses a far more distinct coconut flavor. Whereas yesterday’s brew mixes its toasted coconut with those tried-and-true porter flavors in a practically perfect elixir of cheer, KoKo Brown showcases its coconut center stage. You can smell it in each waft, taste it in each sip, detect it long after the last swallow slips into memory only. For these reasons, I suspect that many will not even consider this as a future beer option. No worries. More for me 😉

I’d like to point out at this point that what I’m tasting in this particular bottle of KoKo Brown is different from what I’ve tasted in previous exposures to this beer. This ale came from my (admittedly small) collection of beers currently being bottle-aged. True, this was a relatively young selection; I’d only been aging it for about a year. However, I can tell you that it was showing delightful progress. One of the things that I noticed when I first tried KoKo Brown was the surprisingly muted status of the flavors. A year served to embolden those flavors, giving this ale a much fuller body and a lush tropical flavor profile.

Actually, this experience has made me once more mourn the fact that Maui Brewing only uses cans for their beers. I can only imagine how amazing a well-aged CoCoNut PorTeR could taste. Diabolically delicious, I’m sure.

Oh, and in case you’re curious about what I’m blathering on about with this whole “bottle aging” hoo ha, here’s a little extra reading material on the subject.

All in all, this is another beer I’m very happy to have discovered, from a decidedly impressive brewer. Even if you choose not to try their KoKo Brown, I’d invite you to give some of their other offerings a try, including their Longboard Lager and an amazing seasonal offering called Pipeline Porter. It’s brewed with Kona coffee. Do I really need to say any more?

And thus the sun descends upon our final moments with Hawaii’s coconut beer offerings. Aloha, denizens, until our next beery destination.