Aloha is one of those words that has multiple meanings. It is a Hawaiian word, of course, and in the native language of America’s fiftieth state it can mean both hello and goodbye. My wife and I just spent eight days on the Big Island of Hawaii. It was a trip that mixed
business and pleasure. I was there for the 55th Annual Meeting of the Western Regional Science Association. We arrived a few days before the meetings started so that we could see a bit of the island. As with any trip I make these days I was interested in exploring the local beer scene. But before doing so I did a little reading on the history of brewing in Hawaii. As I did so I realized that it is a history of hellos and goodbyes – alohas and alohas if you will –  breweries opening and then closing with the result that Hawaii’s brewing history is dotted with hiatuses during which no commercial brewing took place on the islands.

The first record of beer being brewed in Hawaii appears in the diary of a Spanish settler, Francisco de Paula Marin, who lived in Honolulu. In an entry dated 2 February 1812 Marin writes about brewing beer. While Marin appears to have been a home brewer the islands’ first commercial brewery, The Honolulu Brewery, was established in 1854. The brewery, which was owned by J. J. Bischoff & Co., was short lived however and the building was put up for sale in 1857.

Between 1857 and 1865 there was no production of beer in Hawaii. In March of 1865 Thomas W. Warren and Willard H. Francis teamed-up to operate The Hawaiian Brewery on the island of Oahu. The partnership only lasted four months. Warren left the partnership to start another brewery to compete with Francis, who remained at the helm of The Hawaiian Brewery. Both breweries survived for only a few months with Francis leaving the islands and Warren deciding to get out of the brewing business and into the distilling business.

Hawaiians had to wait until 1888 for the next brewery to open its doors. In that year The National Brewery opened in Kalihi. Alas, like its predecessors it lasted only a few years and in 1893 closed its doors. The closure of The National Brewery signaled another hiatus in beer production on the islands. This one lasted until 1898 – it was in that year that the Honolulu Brewing & Malting Company (HBMC) was established. HBMC was responsible for introducing the beer that would become most closely associated with the islands – Primo Lager. HBMC and Primo Lager prospered until the arrival of Prohibition to the islands. Prohibition became effective in Hawaii in 1918, two years before it was imposed nationally. Up until the introduction of Prohibition it has been suggested that  Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Baptist, and the Mormon missionaries, along with plantation owners who did not want employees showing up to work drunk, played a key role in making it difficult for breweries to prosper.

Following the end of Prohibition in 1933 The American Brewing Company took over the brewery formerly occupied by the Honolulu Brewing & Malting Company, while the brewing of Primo was now done by The Hawaiian Brewing Corporation in a newly constructed brewery. The American Brewing Company ceased operations in 1962. The Hawaiian Brewing Corporation was purchased by Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company in 1963. In May 1979 Schlitz closed its Hawaii brewery and shifted production of Primo to Los Angeles. Hawaii, once  again, was without a brewery.

The next brewery to appear was the Pacific Brewing Company which opened up in Wailuku on the island of Maui in May 1986. Like its predecessors it was a short-lived venture, closing down in November 1990. After that Hawaiians had to wait until the Gordon Biersch Brewery opened for business in Honolulu in 1994. Since its opening Hawaii has not been without a brewery – that’s twenty-two years of continuous brewing on the islands. And even though the Brewers Association lists ten craft breweries in the state my exploration of the Internet turned up thirteen – and, as it is possible I missed some, there may be more. Hawaii, like the rest of the country, is riding the wave of the craft beer revolution. By my count eight new breweries have opened up since 2011 – three in 2015 alone. With numbers like these and the nature of the demand for craft beer I would be surprised if Hawaii were ever to return to a situation where no beer was commercially brewed on the islands.

On the Big Island, where my wife and I were staying there are three breweries – Mehana Brewing Company, Kona Brewing Company, and  Big Island Brewhaus. We visited all three. The Mehana Brewery is located in Hilo which, with a population of just over 43,000, is the island’s largest settlement. The brewery has a tasting room, although there are plans to open up a brewpub later in the year. The brief history of the brewery, posted on the wall of the tasting room, tells you that the building started out life as a soda pop factory in the 1920s. Under its current license beer purchased on-site cannot be consumed on-site. However complimentary samples are available so I worked my way through half a dozen of those. The brewery does have canned beer available for purchase that you can take off-site – so I walked away with a six-pack of their Mauna Kea Pale Ale. Mehana is one of a number of growing breweries that seem to prefer to can their beer. This has not always been the case and it was only In 2014 that the brewery switched from bottling to canning their beer. The switch was a money-saving initiative – it costs less to ship cans from Oahu, where they are produced, to the Big Island. The brewery was an eighty mile drive from our hotel (just outside Kona). Eighty miles on the Big Island takes longer to drive than on the mainland. There are no interstate highways of course and the two-lane roads that dominate are slow and, at times, winding. It took nearly two hours to make the journey. Thankfully Mehana was not the sole purpose of our visit to Hilo (Mehana, by itself, is not worth an eighty mile drive) and the rest of our day was spent in the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.

The second brewery stop on the Big Island was The Kona Brewing Company. Unlike Mehana it was a mere twenty-five miles south of our hotel. Established in 1995 Kona Brewing is by far the largest and best known brewery in Hawaii. The company brews ~300,000 barrels of beer per year. However only ~10,000 of those barrels are brewed in Hawaii. The remainder is produced in breweries in Portland, OR, Woodinville, WA, Memphis, TN, and Portsmouth, NH. Brewing Kona beers in these locations reduces the transportation costs associated with reaching consumers on the mainland. To facilitate access to mainland markets Kona is part of what is called The Craft Brew Alliance (CBA) Inc. The CBA was established in 2008 with the merger of Seattle’s Redhook Brewery and Portland’s Widmer Brothers Brewing. Later in the same year The Kona Brewing Company joined the Alliance. CBA utilizes Anheuser-Busch’s distribution networks to reach consumers with the result that Kona’s major brews such as Longboard Lager and Big Wave Golden Ale are available in forty states. Kona beers are also exported to seventeen countries. Anheuser-Busch holds a 31.7% share in CBA. We arrived at the Kona Brewery in time for lunch. It was busy, but not so busy that we had to wait more than fifteen minutes for a table. I ordered a sampler consisting of four of their brews – Duke’s Blond Ale, Wailua Wheat, Firerock Pale Ale, and Koko Brown Ale. My wife and I shared one of Kona’s pizzas. Our waiter informed us that the pizzas were the star item on their menu; dough used to make the pizzas is made with spent grain from they brewery, while the sauces are made in-house. The pizza did not disappoint – it was fantastic.

Our final brewery visit was to the Big Island Brewhaus. Established in 2011 Big Island Brewhaus was located about twenty miles northeast of our hotel in the small community of Waimea. Owners  Thomas Kerns and his wife Jayne purchased the property in 2008 when it was a Mexican restaurant, Tako Taco Taqueria – Mexican food still dominates the menu. Of the three breweries that we visited this was definitely my favorite. At 2,764 feet above sea level it holds the distinction of being the highest brewery in Hawaii. We arrived just after noon and the small tap room was already doing a brisk lunch trade. The only seats available were at the bar. A seat at a bar is always preferable in my opinion as it affords a better opportunity to engage in conversation with the staff, in this case our highly affable bar tender, Crandon. Originally from Boston Crandon moved from California to the Big Island eleven years ago and has not looked back since. We ordered lunch which in my case was a black bean burrito with Haus-made won bok slaw. For beer I opted for the Pau Hana Pale Ale. Pau Hana is a Hawaiian phrase that means “after work”,  a time for relaxing and socializing with friends and family. If I lived in Waimea the Big Island Brewhaus would almost certainly be a regular after-work hangout.

It would have been remiss of me if I had went to Hawaii and not tried the islands’ most famous beer – Primo.  So I did, one evening, when my wife and I went on a whale watching trip. As noted above Primo was one of the earliest beers to be brewed in Hawaii, being introduced by the Honolulu Brewing & Malting Company in 1898. Above, we left the story of Primo in the year 1979 when the then-owner of the brand, Schlitz Brewing Company, closed its Hawaii brewery and shifted production of Primo to Los Angeles. In 1982 Detroit-based Stroh Brewery Company purchased Schlitz and, with it, the Primo brand. In 1997 Stroh discontinued brewing Primo and for ten years Primo was not brewed. Then in 2007, the Pabst Brewing Company, who had acquired the Primo Brand in 1999, made the decision to start brewing it once again – not only that, but to great local fanfare, the brewing of Primo retuned to Hawaii. Pabst partnered with Hawaiian-based craft brewer Keoki Brewing Company of Kauai to brew Primo under license.  Keoki brewed Primo in kegs for draft distribution while the bottled version was brewed at the Miller Brewery in Irwindale, CA. However, In 2009 Keoki Brewing merged with Mehana Brewery in Hilo and the Kauai brewery was closed. The merged entity was named Hawai’i Nui Brewing, although the Mehana brand (and Mehana Brewery name) was maintained. Hawai’i Nui beers are brewed in the same facility as Mehana beers (see above) and were available for sampling when I visited. It is at this point that the Primo trail goes cold. I have googled high and low to figure out what happened to the brewing of Primo after the Keoki Brewery closed. From what I can tell production of Primo was not shifted to the Mehana Brewery in Hilo. I suspect (although if anyone knows for sure tell me) that all Primo production now occurs in the Miller plant in Irwindale, CA. I did not see Primo on draft when I was on the Big Island and the Primo that I consumed was in cans.

We thoroughly enjoyed our trip to Hawaii. It was my fourth visit to the Aloha state and my second visit to the Big Island.  The state is hardly a Mecca for beer lovers – it ranks 37th out of 50 states in terms of the number of craft breweries per capita and 35th in terms of per capita beer consumption. Hawaiians of legal beer drinking age consume only 0.8 gallons of beer per capita per year. But that did not particularly bother me as I sat back, enjoyed a cold beer, and watched a beautiful Hawaiian sunset.

Further Reading
Schmitt, Robert C. 1997. Hawai’i’s Beers and Brewers. The Hawaiian Journal of History, Volume 31, pages 143-150.