If Can, Can

With a host of national awards and a name everybody’s getting to know, this local brewpub has plenty to cheer about.

 

Sara Smith

 

Photography by Jason Moore

“I’ll take a Blonde.”

“Think I’ll go with a Big Swell, thanks.”

(No beach-bum gibberish here—we’re talking important stuff: lagers and IPAs. When one dines with a beer maker, one drinks beer.)

I glance at my lunch partner. He’s calculating something. In a flash I’m receiving a chronicle of my beer’s life. It’s a short story: brewed, canned, delivered . . . I just cracked a brewski that’s a whoppin’ three-days old.

“Fresh. That’s the power behind a truly local product,” he says, eyes twinkling with the excitement of a proud parent.

Meet Garrett Marrero, the man behind Maui Brewing Co. and my new favorite person on the whole island. (Okay, that may be the beer talking.) There’s a woman behind Maui Brewing Co., too, Garrett’s wife, Melanie. Not long ago, Garrett, a former investment consultant, and Melanie, a former financial analyst, decided to tap into a new adventure. They left California and their corporate personas, bought a little-known West Side brewpub in 2005, and cooked up a business plan that read something like this: Have fun; brew kick-ass local craft beer; have fun; leave as small an environmental footprint as possible; have fun—and take the dog to the beach every day at sunset.