This isn’t a new review, but a revisit of the Maui Brewing Coconut Porter I had while in San Diego this year (at Stone Brewing, of all places)—and exploring a bit of Maui’s canned beer offerings as well.

The beer is a “robust porter” brewed with six varieties of malt, and hand-toasted coconut, and is 5.7% alcohol by volume. The coconut character is fairly pronounced, but well-balanced with the dryish, roasty malts of the porter.

I liked it and compared it with my own Coconut Cream Stout, and it would definitely be one I’d like to have available here in Oregon. (Though at the price I found it at in California—$10.99 for a pack of four!—I’d suffer a bit of sticker shock.)

Coconut might well be the most unusual ingredient to appear in a (beer) can yet; it’s certainly a popular choice for Maui Brewing, as their getting high marks on the ratings sites for this beer: an A- on BeerAdvocate, and 96th percentile on RateBeer.

Maui Brewing also cans two other beers: Bikini Blonde and Big Swell IPA, neither of which I saw in California—I think their Coconut Porter is the flagship. But it seems to me if you’re brewing beer in Hawaii, the best way to get it to the mainland is in cans; perhaps they’ll start canning and distributing more of their beers. Hopefully it’ll appear in Oregon soon!