Kona Brewers Festival

Some of you may have noticed I am a bit late on this post. The reason for this was a trip to the Kona Brewer's Festival on the Big Island of Hawaii.

The Chick was actually pleasently surprised by this event. When we bought the tickets the cost of $50 a head seemed a bit steep.

However this cost covered 8 6oz glasses of beer, live entertainment thoughout the event, including hula dancers and as much food as you could eat. Officially the food was supposed to be 'appetizers' but there were sandwichs, salads and seafood and all the food 'vendors' were eager to push samples into the hands of passersby.

Admittedly for those who regularly attend West Coast brewfest the beer offering aren't terribly exciting. The 10 or so Hawaii-based breweried that show up had new and interesting things to offer that aren't often found on the mainland. However, the majority of the mainland breweries who turned up brought parts of their regular line ups rather than things brewed specifically for the event.

More on the Hawaiian breweries that we visited in a day or two

Stouts and Porters

Now, a lot of people notice that there are a great deal of flavor similarities in these two families of beer styles. So much so, in fact, that is often difficult to tell them apart.

The reason for this is that they started out as the SAME beer family. Our beloved Stouts, my dears, are nothing more than strong porters that have branched off and become a beer style of their own.

As to the hows and whys, those are a little muzzier. The most famous of Stouts, Guinness, started life as a porter, the label was changed to Extra Stout in 1840 and a number of people date the style from this point.

Although this really isn't terribly accurate since the wealth of English Porters and 'Stouts' pouring into Ireland is part of what inspired Arthur Guinness to adopt the style in the first place.