The beers of Wakiki: Kona Brewing Lemongrass Luau

My apologies for not posting in some time, I have had work related concerns. But thanks to these work related concerns I'm in Waikiki, Honolulu, Hawaii. I'm currently staying at the Royal Hawaiian hotel, the fourth hotel built in the area (1927) with a long history of hosting military, which explains the substantial discount we are staying here for. In fact, during WW2 it was completely closed to the public and hosted US military guests exclusively, and during the Vietnam war it hosted the Armed Forces Network program "Concert by the Sea". They renovated the place back in 2008 to modernize it's amenities and do some extensive maintenance. Fortunately they were not overzealous in their modernizations so it is still a gigantic, pink stucco, Spanish/Moorish styled, H building designed to catch trade winds and let them pass through its large windows and open common areas and swirl around it's high ceilings (a Godsend in the days before air conditioning).

Tonight's beer is Lemongrass Luau by Kona brewing, out of Kailua-Kona Hawaii. The brewpub was started in 1995 by a father and son team with a focus on the Hawaiian market. The business grew over time with a few flagship beers such as their Longboard Island Lager and their Firerock Pail Ale, and they are now selling in the continental US. The Lemongrass Luau we will be reviewing is a blonde ale with added lemongrass and ginger from their Aloha series. It has embossed on it's bottle in cursive "Liquid Aloha" along with the Hawaiian island chain. Also on the bottle is a classic hula girl scene complete with tiki torches and sunset and the breweries gecko label. It is 5% alcohol by volume and in a 12 oz bottle. Fortunately this is a classy hotel, no no plastic cup this time, on to the brew.

It has a slight sort of sweet and sour nose from the bottle, this continues in the glass. It is certainly a golden color, extremely clear, no head to speak of. If you just showed me the poured glass and asked me what the liquid inside was, I would not instinctively say beer. But aesthetics are secondary to taste, and on inital sip the taste is sweet. Not a barley sweet though, I can only imagine this is from the lemongrass. Other than that it is a light hay like barley taste and a little bit of ginger. It has a light body, creamy mouthfeel, low acidity. Not allot of life within the glass, there's a little bit, it's not flat, but this is on that definitely expires before too long.

Listening to Nikki Lane, she's a county music singer/guitarist/songwriter from Greenville, South Carolina. She Performs out of Nashville, Tennessee now and plays outlaw and Americana styles. That being said, her music tends to have a real late 1970's through early 1990's feel, which would make her also neotraditionalist country. It's not that there is anything particularly special about her music, it's just really refreshing to hear generally good country that you can put on in the background and just leave playing. Just the beat of pop country in the background has started to put me in a bad mood. I went ahead and got two of her albums on vinyl.

Final thoughts. It's a serviceable beer, made for sitting on the beach and having a few, nothing special. I have some Anchor steam beers in the fridge I think I'll get into.