Maui Brewing Co. Waikīkī

Maui Brewing Co. operates its Waikīkī brewpub at 2300 Kalākaua Avenue, on the ground floor of the Outrigger Waikiki Beachcomber Hotel and a few steps from the beach. The room is large — the business describes it as the biggest bar in Waikīkī — and it pours thirty-six taps covering Maui Brewing's year-round range, its limited releases, and guest beers from other independent breweries. It opens daily from 11am to 11pm, with happy hour Monday to Friday from 3.30pm to 4.30pm and a late-night happy hour from 9.30pm to 10.30pm on most nights.

This is a brewpub rather than a zero-proof destination, and the entry sits at a three for that reason. The documented non-alcoholic build is the Orange Crush, made with orange juice, mint, lemon-lime soda and simple syrup — a straightforward, sweet, refreshing drink rather than a technical one, and the sort of thing a bar makes when it wants to offer something better than a can without building a programme. Anyone hoping for the kind of thing Maui Brewing's mainland counterparts increasingly do — brewing a genuine non-alcoholic beer in house, as New Holland does with its Zylch IPA — will not find it here; no such product is published for this location. What the venue does offer is scale and hours. A group of eight where two people are not drinking is a hard booking in Waikīkī, and a room this size with a long trading day, food service throughout and a drink on the list that is not a soft drink from the gun handles that situation better than a smaller, more precious bar would. It is a practical inclusion rather than an aspirational one, and the honest framing is that the beer is the reason the room exists.