Hawaii brews stand up to California’s best

I love traveling. It gives me the opportunity to try new beers we don’t have access to in Hawaii. My family makes regular trips to California, and I always get excited because the state has so many amazing breweries.

On a recent trip to Northern California and San Diego, I sought out as many new beers as I possibly could. But something unexpected happened. I was rather underwhelmed by what I tasted. It’s not because the beers were not good, it’s just that I was comparing my discoveries to the beers brewed in Hawaii.

In all my years of traveling to California, I always felt the beers brewed there were far superior to what we had locally. Hawaii-brewed beer left a lot to be desired. But on this trip, as I tasted my way through various Cali­fornia IPAs, sours and pilsners, I took note of how much Hawaii breweries have closed the gap or even surpassed the quality of those beers.

I’m an IPA fan and probably drink the style more than any other. Like many around the country, I’m enamored with Hazy IPAs for the bright, juicy hop flavors, low bitterness and smooth, rounded mouthfeel. Hazy IPAs are everywhere in California right now, so naturally I indulged my preference. Some were great, but many were subpar to the versions coming out of Beer Lab HI and Inu Island Ales. For the first time, I didn’t load my luggage with these highly sought-after beers. Beer Lab HI’s Hotate or Tamago IPA and Inu’s Hazy IPA were far more bright, pungently aromatic and well balanced than most of what I tasted on my trip.

Another true sign of how far Hawaii’s beers have come is the pilsner. If I walk into a brewery and they have a pilsner or lager on the menu, it is always the first beer I order. Why? I love the clean, refreshing taste of the style, but it is also the most technically difficult style to brew. It can take up to three times longer to make a lager than your typical ale. If a brewery can create a perfect pilsner, that bodes well for the rest of their products. Lucky for us, Hawaii brewers are not just tackling this difficult style, but they are perfecting it.

If you find Maui’s Kohola Brewery’s Lokahi Pils on draft (the only way to have it on Oahu), do yourself a favor and order a pint. It’s as good of a pilsner as I’ve had anywhere in California. In fact, it won a bronze medal at the Great American Beer Festival a few years back.

Another fantastic locally crafted pilsner is Honolulu Beerworks’ Pali Pils. Its wonderful soft-grain aromatics and clean, dry finish makes this beer especially thirst-quenching. And you can always find a fresh keg somewhere, which is important because for this style, fresher is better. For something you can take home while island hopping, look for Maui Brewing Co.’s Pau Hana Pilsner in cans later this month.

But back to my trip. As I packed my bags to get home to Hawaii, I realized that I didn’t have a single beer to pack. Hawaii’s beer game has stepped up, and now my suggestion to our visitors is to fill up their bags with our local beers.

Tim Golden, a certified cicerone, shares his obsession with all things craft beer monthly. See his blog, “Beer in Hawaii,” at beerinhawaii.com.