The end of last week I received a package promoting Kona Brewing, for their seasonal Pipeline Porter. In it were two bottles of the beer and a package of Kona coffee. (Picture below, of course.) The connection being, that Pipeline Porter is "brewed with freshly roasted 100% Kona coffee grown at Cornwell Estate Plantation, just a few miles from the Kona brewery on Hawaii’s Big Island."

The coffee was very good; I haven’t tried the beer yet.

Incidentally, the bottled Kona beers we get here in the mainland aren’t actually brewed in Hawaii—they’re produced in Portland. Here’s the official word:

All of the mainland Kona beer comes from the mainland where it is brewed under the supervision of the Kona Brewmaster in Portland. This done for environmental reasons and the desire to deliver fresh beer to consumers. However, the Kona coffee used in the Pipeline Porter is shipped over from Cornwell Estates. The brewery in Kona produces the draught beer for the islands, but the bottles found in Hawaii come from Portland as they don’t have a bottling facility on the islands.

As much as I’d love to taste beer brewed in Hawaii, this makes sense. (I’ll just have to visit Hawaii in person sometime.)

Here’s that photo, too: