Beer in Hawaiʻi — the Lagers and the Craft Brewers

Beer came to Hawaiʻi with the ships and the plantation camps of the nineteenth century, and it was the drink of the labouring households that the sugar and pineapple industries gathered from China, Japan, Okinawa, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Korea and the Philippines. It has no place in the Native Hawaiian table of the canoe plants, whose ceremonial drink was ʻawa, and its standing in the local table is that of the pau hana drink, taken when the work is over. Kysar writes of cold beer beside a relative's poke and hot white rice, and her mother's view that boiled peanuts were made for beer; these are the terms on which beer entered the local kitchen, as the companion of salt, raw fish and rice. The craft brewers of recent decades came later and brewed with island fruit and other local ingredients, but the settled place of beer in Hawaiʻi is as an ordinary, cold, shared drink of the plate lunch and the poke counter.

Beer here means chiefly the pale, light-bodied lagers, served very cold, that suit a hot climate and a salty, soy-seasoned table. Beside them stand the craft brewers' ales and lagers, some made with lilikoʻi (Passiflora edulis), pineapple, kukui-grown or other island ingredients, and some in the pale, clean style of the older lagers. In the kitchen beer is also an ingredient: Kysar simmers heʻe (Octopus cyanea) in beer until very tender, about an hour and a half, before the meat is stripped of its dark skin and cut into pieces for a dish with cooked taro leaves. The drink is poured cold from bottle, can or tap, and its work at the table is to cut salt and fat and to cool the mouth.

Beer is drunk with poke, boiled peanuts, taro and sweet potato chips, pickled mango and the plate lunch, and in the pau hana hour with the mai tai as its rival. The structural reason is the salt and richness of the local table: shoyu, ʻalaea salt, raw fish, rice and macaroni salad are all met by cold carbonation and light bitterness, which cleanse the palate and refresh it for the next mouthful. Light lagers do this without overpowering raw fish, while fruited craft beers sit best beside salty, sour or fried snacks.