Luau

About The Brew

Say “smoked beer” and most people brace for a mouthful of campfire. That reputation isn’t entirely undeserved — but it’s also not the whole story. Before the invention of indirect kilning in the 18th century, every beer was a smoked beer. Malt was dried over open fires, and whatever wood you had on hand ended up in the glass. What we now think of as a specialty style was, for most of brewing history, just how beer tasted.

The tradition survived in Bamberg, Germany, where brewers still malt their own barley over beechwood fires to produce Rauchbier. Done well, the smoke isn’t a wall — it’s seasoning. It sits underneath a clean, malty lager base and rounds everything out, the same way a little char makes a good steak better.

Luau takes that idea somewhere warmer. Honey and bright pineapple sweetness lead things off, riding on a crisp German-style lager backbone, with the smoke arriving late and low — more slow-roasted pit than smoldering log. It’s the whole kalua pig experience in a pint: sweet, savory, and unmistakably built for whatever’s on the grill.

Aloha.

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