You don’t have to toss a bucket of sand onto our floor, unfold a beach chair, slather your face with SPF 50, erect a striped umbrella, or even think about flip flops in order to bring the beach to Peaks and Pints. Enter tropical craft beer. Brewers have created beers that taste like a Hawaiian vacation. Many of the recently released hops have flavors and aromas ripped from a fruit bowl, including Citra (papaya, mango), El Dorado (watermelon, pears), Galaxy (peach, melons), Hull Melon (honeydew), Mosaic (berries), Sterling (sweet grass) and Sorachi Ace (lemons). Dial up a recipe with these hops, used later in the brewing to emphasize flavor and aroma, not bitterness, and you can create a juicy beer that’ll rival a Mai Tai for all your tropical-drinking pleasure. Peaks and Pints heads to the beach today with Craft Beer Crosscut 9.25.17: A Flight of Beach.
Green Flash Passion Fruit Kicker
5.5% ABV, 5 IBU
Despite being well known throughout the world for making great hoppy beers, the Lupulin-obsessed brewers at Green Flash feel the need to keep pushing the envelope rather than resting on their green, leafy laurels. Enter Passion Fruit Kicker, an India pale ale brewed with wheat malt, 2-row malted barley and dry-hopped with experimental hop cultivars so even the brewers aren’t sure how it’ll turn out. And here’s the kicker: the beer is aged in oak barrels and has tart, tangy passion fruit added to the mix for an escapism IPA unlike any other.
Avery Liliko’i Kepolo
5.4% ABV, 10 IBU
The Liliko’i Kepolo (hard to say, easy to drink) from Avery Brewing is an unexpected delight! We don’t typically expect witbiers to be this interesting, original or surprisingly tart. It looks like your average Wit, with minimal, fine white foam over a hazy straw body, but lean in for a whiff and up wafts strong passion fruit, a little citrus and banana, coriander, and some creamy wheat malts. To taste, there’s an underlying spice throughout, but it starts off with a tart, citrusy bite, possibly due to the Bravo and Sterling hops. The passionfruit is evident, though not as heavy as on the nose, and the fuzzy mouthfeel reminds us of biting into a peach. The Liliko’i is a delicious, fun, and unique diversion from a autumn Monday.
O-Town Tropical Cream
5% ABV, 24 IBU
The American cream ale style emerged prior to Prohibition as brewers looked for a beer to compete with the emerging popularity of American light lager. Cream ale is light and easy drinking. It’s often overlooked among craft beer enthusiasts because it comes off as a little too “big brewery,” with its clean, non-offensive personality, which some mistake as bland … unless it receives the O-Town Brewing treatment. O-Town’s Tropical Cream is just that, with coconut, key lime and mango plus a smooth mouthfeel and finish.
Breakside Beachcomber
9.2% ABV, 25 IBU
Portland’s Breakside Brewery has tiki on the brain. Its strong golden ale Beachcomber with fresh ginger and Belgian yeast strains ages 11 months in Caribbean rum barrels, developing rich notes of coconut, molasses and burnt sugar. Breakside thought the flavors pointed so clearly toward tiki cocktails that the brewers decided to make a cocktail beer out of it, aging the beer on vanilla bean, toasted almond and a bit of lime zest. Mahalo!
Maui Brewing Coconut Hiwa Porter
6% ABV, 30 IBU
Brewed with hand-toasted coconut and six varieties of malted barley, Maui Brewing‘s Coconut Hiwa Porter is a very dark, almost impenetrable, black coffee color. The aroma recalls baked coconut macaroons or, on the other end of the spectrum, coconut suntan lotion. The coconut flavor is present, but not overwhelming in the mouth, along with other roasted earthy lactose flavors.
