The Best Beers at Last Drop Beer Festival: Forbidden Tiki Fest

Last year, we began hearing about a new virtual beer fest outfit in our neck of the woods in Southern California called Last Drop Beer Festival. The selections seemed impressive by local virtual beer fest standards, so we were very excited for our schedule to align with their next fest. Fast forward to April 2021 (last weekend, to be exact), when we finally got to participate in one of their festivals, one with a tropical tiki theme. With the weather turning warm here in LA, we felt their theme would perfectly match the Saturday vibes, and we looked forward to seeing what the best beers at Last Drop Beer Festival: Forbidden Tiki Fest would be.

First off, the box itself was impressive. They had tropical selections from a number of terrific California breweries, including Humble Sea, Bottle Logic, The Bruery’s Offshoot Beer Company, and more. We ordered the VIP package, so we got two glasses for the festival— one was a standard logo glass, the other a really fantastic tiki head glass. This isn’t your usual virtual beer fest that sends you something plastic or a mere taster with your cans— this is glassware worth keeping.

Combine that with the entertaining video led by Ben and KC, a packet of stickers and coasters from the breweries, and a couple of leis to make our hula-ing more festive? You’ve got yourself as entertaining a virtual beer fest as we’ve encountered since the pandemic struck. We’d definitely participate in the coming festivals that Last Drop will host. Hopefully as Last Drop invariably moves into live events, they continue to experiment with these virtual fests, as they’re a convenient way for craft enthusiasts to celebrate love for local beer from the comfort and safety of home.

But now, without further ado… our favorite beers from Forbidden Tiki Fest!

SLO Brew: Tropical POG Cali-Squeeze

One of the first cans we opened was the SLO Brew Tropical POG Cali-Squeeze. We’ve had several beers from SLO Brew in the past, but never any from their Cali-Squeeze line of juiced-up hefeweizens. That said, if the rest are as good as this, we’ll be first in line to buy some in the future, as this passionfruit, orange, and guava beauty was definitely juicy, crushable, and a flawless way to start the virtual beer festivities.

Gunwhale Ales: Hu’iHu’i

We’ve visited Gunwhale Ales a number of times in Costa Mesa. They’ve served us a number of tasty beers covering a wide variety of styles, but I couldn’t recall having ever had a coffee beer from them… so we were very excited to crack open the Hu’iHu’i and have Gunwhale take us to Coffeetown. Sure enough, it delivered— even by our coffee-beer-loving standards, this packed a significant coffee punch, all while maintaining a relative lightness of body.

Offshoot Beer Company: Retreat [this is a hazy double IPA]

Retreat is a beer we’ve had a number of times since it was first introduced, as, here in Los Angeles, there are few hazies you can find in a local store as consistently delicious as the ones Offshoot produces. Still, sometimes you run into some cans that have been kept on shelves for too long by the store owners, so this festival provided a great opportunity for us to once again enjoy Retreat in its freshest canned form. Sure enough, it’s still a winner— it’s got sweet mango, berry, and melon blasts packed into its thick juicy finish. As with all haze, the fresher, the better!

GameCraft Brewing: Doom Juice

The word “tropical” is definitely thrown around a lot when describing hazy IPAs, but make no mistake, GameCraft Brewing’s Doom Juice is *tropical*. This Laguna Hills brewery has provided an imperial IPA that lives up to the Tiki Fest’s name, giving you some of the prerequisite pineapple, orange, and stone fruit juice that helps disguise the booze in so many hazies… but this one also boasts a kick of coconut at the end, making this one silky smooth, creamy, and, yes, as tropical as they come.

Batch Mead: Tempest Session Mead

Despite our site having “beer” in the title, we can never resist shouting out a delicious mead— and Batch Mead in Temecula has provided this fest with a very delicious mead indeed. The Tempest Session Mead is, as you’d imagine from the name, lower ABV than your average mead, but that doesn’t mean they trimmed back on the flavor, as this brought bubbly passionfruit and pomegranate vibes. The phrase that came to mind was “Jolly Rancher champagne”— a heavy compliment from someone who loves Jolly Ranchers as much as we do.

Bottle Logic: Tropical Hideaway

The old adage “save the best for last” doesn’t always apply… but we saved this Bottle Logic smoothie-style sour for last, and oh boy, the adage applies here. They call it a “Dole Whip-inspired tiki berliner,” and they absolutely nailed both the description and the beer. The pineapple flavor is absolutely bonkers (with good reason— they apparently put *over a ton* of pineapple into the brew), and the foam gives you as luxurious a vanilla marshmallow burst as you can imagine floating atop your beer. Smoothie beers aren’t always our scene, but when they work for us, they tend to *really* work… and Bottle Logic delivered to this festival one of the best smoothie sours we’ve ever had, period.

Have you taken part in any virtual beer festivals? If you’ve participated in any Last Drop Beer Festivals, what was the best beer you had? Please let us know in the comments, and take a look at some of our other festival coverage, including this year’s Virtual Extreme Beer Fest! Cheers!