Interview: brewmaster Dave Campbell (Aloha Beer Co.)

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Craft Beer Hawaii

Oahu native Dave Campbell was an early adapter to craft beer, creating homebrew from a kit his parents brought back from a British vacation back in 1985. Since then, he’s gained the technical know-how and operated Big Aloha Brewery for years, with the bulk of the beer going to neighbor Sam Choy. He recently added a beer hall, rebranded as Aloha Beer Company and increased production and reach. Campbell’s been making the rounds to promote his eight different beers, including a pairing dinner with Honolulu’s Miso & Ale pop-up.

At what point did you know you’d work with beer for a living?

I, like a lot of American brewers, started as a homebrewer. For me, that was 1985. Here in Hawaii the drinking age was 18 and I was a senior in high school, playing around with making beer. The results were not great, but I went away to college in Oregon, and Oregon is arguably where the whole brewing renaissance began. I came home from Oregon knowing I wanted to do brewing for my profession. I later went to technical school.

How did Aloha Beer come about?

It was a long road. We opened another brewery in the building next door called Big Aloha Brewery. We were brewing beer for Sam Choy, Hawaii’s sort of favorite chef. We did that for 15 years and we were definitely in the shadow of Sam. People were going to his restaurant for food, and the beer, while we were moving a lot, we knew we could do so much more if beer were the focus, so we took the space next door and it was the same brewery, but we revamped it, added a beer hall and renamed it Aloha Beer Company.

Are you still brewing for him too?

We now sell beer to Sam Choy, so he’s one of our customers.

What’s does a beer have to be for you to brew it at Aloha?

I’m brewing for Hawaii, and what might fly in the Pacific Northwest or down in San Diego isn’t necessarily [the same]. Our beers have got to be balanced. We drink a lot of beer here in Hawaii. The big gnarly styles, people are still a little shy with those. Most of the beers I have are in the session range, meaning 4.6 to 5.0 alcohol by volume. We’ve got great weather year round, so the beer does as much to sate thirst as it does to present full flavor.

Have you had anybody who’s been a mentor along the way?

Early on, when I went to brew school, there was a guy who came up British, through the Burton upon Trent area. His name was Paul Farnsworth, and I really learned a lot from him about the British way of doing it. They make some wonderful beer, and they really stress simplicity. The German tradition stresses, “How hard can we make this? That’s what we’re going to do.” So really what I got from him really helped shape how I brew, our approach.

What was the first beer you ever remember drinking?

It would have been one of my dad’s beers. It would have been Prima, which was the original beer of Hawaii.

What was the first beer that you ever brewed, and how did that turn out?

The first beer I ever brewed would have been one of my early homebrew batches. My folks went on a trip to England and came back with a homebrew kit, so I read the label and it said, “Add contents to two kilos of sugar,” which we did, and grabbed the yeast and fermented in an open tub with linen stretched over the top. That’s exactly what we did, and it was bad, but I was a senior in high school, being of that age, we drank it.

You and your friends?

Yeah. Me and my buddies. At that time in Hawaii the drinking age was 18, a lot of seniors in high school are 18, so you play drinking games. At that age, it’s a joke what you’re drinking anyway. I’ll tell you, when the quarter landed in the cup of my beer, those early batches, there was a lot at stake. You did not want to have to drink it. Fortunately, I learned a few more things about the craft.

Where do like to drink beer in Honolulu when you’re not working?

No commercial place. I like to drink beer on my deck with friends. I’ve got a small farm on the windward side, and I’ve got a huge deck that overlooks it. For me, sitting on the deck with friends, barbecuing and cooking, it doesn’t get better than that.

If you could only drink one more beer and you couldn’t brew it, what would it be?

Only one more? I’d probably go big, and I’d probably go for Delirium Tremens, something big that I’d remember.

Address: 580 North Nimitz Highway, Honolulu, HI 96817
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Joshua Lurie

Joshua Lurie founded FoodGPS in 2005. Read about him here.

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remember this?
BOB DYLAN LYRICS
“Gates Of Eden”

Of war and peace the truth just twists
Its curfew gull it glides
Upon four-legged forest clouds
The cowboy angel rides
With his candle lit into the sun
Though its glow is waxed in black
All except when ‘neath the trees of Eden.

The lamppost stands with folded arms
Its iron claws attached
To curbs ‘neath holes where babies wail
Though it shadows metal badge
All and all can only fall
With a crashing but meaningless blow
No sound ever comes from the Gates of Eden.

The savage soldiers sticks his head in sand
And then complains
Unto the shoeless hunter who’s gone deaf
But still remains
Upon the beach where hound dogs bay
At ships with tattooed sails
Heading for the Gates of Eden.

With a time-rusted compass blade
Aladdin and his lamp
Sits with Utopian hermit monks
Side saddle on the Golden Calf
And on their promises of paradise
You will not hear a laugh
All except inside the Gates of Eden.

Relationships of ownership
They whisper in the wings
To those condemned to act accordingly
And wait for succeeding kings
And I will try to harmonize with songs
The lonesome sparrow sings
There are no kings inside the Gates of Eden.

The motorcycle black Madonna
Two-wheeled gypsy queen
And her silver-studded phantom cause
The gray flannel dwarf to scream
As he weeps to wicked birds of prey
Who pick up on his bread crumb sins
And there are no sins inside the Gates of Eden.

The kingdoms of Experience
In the precious winds they rot
While paupers change possessions
Each one wishing for what the other has got
And the princess and the prince
Discuss what’s real and what is not
It doesn’t matter inside the Gates of Eden.

The foreign sun, it squints upon
A bed that is never mine
As friends and other strangers
From their fates try to resign
Leaving men wholly totally free
To do anything they wish to do but die
And there are no trials inside the Gates of Eden.

At dawn my lover comes to me
And tells me of her dreams
With no attempts to shovel the glimpse
Into the ditch of what each one means
At times I think there are no words
But these to tell what’s true
And there are no truths outside the Gates of Eden.

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