The title sums it all up. You can’t beat a beer festival on the beach in Hawaii. The 2013 Kona Brewers Festival was a fantastic event that featured great breweries and amazing food. If you’ve never made the trip over to Kona to check out this event, mark your calendars for next year and plan to be there.  You won’t regret it.  Here are some of the highlights from our experience.

The Beer – Tons of great breweries were on hand with a variety of interesting beers. Here’s a list of the beers we tried:

• Maui Brewing Company Lemongrass Saison
• Deschutes Armory XPA
• Hawaiian Islands Brewing Company Kona Coffee Stout
• Kauai Island Brewing Company IPA
• Hawaii Nui Southern Cross
• Cascade Brewing Ginger Lime Sour Ale
• Seapine Session IPA
• Kona Brewing Company Lemongrass Blonde
• Eel River Blonde
• Lagunitas A Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’ Ale
• Coronado Orange Wit
• Jolly Pumpkin Maracaibo Especial
• Stone Oaked Arrogant Bastard
• Big Island Brewhaus Golden Sabbath

Our favorite beer of the day was Maui Brewing’s Lemongrass Saison. Saisons are a personal favorite and this 4% abv version with slight hints of spicy lemongrass was the perfect beer for a hot day in the sun. I hope they plan on releasing this beer in cans or on draft.

The Food – There was too much great food to list out. And there was A LOT of food. If you left hungry, you didn’t eat enough.  The great part is that all of it was included in your ticket price, so you could sample everything as many times as you wanted. At many festivals you need to purchase food separately so this was a nice change and it help balance out all of that great beer everyone was drinking.

Water – There were free water refill stations everywhere. A small, but very important thing when you’re in the sun drinking beer for 4 hours.

The Setting – It was a beautiful day in Kona and the festival is literally on the beach. It’s hard to find a better setting to have a beer festival at than on the beach in Hawaii.