How Maui Brewing + Alaska Airlines Soared to New Heights

Where does Hawaii get fresh hops for the first time ever? From the Pacific Northwest. How do they get here? Alaska Airlines has stepped in to help.

If you’re unfamiliar with hops, they are flowers from the Humulus lupulus plant. And if you love beer, you know that it’s used as a flavoring and stability agent in making it. Hops can add flavor ranging from citric to bitter to zesty. Hops play an essential role in balancing the sweetness of the malt.

Our climate in Hawaii is more tropical than this temperate plant prefers, but the main limiting factor is the length of our summer days. Even if grown in one of our cooler micro-climates, the plants will grow but not flower, as this flowering is triggered by the long days of summer, which only occur at higher latitudes. Supplementary lighting could be used to extend the perceived day length and trigger flowering artificially, and the feasibility of this approach is currently being studied. In the meantime, Hawaii breweries are dependent on shipments of mainland hops and, until now, have been limited to using dried hops.

Maui Brewing, in the past, has helped smaller companies bring hops to Hawaii. There’s been a long history of local breweries ordering pallets of ingredients together, so there is enough to go around. The shipping costs to do this are enormous, and a 2019 study from Hawaiian Craft Brewers found that the state’s 18 total breweries pay 50% more to create a beer than their colleagues do on the mainland.

This year, as we approach Oktoberfest with festivities all over the islands starting this weekend, Alaska Airlines has partnered with Maui Brewing Company to deliver fresh hops to the island.

Alaska said of this fun promotion, “This is a potential game-changer for the craft beer industry. This puts a Northwest agricultural product in places that don’t normally get it. With the size and scope we have in Seattle, we are really positioned to own this.”

This is the first time that Alaska has gotten into the brewing business, to our knowledge. But they’ve been doing similar shipping of fresh Alaska salmon for decades. That experience made getting into commercial-scale hops shipping feasible for the first time.

From Yakima WA to Maui Brewing Company.

Yakima Chief Hops worked on timing to perfect the harvest of hops at Loftus Ranches, one of Yakima’s longest-running family-owned hop farms. The hops were loaded into refrigerated trucks and driven to Alaska Airlines’ Seattle location, timed perfectly for departure to Maui. This is all done within 24 hours of harvesting.

Brewing on arrival.

On Maui, brewers were ready to “add the fresh hops to the “boil” – the first stage in beer – as soon as they arrived.” That is according to Alaska Airlines. Maui Brewing’s Kim Brisson-Lutz said, “When we added the fresh hops, it smelled amazing! Making beer is a culinary art, and we’re all about making these ingredients really shine.”

Fast-Growing Maui Brewing’s Cargo Fresh Hop IPA

The beer made with their Yakima forced fresh hops is appropriately called Cargo Fresh Hop IPA. You’ll find it as soon as it’s ready at their location on Maui and elsewhere. To date, they’ve received 833 pounds of hops via Alaska flights. That’s enough to make about 140 kegs of the IPA.

Maui Brewing CO. recently purchased Modern Times Beer of San Diego. The company founders were once named the SBA National Small Business Persons Of The Year. They have two taprooms; one on Maui and two in Honolulu. They also brew in Colorado and are among the 50th largest craft breweries in the US.