Today we rented a Jeep and headed to the southern most US point, Ka Lae. This is where the trade winds meet the island chain of Hawaii and the wind blows at 20-30mph ALL the time! On the way back we stopped in Kailua-Kona and the brewery was closed for Kona Brewing Company to have the floors refinished, which is like the only day of the year they are closed, but we still managed a tour with Randy. It's a nice setup with 10K gallons ALL kegged and distributed for HI only. They tried bottling there and couldn't keep up with demand, so the bottling line was abandoned for a brewing alliance with Red Hook and Widmeir Brothers. 210K gallons of beer were bottled last year and distributed to the west coast and HI. However, since they only brew <15K barrels a year ON SITE they are considered a micro. They have nice in-line setup that seems pretty manpower efficient. Cold storage for the islands seems small compared to overall consumption but demand is there by far. Some barrels were purchased for limited stuff and of course the next day they were releasing 08' barleywine, lillikoi wheat (label name has been abandoned due to inability to ask for when drunk), and another beer that lapses me but Merry and I did have a full taster, they even had place mats that kind of guided Randy along the taster. The water travels 30mi from mountain top to tap through black lava rock to give it the true Hawaiian feel; however, the brewmaster has to fly to the mainland to tender up chemical levels of NaPo4 to yield the true bottled feel? Needless to say a great beer but no real competition.
