It's the Hops, Stoopid
Written: Jun 21 '08 (Updated Jun 21 '08)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Amazingly bitter, intense hoppy ale.
Cons: Hard to find.
The Bottom Line: Vote hops in 2008.
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| Bruguru's Full Review: Lagunitas Hop Stoopid |
Here’s what I want you to do. Take a ride to the homebrew shop and buy yourself, oh, I don’t know, about ten pounds of hops. Pick up some Cascades, Willamettes, and whatever else you happen to find available. Now, bring them home and head for the kitchen. Break out that juicer you never use (the one you bought from Ron Popeil) that’s sitting next to the pasta maker in the cabinet under the sink.
Now, jam those hops into the juicer, add a little water, and let that sucker rip. When it’s done, you should get a green sticky mess that’s gonna be pretty hard to drink, but should be a hit when your hop head buddies swing by.
OK, maybe all that wasn’t such a great idea. But that’s OK, because we have a plan B: just pick up a few bombers of Lagunitas Hop Stoopid instead. You’ll get all of that wonderful hop intensity, without all the mess and bother. Better still, you’ll get it for a measly four bucks per 22-ounce bottle. And that’s truly a steal in these days of ever-increasing prices on just about everything.
To make Hop Stoopid, Lagunitas uses an amazing 5 pounds of hops per barrel. And they deliberately avoid whole flower hops, using hop extract and hop oil instead to impart a more intense hop experience. The results speak for themselves, as you’ll see for yourself when you try it. One caveat: this beer is probably too over the top for the casual beer drinker, and is really intended for the serious hop aficionado.
Lagunitas Hop Stoopid pours to a beautiful shiny copper color with a light creamy head formation and an intensely resiny hop nose. I mean really intense, folks, even for this hophead. Sniffing the stuff can cause your nose to pucker up like a blowfish sucking a lemon.
But if you think the nose on this one is intense, just wait until you take a sip. The malt supplies body and a bit of caramel at first but not much else, because the hops almost immediately overwhelm your senses, attacking from multiple directions with an intensely herbal, aromatic flavor of resiny pine and citric orange and grapefruit.
In the finish, Hop Stoopid becomes amazingly bitter, so much so that you don’t really notice the alcohol. That said, Hop Stoopid is a big beer at 8.2% by volume, even if really we’re drinking this one for the hops.
Not for the timid. And while the motto of the upcoming 2008 election may boil down to the slogan“It’s the economy, stupid” just as it was in 1992, for beer geeks everywhere it’s still the hops, stoopid.
Also from Lagunitas:
Undercover Shutdown Ale
Kill Ugly Radio Ale
Freak Out Ale
Lagunitas IPA
Dogtown Pale Ale
Maximus IPA
Censored Copper Ale
Cappuccino Stout
Brown Shugga
Imperial Red Ale
Imperial Stout
Lucky 13 Ale
Recommended:
Yes
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