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Kihei Brewery Tasting Room
605 Lipoa Pkwy, Kihei, Maui, HI 96753 Hours: Daily tours are offered at 11:30, 12:30, 1:30, 2:30, 3:30, and 4:30. https://mauibrewingco.com/ https://www.mbcrestaurants.com/ |
Maui Brewing Co. (MBC) is one of the craft breweries in the state that's leading the pack and setting the standards for Hawaii-brewed beer. MBC currently operates in a newly constructed campus in Kehei, a small, beach-heavy town in south Maui, and distributes to twenty-three states and ten intercontinental counties. MBC remains privately held by its original owners, yet they have been expanding into brewpub locations in native Kehei, Lahaina, Waikiki, and soon Kailua.
In 2005, Maui Brewing Co. released their first batch of Lagers and Ales and ever since, the Aina-forward beer company has continued to be a dominant force in both the local and intercontinental craft brewery scene. The growing company prides itself on a beer for every season through their “Craft Beer Way of Life” initiative; and as such, currently produces six styles of beer including four limited release beers in their portfolio. MBC’s impressively diverse roster of craft beers range from a buttery textured, toasted coconut-infused porter, the Coconut Hawi Porter, which along with the richness of the lightly browned coconut, has a dark chocolate, heady coffee mouthfeel, providing the perfect “brewed” mocha experience. The line up also includes the familiar sweetness of a perfectly canned, locally grown pineapple in the Pineapple Mana Wheat, which is a beer that is flawlessly even-bodied, combining the tartness of a Maui Gold Pineapple and the sweet, bitterness from wheat, creating a heavy, yet very refreshing beer. MBC’s craft collection expands to two IPA’s: the Big Swell IPA and the Double Overhead IPA, and includes the Pau Hana Pilsner, along with the OG Bikini Blonde Lager, the beer that started it all.
We interviewed CEO Garrett Marrero to learn more about Maui Brewing Co. and what drives their passion for making craft beer on Maui.
In 2005, Maui Brewing Co. released their first batch of Lagers and Ales and ever since, the Aina-forward beer company has continued to be a dominant force in both the local and intercontinental craft brewery scene. The growing company prides itself on a beer for every season through their “Craft Beer Way of Life” initiative; and as such, currently produces six styles of beer including four limited release beers in their portfolio. MBC’s impressively diverse roster of craft beers range from a buttery textured, toasted coconut-infused porter, the Coconut Hawi Porter, which along with the richness of the lightly browned coconut, has a dark chocolate, heady coffee mouthfeel, providing the perfect “brewed” mocha experience. The line up also includes the familiar sweetness of a perfectly canned, locally grown pineapple in the Pineapple Mana Wheat, which is a beer that is flawlessly even-bodied, combining the tartness of a Maui Gold Pineapple and the sweet, bitterness from wheat, creating a heavy, yet very refreshing beer. MBC’s craft collection expands to two IPA’s: the Big Swell IPA and the Double Overhead IPA, and includes the Pau Hana Pilsner, along with the OG Bikini Blonde Lager, the beer that started it all.
We interviewed CEO Garrett Marrero to learn more about Maui Brewing Co. and what drives their passion for making craft beer on Maui.
When Maui Brewing Co is also a story of Marrero. He grew up in San Diego and was influenced by its Craft Brewing scene. He recanted, “I grew up around good beer. When I was in San Diego, my step-grandpa was really into beer and he would be gifted beer from all over the world as part of his job at an oceanographic institute. So, I got to try a lot of different beers at a young age. I remember trying some of my grandpa’s beer and being like, ‘Wow, that’s really good. I like that.” I was probably thirteen or fourteen years old. We were a very European family, so it was common for us to enjoy alcohol and not abuse it, obviously. As the beer scene in San Diego started to grow with the opening of Sam Adams, Sierra Nevada, and a few other breweries, my grandpa and my step-dad would buy the different beers that were coming in from America at the time, and we would drink them. Pete’s Wicked was one of the beers that I cut my teeth on, as well. Fast forward to me graduating from high school. Stone Brewing (at the time it was called a “microbrewery” but is now known as “craft”) opened up in San Diego and my grandpa got one of the first kegs of for my graduation party. I went to college at [University of California] Davis, which had a brewing program on campus, and although I didn’t study brewing in the actual school, I enjoyed quite a few pints at the campus brew pub called Sueworks. When on vacation anywhere, I would always try to drink what was new and local to the area. When I visited Maui in 2001, not only did I end up falling in love with the island, but when I learned that their local beer wasn’t actually made in Hawaii, I saw an opportunity to create an authentic, local Hawaiian beer. In 2005, we opened Maui Brewing Co., and I believe we were the first to use the term “craft beer” in Hawaii.
When Maui Brewing Co opened, there were few other microbreweries, and the only one remaining from that era is Kona Brewing. Since then the companies have gone on divergent paths. Kona Brewing Co merged into Craft Brewer’s Alliance, a publicly traded company with partially owned by Anheuser-InBev and manufacturers and distributes globally. Maui Brewing has maintained a commitment to producing 100% of its product in Hawaii.
When Maui Brewing Co opened, there were few other microbreweries, and the only one remaining from that era is Kona Brewing. Since then the companies have gone on divergent paths. Kona Brewing Co merged into Craft Brewer’s Alliance, a publicly traded company with partially owned by Anheuser-InBev and manufacturers and distributes globally. Maui Brewing has maintained a commitment to producing 100% of its product in Hawaii.
According to Marrero, “Maui Brewing Co.’s philosophy is to brew locally, to have integrity, and we believe that ‘liquid aloha’ should be made in Hawaii and not imported from the mainland.” He further added, “I never say, ‘Don’t buy Kona [Brew Co].’ I say, ‘Buy what you like, but don’t buy it for the wrong reasons.’ Don’t buy it because you think you’re supporting a local business down the street. If you want to do that, there are several other breweries that you can choose from. Buy it for the right reasons. If you like it, you like it. Great. There’s nothing wrong with that. Buy what drink you like; that is why there is such a wide variety of selection. But when it come to why you buy it, that’s different. A lot of people really believe in independence, local, authenticity, integrity, sustainability, or “one percent for the planet. A good friend of mine, Dan Kopman, the CEO over at Heavy Seas in Maryland says, and I may misquote him, ‘The real brand owners are the customers. We are just the stewards of the brand.’ We created something that means something and we have to continue to stand by that. Our brand is really in the hands of the people of Hawaii, and we have to make good on the promises that we’ve made about who we are.It’s why we’ve pushed so hard and spent more than $10 million to get to a point of grid-independence. It’s the right thing to do; it’s what people expect of us. It’s good for the company, no doubt, especially for the long-term, but imagine making 60,000 barrels of beer, all of these spirits, canned cocktails, and coffee with zero-grid energy. No fossil fuel. That is unparalleled in the industry, and I think that’s who we want to be.”
From a product perspective, the company brews beer by “focusing on our roots and make beers that are palatable by many.” Marrero noted, “We have a wide enough array of beers in our repertoire --arrows in the quiver, if you will. We’ve got our funky beers, we’ve got our big beers, and we’ve got our more approachable, mainstream beers. That just comes from years of brewing experience and our ability to take risks that other breweries can’t, which our size and success permits us to do.”
Marrero also noted that they are are Hawaii’s most sustainable brewery. They recover 100% of thir CO2 and are grid-independent due to installation of solar panels. They were also the first brewery in Hawaii, and tenth in the country to put beer in cans.
Inspiration and influence to recipes
Development of recipes is a collaborative effort, however Brewmaster Kim is ultimately responsible for recipe development and creation. Marrero mentioned “We’ve got guys like Pete Cumbo who love the hazy IPAs and big imperial stouts, so he likes to brew those when there’s room in the brewhouse to do one-offs. We don’t brew the same beer every day, and we like to give the brewers some autonomy to be able to brew a multitude of styles, so that they feel they are getting that artistic expression of themselves in the beer. Even our market manager, Dustin Gomes, loves beer and developed a recipe to brew, and it was a fantastic homebrew. We brewed Gomes’s recipe at the production level, and it has become a staple for us; it’s called the Coconut Wireless.”
From the sales perspective, Maui Brewing Co analyzes the marketplace to figure out what beer goes on draft and what beer gets canned. Marrero gave the following example, “While we love our Lahaina Town Brown and we love our Valley Isle ESB (ESB just took the gold medal at the World Beer Cup in April), they’re not a sexy style on the market and we’re probably not going to sell a lot of it out there if we put it in cans, so they might be better as draft-only beers.” However, ultimately, the beer brewed is the beer they want to drink. The multitude of styles brewed is also attributed to their production capacity. Marrero mentioned “We’ve got the capability to brew everything from a one-barrel batch to a 50-barrel batch and our team collectively figures out what they want to brew next. Most of the time, I think the craft beer drinkers in Hawaii are the ones that actually pick what beers go to cans. We may vote on what beers go to cans, but it’s usually based on how quickly a particular beer sells in the market after it was first created experimentally. We also listen to the people who are coming to our restaurants and tasting room, and they offer a lot of feedback. It’s one of the reasons Pueo Pale Ale is going to be a year-round beer now. We’ve had a lot of requests for it, and we feel it’s because of the craft beer drinkers saying, “Hey, we want this.” And that’s what we’re able to do."
From a product perspective, the company brews beer by “focusing on our roots and make beers that are palatable by many.” Marrero noted, “We have a wide enough array of beers in our repertoire --arrows in the quiver, if you will. We’ve got our funky beers, we’ve got our big beers, and we’ve got our more approachable, mainstream beers. That just comes from years of brewing experience and our ability to take risks that other breweries can’t, which our size and success permits us to do.”
Marrero also noted that they are are Hawaii’s most sustainable brewery. They recover 100% of thir CO2 and are grid-independent due to installation of solar panels. They were also the first brewery in Hawaii, and tenth in the country to put beer in cans.
Inspiration and influence to recipes
Development of recipes is a collaborative effort, however Brewmaster Kim is ultimately responsible for recipe development and creation. Marrero mentioned “We’ve got guys like Pete Cumbo who love the hazy IPAs and big imperial stouts, so he likes to brew those when there’s room in the brewhouse to do one-offs. We don’t brew the same beer every day, and we like to give the brewers some autonomy to be able to brew a multitude of styles, so that they feel they are getting that artistic expression of themselves in the beer. Even our market manager, Dustin Gomes, loves beer and developed a recipe to brew, and it was a fantastic homebrew. We brewed Gomes’s recipe at the production level, and it has become a staple for us; it’s called the Coconut Wireless.”
From the sales perspective, Maui Brewing Co analyzes the marketplace to figure out what beer goes on draft and what beer gets canned. Marrero gave the following example, “While we love our Lahaina Town Brown and we love our Valley Isle ESB (ESB just took the gold medal at the World Beer Cup in April), they’re not a sexy style on the market and we’re probably not going to sell a lot of it out there if we put it in cans, so they might be better as draft-only beers.” However, ultimately, the beer brewed is the beer they want to drink. The multitude of styles brewed is also attributed to their production capacity. Marrero mentioned “We’ve got the capability to brew everything from a one-barrel batch to a 50-barrel batch and our team collectively figures out what they want to brew next. Most of the time, I think the craft beer drinkers in Hawaii are the ones that actually pick what beers go to cans. We may vote on what beers go to cans, but it’s usually based on how quickly a particular beer sells in the market after it was first created experimentally. We also listen to the people who are coming to our restaurants and tasting room, and they offer a lot of feedback. It’s one of the reasons Pueo Pale Ale is going to be a year-round beer now. We’ve had a lot of requests for it, and we feel it’s because of the craft beer drinkers saying, “Hey, we want this.” And that’s what we’re able to do."
Garrett Marrero: Obviously, beer is high-90th percentile water, so the local water does make a difference. When we moved the brewery from Lahaina to Kihei, we had to make recipe adjustments to get the Bikini Blonde to taste the same because the water does change the flavor of the beer; that alone makes a difference in the beer. On top of that, as much as we don’t have waves of grain or any malting houses or any hops fields growing in Hawaii, we do use a lot of local agriculture to influence our beer. We created the first coconut beer, the first pineapple beer, and the first POG beer. All of these different beers that were influenced by local agriculture is how we took traditional styles and made them Hawaii and made them Maui --simply by using those local ingredients. We also made the first breadfruit beer and the first Maui onion beer. We’ve done a lot of firsts here and we’re proud of that. We’ve influenced not only beer culture in Hawaii, but [I think] beer culture around the world. The coconut porter style is often imitated around the world now, and that started right here on Maui with us.
HBG: If you had to pick a beer or two from the portfolio that best represented Maui Island, what would they be and why?
Garrett Marrero: I would probably say the Pineapple Mana Wheat. That’s a beer that we’ve been doing since 2008 or so. It’s a simple, American wheat-style brewed with Maui gold pineapple. I don’t think there’s much of an argument when we say that Maui gold pineapple is the best pineapple in the world. It is the sweetest, lowest-acidity, highly sought-after pineapple, and we’re proud to use that exclusively in our beer. I think the pineapple being the universally recognized symbol of hospitality and Aloha embodies Maui, given that it is a Maui gold pineapple afterall.
I’d also say the Bikini Blonde Lager. Although it doesn’t have any local fruits, I think when you sit back and enjoy a Bikini Blonde anywhere in the world, you feel like you’re on the beach on Maui. As Pete, our national sales guy, likes to say, “We bring you back to Maui twelve ounces at a time.” I feel like that beer really does that.
HBG: If you had to pick a beer or two from the portfolio that best represented Maui Island, what would they be and why?
Garrett Marrero: I would probably say the Pineapple Mana Wheat. That’s a beer that we’ve been doing since 2008 or so. It’s a simple, American wheat-style brewed with Maui gold pineapple. I don’t think there’s much of an argument when we say that Maui gold pineapple is the best pineapple in the world. It is the sweetest, lowest-acidity, highly sought-after pineapple, and we’re proud to use that exclusively in our beer. I think the pineapple being the universally recognized symbol of hospitality and Aloha embodies Maui, given that it is a Maui gold pineapple afterall.
I’d also say the Bikini Blonde Lager. Although it doesn’t have any local fruits, I think when you sit back and enjoy a Bikini Blonde anywhere in the world, you feel like you’re on the beach on Maui. As Pete, our national sales guy, likes to say, “We bring you back to Maui twelve ounces at a time.” I feel like that beer really does that.
Ingredients
Insight Coming Soon
Insight Coming Soon
Water Filtration
Garrett Marrero: We have a particulate filter, activated charcoal, and UV. We don’t, however, do any sort of Reverse Osmosis (RO) because RO is extremely wasteful and you’re removing the terroir, all of the natural minerals that occur in the water supply here, which you have to add back into the concoction anyway. Your brewing salts are really important, as well as is the pH of your water, so if you do RO, you have to amend so much.
Garrett Marrero: We have a particulate filter, activated charcoal, and UV. We don’t, however, do any sort of Reverse Osmosis (RO) because RO is extremely wasteful and you’re removing the terroir, all of the natural minerals that occur in the water supply here, which you have to add back into the concoction anyway. Your brewing salts are really important, as well as is the pH of your water, so if you do RO, you have to amend so much.
HBG: How has your lilikoi sourcing been?
Garrett Marrero: It’s been tougher to get lilikoi. It’s one reason why POG was supposed to come back on the calendar for a can, but we couldn’t get enough of the local fruit to brew it in large volumes for the cans. So, it’s going to be a draft-only beer for us this year. That is part of the problem of using local-only fruit. Other breweries’ method of incorporating flavoring extract is very different from using real fruit. We came out with the POG IPA and a couple of the other breweries started to do that (but none were produced in Hawaii), most notably Kona; no real fruits were used in making that beer whatsoever. For us, we make a better beer out of local agriculture versus taking a jug of lilikoi extract and throwing it into our beer. The flavor from an extract is not even close to the real thing; it’s just like coconut beer that uses an extract and not any real coconut. We hand-toast our coconut chips and we add them to the brewing process, and there’s nothing that tastes like fresh, toasted coconut. You’ve got beers out there that taste like suntan lotion. It’s just disgusting. The beer itself is super sweet, but it literally tastes like someone dumped a bucket of Coppertone into the tank. I don’t think that’s appropriate for beer. The idea of adding fruit to beer, for me at least, is taking a style that is steeped in tradition and enhancing it by adding fruit or pulling out some nuanced flavors by adding the fruit. It goes beyond making juice that has a little bit of beer character. I think there are some fruit beers that have gone way too far. This is why we don’t add fruit to every beer we brew. There are some beers where a fruit flavor makes sense to be added into, and there are others that it does not. That’s my take on beer. When a flavor doesn’t enhance the beer or create an overall better experience when drinking the beer, then I don’t think it belongs in the product. It would be like a chef adding something to a dish just to say he added something to a dish. No self-respecting chef is going to do that.
HBG: I like the approach of not getting gimmicky. I feel like that’s oftentimes what happens whenever a concept is beaten to death. It’s either gimmicky or it’s a one-trick-pony type of situation.
Garrett Marrero: Exactly. It’s putting glitter in beer. What’s the point? There’s no point. It doesn’t do anything for the flavor, and it adds plastic to the environment as you’re going to drink that glitter, it’s gonna come out of you at some point, and then it’s gonna hit the water; now you have more microplastic in the environment because somebody thought it was cool that your beer was shiny. I don’t get it. I think gimmicky is a good word for what shouldn’t be happening. But, I also don’t want be the old man shaking his fist at kids speeding through the neighborhood either. I think innovation is awesome. The things that we’re doing in the brewery right now, especially since we just bought a one-barrel pilot system, is geeking out on all kinds of stuff. We’re pushing limits, but we’re doing it in a way that we believe is at least paying tribute to the essence of craft beer and to the styles that we are brewing. We may be heavily tweaking recipes and ingredients, but ultimately, we’re just brewing beer and having fun. There’s no glitter involved and certainly none in our beers. We also don’t use any fruit extracts. That’s an important thing to us. I mean, we brew with fruit; with such a plethora of fruit available in Hawaii, we should be supporting the local agriculture rather than buying a jug of POG extract.
Garrett Marrero: It’s been tougher to get lilikoi. It’s one reason why POG was supposed to come back on the calendar for a can, but we couldn’t get enough of the local fruit to brew it in large volumes for the cans. So, it’s going to be a draft-only beer for us this year. That is part of the problem of using local-only fruit. Other breweries’ method of incorporating flavoring extract is very different from using real fruit. We came out with the POG IPA and a couple of the other breweries started to do that (but none were produced in Hawaii), most notably Kona; no real fruits were used in making that beer whatsoever. For us, we make a better beer out of local agriculture versus taking a jug of lilikoi extract and throwing it into our beer. The flavor from an extract is not even close to the real thing; it’s just like coconut beer that uses an extract and not any real coconut. We hand-toast our coconut chips and we add them to the brewing process, and there’s nothing that tastes like fresh, toasted coconut. You’ve got beers out there that taste like suntan lotion. It’s just disgusting. The beer itself is super sweet, but it literally tastes like someone dumped a bucket of Coppertone into the tank. I don’t think that’s appropriate for beer. The idea of adding fruit to beer, for me at least, is taking a style that is steeped in tradition and enhancing it by adding fruit or pulling out some nuanced flavors by adding the fruit. It goes beyond making juice that has a little bit of beer character. I think there are some fruit beers that have gone way too far. This is why we don’t add fruit to every beer we brew. There are some beers where a fruit flavor makes sense to be added into, and there are others that it does not. That’s my take on beer. When a flavor doesn’t enhance the beer or create an overall better experience when drinking the beer, then I don’t think it belongs in the product. It would be like a chef adding something to a dish just to say he added something to a dish. No self-respecting chef is going to do that.
HBG: I like the approach of not getting gimmicky. I feel like that’s oftentimes what happens whenever a concept is beaten to death. It’s either gimmicky or it’s a one-trick-pony type of situation.
Garrett Marrero: Exactly. It’s putting glitter in beer. What’s the point? There’s no point. It doesn’t do anything for the flavor, and it adds plastic to the environment as you’re going to drink that glitter, it’s gonna come out of you at some point, and then it’s gonna hit the water; now you have more microplastic in the environment because somebody thought it was cool that your beer was shiny. I don’t get it. I think gimmicky is a good word for what shouldn’t be happening. But, I also don’t want be the old man shaking his fist at kids speeding through the neighborhood either. I think innovation is awesome. The things that we’re doing in the brewery right now, especially since we just bought a one-barrel pilot system, is geeking out on all kinds of stuff. We’re pushing limits, but we’re doing it in a way that we believe is at least paying tribute to the essence of craft beer and to the styles that we are brewing. We may be heavily tweaking recipes and ingredients, but ultimately, we’re just brewing beer and having fun. There’s no glitter involved and certainly none in our beers. We also don’t use any fruit extracts. That’s an important thing to us. I mean, we brew with fruit; with such a plethora of fruit available in Hawaii, we should be supporting the local agriculture rather than buying a jug of POG extract.
Beer
Garrett Marrero: Light-to-dark didn’t have so much to do with it as us just wanting to bring a new style to the world. If you think about Hawaii, you think about drinking a beer on a beach. A beer like Bikini Blonde Lager goes a long way. There’s only so much Big Swell IPA you’re going to want to drink when it’s 90 degrees out and you’re sitting in the sun. We had brewed the Coconut Porter since it was very representative of Hawaii at the time because of the coconut. We wanted to launch the Coconut Porter because it was something that was unique and that had never been done before. We took more into account “uniqueness” as well as what wasn’t in the local brewery market at the time. Given that there weren’t many local breweries, we had a lot of options. Bikini Blonde Lager was the answer to, “What beer can I drink all the time in Hawaii?” The Coconut Porter was our answer to “What is representative of Hawaii and super unique?” Then you have Big Swell IPA, which came out when nobody in Hawaii was even making an IPA. We had a lot of opportunities to experiment with different things, but those were the first three. Then, as soon as we could secure pineapple, we started with the Pineapple Mana Wheat to make something that was again unique and special to Hawaii, but also quite crushable (something you can drink several of when you are out on the beach). Last to that would be having a balanced array of styles of beer that went well with food.
Seltzer
Learn More at hawaiibevguide.com/maui-hard-seltzer
Kupu Spirits
Learn more at hawaiibevguide.com/kupu-spirits
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