BOTW–Hop Stoo… Errr.. Henge!

Hop Stoopid Label

At Beverages and More the other day, I noticed a new beer from Lagunitas Brewing Co. Hop Stoopid is a great name and it had a nice label, with the patented Lagunitas eccentric writeup.

Hop Stoopid in Glass

Not only that, it poured a beautiful orange into the glass.

Hop Stoopid Bubbles

And I got this picture, which is even cooler, of the constellations of bubbles on top of the surface of the beer.

Sadly, neither Mrs. Flannestad nor I really enjoyed the beer.  It is very, very hoppy.  According to the bottle, it has an IBU of 102.  Also, according to the bottle, with this beer Lagunitas experimented with created a “hop extract” to flavor the beer, instead of using whole hop flowers.

I don’t know if this is where the problem starts or what.  But for both Mrs. Flannestad and I the resulting beer is unpleasantly vegetal.  Mrs. Flannestad compared it to Moylan’s Hopsickle, the beer both of us had previously found hoppy to the point of unpleasantness.  In terms of raw hoppiness, I get her point, but the hop flavor profile of the two beers are very different.  With Moylan’s being ridiculously hoppy in a sort of normal extreme beer kind of way and Hop Stoopid tasting kind of cabbagey and straw-like in it’s hop character.

duartessign-1

Fortunately, a trip down the coast for lunch (and pie!) resulted in a favorable coincidence.  Duarte’s Tavern is something of a classic California landmark.  Operating since 1894, Duarte’s is  justifiably famous for their pie, artichoke soup, and seafood.  It’s somewhere we like to go, from time to time, when we need to get out of the city and recharge.

The coincidence was that another beer I’d recently purchased on a hoppy beer buying spree, Deschutes‘ Hop Henge, was on tap when we stopped there Saturday.

hophenge-1

Even with the vestiges of some sort of cold or flu-like virus running through my body, I could appreciate the well balanced extreme hoppiness of Hop Henge.  I know I’ve banged on about Deschutes before, and how much I enjoy their beers, but this is one very well balanced beer.  Not quite sure it is quite up there in the stratosphere with Russian Rivers’ Pliny the Elder or Younger, but it is a very nice extremely hoppy beer.  And, yay!  I still have a 22oz bomber of it at home to enjoy at my leisure!

One thought on “BOTW–Hop Stoo… Errr.. Henge!

  1. I loved the Hop Stupid for those very same reasons. I do think of these beers as the silly end of a fad-ish flavor experiment w/r/t beers. I feel a bit sheepish in admitting my love for the ‘XTREME’-ness of the overy-hopped products, but ya like what ya like, eh?
    A strange aside – Heather hates bittering hops and avoides high IPUs, yet she liked (her sip) of the Hop Stupid. Perhaps she’s developing a taste for it.

    I had the Bridgeport Hop Czar last night and I enjoyed it. I wasn’t really drinking for review, so I don’t have notes but it did go well with our Ham and Golden Potato Casserole.

Comments are closed.