Name: Kona Brewing Co Longboard Island Lager

Style: Lager

Country: U.S.A.

ABV: 4.6%

Beer description: Kona Brewing Company is one of Hawaii’s larger breweries. They’re located on the big island and it appears that their beer is pretty easy to get throughout Hawaii and in many states in the United States. They appear to have a pretty good variety of beer styles ranging from lagers all the way up to darker beers like a porter.

The Longboard Island Lager in on the more yellow side of light straw; it’s a standard American lager colour with little difference to mass market beer. This beer is designed to be a standard lager, so there’s no problem with it being a standard colour.

The smell of this beer is straight and crisp with lemon and straw and a refreshing cold snap as it moves through your nose. There’s an unexpected bitterness and spice in the aroma that stings and opens the nostrils a bit, it’s refreshing and a bit different to see in a lager. However, it is a lager so it’s not big on aroma.

Upon smelling this beer, the drinker gets the sense that this is an easy drinking lager that would be suitable to drink out of the bottle. That is to say, if there is ever a time to drink a beer out of the bottle (which is never), you could probably pull it off with this beer.

Through the taste, the crispness continues along with the straw and lemon, while a little bit of general citrus surfaces as well. The biggest surprise comes as the beer finishes with a creamy vanilla flavour. This is surprising but it works. While the creaminess takes away from the the crispness, it’s an interesting change up that really adds to the beer.

Kona’s Longboard Lager is a pretty good beer, but it feels a bit like a mass produced American lager with more care put into it. They haven’t tried anything different here. It seems like the beer is designed for tourists in Hawaii used to macrobrewed beers on the mainland who want to try something different because they’re on vacation. This is apparent on island as it appears fairly common on tap.

All that being said, it’s certainly refreshing and great for sitting by the ocean while watching surfers do their thing.

Check out general summary of Hawaiian beers.

Check out other lager reviews.

Go to reviews of Kona Brewing Co beers.