Drink ALL the coconut beers

A few days ago, a big motivating factor in getting through the week was stopping at Half Acre and picking up some of their Hot Tropic.  Purely by coincidence, my eyes fell upon a Kona Beer display at the grocer's over the weekend, leading to a purchase of their Big Wave golden ale and Koko Brown with toasted coconut.  Talk about similar beers worlds apart.

First, the tropic.  Not terrible, even if going to Half Acre is increasingly becoming an exercise in patience.  At the end of a long day and commute, if I walk into your store I don't have any objectives other than purchasing beer and leaving, which is impossible in their tasting room.  My favorite part of the experience was the look another customer gave me when the guy at the taps served someone else who came in after both of us.  What can you do?

Tropic was an IPA with toasted coconut, but for all the talk of tons of coconut all it really did was take the edge off some of the hops.  The wife doesn't drink IPA's, but this one was mellow enough for her to try at least.  I love a hoppy IPA, but I want to be able to taste whatever else might be in there, and there wasn't any coconut to be found.  I didn't regret picking it up, and drinking from a half-growler always makes me feel like I'm in a science lab, but HT was ultimately disappointing.

Kona's Koko Brown was the complete opposite.  A brown ale would be pretty far down on my list of options for beers I'd usually drink, but the coconut in this one takes several swings at your taste buds.  There's an initial burst when you first take it in, then a secondary swell that surges back as you swallow.  It actually made me stop and say "whoa," which made the wife laugh.  And even though that kept up through the entire beer, it never got to the point of overpowering the rest of the beer.  A great balance between the sweet and the brown ale.  Can't wait to have the rest of it.

I can't say no to finding new beers to try from a brewer I like, so the Golden Ale came home too.  That one's not terrible either, just not as interesting as the brown.  It's fruity as hell, with a hops backbone that keeps it light.  They were both a fun discovery on a random grocery trip, one of those things that I'll probably spend the rest of the summer looking to replicate.

Current beer-scale: 7.1