Maui Brewery - Coconut Porter

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Tasting Notes - Maui Brewery Coconut Porter

In a previous blog, I wrote about my first experience of Maui's Big Swell IPA. I thought it was a really nice beer and I also rather liked the novelty of drinking a quality beverage from a can. 


Next up for the beer monkey taste treatment is another one of Maui's fine beers, their Coconut Porter.


As you can see from the picture, the can is a very fetching piece of alluring beer branding with the Porter splashing uncontrollably out of the coconut husk container. It's a very tempting image and one that made me want to plunge right in like a base jumper off a Hawaiian sea cliff.

taking the plunge like a Hawaiian base jumper

So how was it?


On first pour, I was a little bit perturbed as it came out looking like a can of coke - thin in body but dark in colour with a hissing, fizzing effervescent tan head that disappeared as quickly as it had materialised, leaving a dull, flat looking brew.  There was not a shred of evidence of the existence of a head, no lacing, no tracing, nothing. This, I thought, didn't look promising.


My fears, however, were put at rest when I inhaled the aroma. It had a very nice tickle of roast coffee and chocolate but it was mainly the aromatic earthy, grassy notes that were to the fore.


It tasted of mild milk chocolate - almost milk stoutish - with a delicate faint splash of coconut and, once again, coffee. It's dry and smooth with some slight carbonation and syrupy sweetness. I'm not sure if adjuncts were used in the making of this beer but the sweetness certainly tasted like it. I was expecting the coconut porter to be cloying and quite chewy in the aftertaste but I was pleasantly surprised by it's clean, faintly bitter finish.


Overall, it was a tasty beer and one that I had looked forward to trying. It was nice enough but not something that I would actively seek out again and hunt down in the future. The same, however, can't be said of the Maui Big Swell IPA. That was a cracking brew and if it crosses my path again, I'm getting my wallet out.




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