BREW'd is now open

More (sort of) old news: BREW'd is open... and it's beautiful. It's got a classy ambiance--think dark woods and dim lighting instead of REAL's yellow walls--but they've worked some irreverence into the wall mural. Sixteen taps, and the same cicerone-type level of beer knowledge and passion. My wife and I stopped in for the Sierra Nevada Beer Camp event a few weeks ago, and had a great time.

Main downside: expensive. Most of the beers start at $7 and up (click on my picture of the chalkboard and you'll see that there are no beers listed for less than $8). Four beers and an appetizer will run close to $50 when you throw in a tip. Because of that, I haven't been frequenting the place like I thought I would.

Homebrew in Paradise has moved

This is sort of old news, but I figured I'd put up a post just in case any readers of this blog haven't stopped by the homebrew shop recently. Homebrew in Paradise is no longer in their old location on Kilihau Street. Their new address is 740 Mooawa Street, off of Dillingham (if you're driving Ewa-bound on Dillingham, it's after you pass the Community College but before you get to the Correctional Facility). It's just as industrial as the last location, but it's a little closer to town.

American Homebrewing Association members now get 10% off at Beerworks

reflecting on the opening of Honolulu Beerworks

Friday, April 11th, 2014: a big day in the history of Honolulu. On this day, Honolulu finally got its first craft brewpub. Sure, we had Aloha Beer before, and Vice Inferno, and even Brew Moon way back when. But each of those places played it safe. They tried to create brewpubs that would appeal to a cliched concept of "local" tastes. And what do locals like, according to those cliches? Tacky nightclubs and green-bottle beers. So that's what these brewpubs tried to give us: colored lights and black-painted ceilings and beer that tasted closer to mass-market brews than to real craft ale.

None of those brewpubs succeeded. Two of them didn't even survive a single year.

Honolulu Beerworks, on the other hand, is trying for something different. It's not a watered-down-for-"local"-tastes type of place. It's a craft brewpub, a real one. From the oak-barrels flanking the entrance, to the center-stage setting for the bar, to the gleaming stainless-steel brewery in the back, Beerworks is following a vision previously unseen in Honolulu. Because of that, it's got more in common with the brewpubs thriving on the mainland than it does with those other, short-lived local breweries.



That difference in vision applies to the beer, too. I drank a sample of every beer currently on tap, and went back for a couple pints of my favorites, and I can tell you with full confidence that Honolulu Beerworks is real beer. Not every beer won me over, but there were a few that satisfied my beer-cravings like no other local beer has managed to do.

The standout for me, by far, was the South Shore Stout. When I tipped back my glass and took my first gulp, it nearly brought tears of joy to my eyes. Big-bodied, malty, rich with caramel, and packing a notable alcohol punch. The ethyl-caramel combo made me recall bourbon-barrel aged beers I've had before, though of course this brewery hasn't had the time to age beer in barrels, yet. It also brought to mind the Russian Imperial Stout style, but Russian Imperial Stouts, in my experience, tend to have such a high alcohol level that the ethyl just burns your palate (unless they've been aged for a long time, and it's hard to find one that's been given enough time to mellow). This beer is a smoother, lower-alcohol drink than those. It didn't feature much of the smoky, roasted flavor that I favor in certain stouts, but I loved it anyway. Awesome beer!



I also really liked the Pia Mahi' Ai Saison. Slightly hazy, pale gold in color, with a good foamy head. The funk was in effect, but it was paired with an interesting sweetness that I'm not used to seeing side by side with that farmhouse flavor. A good, refreshing beer. I'd gladly go back for more.

There were a few disappointments, too, and since I value balanced journalism I feel obligated to mention them. The Kakaako Kolsch felt a bit thin and bitter. The Rye Not Pale Ale was so slight with its rye component that I could barely even notice it, and it poured completely flat with absolutely no head or carbonation (maybe they forgot to attach that keg to the CO2 system in advance, so it never got a chance to condition?). And it looked like they used plenty of PVC piping in their brewing system, which seems like a really bad idea to me.



But all in all, I'm excited about this place. Very excited. Take a look at their current line-up in the picture above, and you'll see that they've got two farmhouse beers and a rye. Beers featuring those flavors are relatively new to the American scene, definitely not as proven-to-sell as typical pale ales, IPAs, and lagers. You certainly wouldn't have found anything like them on tap at any of the other Honolulu breweries.

Which brings me back to my opening thoughts. This is the first brewery in Honolulu that isn't focusing their approach on appeasing that cliched concept of the "local" masses. Honolulu Beerworks seems to be trying to appeal to local beer geeks instead. (And there were plenty of them in attendance on the opening night--lots of Stone Brewing shirts, and even some other-than-west-coast gear like Three Floyds and Half Acre.) It's a gamble that no one else has tried here before. Personally, I'd love to be able to go back for more of that South Shore Stout, so I'm hoping it's a gamble that pays off.

Update (4/20/14): I sent an email to Geoff, owner of Beerworks, when I put this post up. He read the post and responded. The key things I took from his email, which I think should be posted, are these:

1) He confirmed that Honolulu Beerworks is "definitely not trying to appeal to the mass market green beers". They plan on rotating styles and should have barrel-aged beers available soon.
2) He's planning on upping the rye quotient in the Rye Not, and he says he's worked out the carbonation issues present in the first few batches.
3) (most important point) The PVC pipes I saw are actually just external cores for double-insulated glycol piping. The beer never comes in contact with PVC.

The Newest News

My wife, who's signed up on the email list for Beer In Hawaii, forwarded me their new interview with Andy Baker. Baker's story is pretty interesting, but I personally was most intrigued by his mention, near the end, of the two companies that will be coming out of the dissolution of Aloha Beer. From piecing together the bits of info I've stumbled across, here's how I understand it (and I may be way off--a lot of the business dealings in Hawaii seem to be played very close to the vest, with plenty of secrets; innuendo and rumor are often hard to differentiate from truth):

First of all, Aloha Beer is still in business. I'd been wondering about this because you can still find their bottles on the shelves of local stores despite the fact that the brewery's been shut down for nearly a year and the original business partnership behind Aloha Beer seemed to crash and burn like the Hindenburg. Apparently, one of the original owners (those owners being Steve Sombrero, James Lee, and Dave Campbell) maintained rights to the brand, and has plans of creating a new brewpub location and adding a new beer to the bottled product line. (The bottled beers, by the way, were never brewed on the islands; the beer in those bottles has always been handled by a commercial brewery in California.)



Secondly, the actual brewery--that is to say the equipment and location that had been used to make the beer served in the Aloha Beer brewpub--will be reopening with a new name: Hoku Brewing. They've got a website up which is still largely under construction, but it features plenty of pictures of Dave Campbell, the original brewer behind Aloha, so I figure it's safe to say that he'll be involved. As to whether he'll be the sole owner of Hoku, or whether one of the other folks from the original Aloha Beer partnership is going to be part of this... who knows?

Now that I've delivered the meager hard-facts I've managed to gather, I'd like to take an opportunity to spew (probably unwisely, considering my general ignorance) my personal thoughts. Mainly, I'm hoping that Dave Campbell is sole owner of Hoku Brewing. He's the dude who brews the beer, he's the guy who does the real work. The other two dudes--Sombrero and Lee--strike me as businessmen (Sombrero is president of commercial real estate company NAI ChaneyBrooks, and Lee is a partner with the Honolulu law firm Devens, Nakano, Saito, Lee, Wong and Ching) who were primarily involved for business reasons. Campbell, on the other hand, has been a passionate member of the brewing scene in Honolulu for nearly 30 years--he even opened up the first homebrew shop! The sense that I get--mainly from unfounded supposition--is that the shit that went down with Aloha was mainly provoked by the other two guys.

Other news? Well, Honolulu Beerworks still isn't open, and neither is BREW'd. (Remember my post back in September of last year? At that time, the word on the street for both Beerworks and BREW'd was that they'd be open by November.) Rumors continue to float around concerning other potential breweries--like this one, who apparently got funding but haven't been able to move much farther along--but precious little actually seems to take place in the real world of Honolulu. This town just doesn't seem to be a very easy to start a business.

News relating to my personal brewing? Well, I've been developing a greater interest in mead, and have been revisiting my cider attempts--but both of those are topics for future posts.