The worst beer in the non-contiguous United States

Wailua - Kona Brewing Co.

I bought a six pack of Wailua while down the Jersey shore on vacation this summer.  According to the label, it’s brewed in Hawaii  with passion fruit.  It sounded like the perfect beach beer.  I had one that night and it was so poor that I poured it out and put the rest of the six in my beer closet when I got home.  I broke it out tonight in order to relive just how bad it is.  I am really just trying to get a little “hair of the dog” in order to suppress a hangover from a good Thursday night in Hoboken.  That review will be forth coming.  I wasn't about to waste a good beer tonight. I figured a really awful beer will teach me a lesson.

A closer inspection of the label shows an expiration date of April 21, 2011.  That means when I first drank it in August it was already past its due date.  That’s what I get for trying to drink a beer from the South Pacific. I open it and pour it into an iced mug hoping the temperature might ease the pain.  It smells like something gone bad; like a Mexican dinner, maybe a burrito, that has been sitting out in the sun all day.  It pours like a lager with a white foamy head.  It’s very clear for a wheat ale.  The taste assaults my tongue from all sides.  There is a hint of fruit – but again more fruit gone bad.  I’m getting no discernible buzz from this beer and I’m wondering if they put alcohol in their beers in Hawaii.  I was hoping that as I drank it the taste might improve.  No such luck. It is bad throughout. 

I have had some really bad tasting beers over my beer drinking life, but this Wailua is one whale of a bad beer.  Maybe it is the lack of freshness that comes the transportation time;  though German beers have to travel a long way to make it to the States and they are some of the best I've tried.   Maybe it tastes just as bad on the black sand beaches of Maui, but people are just too awestruck at the beauty of Hawaii to notice.  Either way, I finish the whole thing in order to teach myself two lessons: 

1. don’t drink too much on a week night and

2. don’t drink anything else from Hawaii other than a Mai Tai. 

Is there a real awful beer that I'm missing? Have you tried something worse?  Let me know so I have a fall back next time I'm in the mood for a real shitty beer.