Lagunitas Brewing Company’s Hop Stoopid Ale An 8% Imperial IPA boasting 102 IBUs
Lagunitas was founded in 1993 in Lagunitas, California. A year later, they moved to Petaluma, California, where they became one of the fastest growing craft breweries. Today they are the sixth top selling craft brewery in the United States.
They are currently working to increase their capacity to 600,000 barrels, which includes an expansion in Chicago (the Chicago TapRoom is expected to open this November).
Lagunitas says that Hop Stoopid is “guaranteed to blast right through whatever lingers from the night before.” They used as many different hops as they could in this beer along with hop extracts and oils, making it deliberately bitter.
The bottle label includes lyrics from Steely Dan’s “Kid Charlemagne“: “Clean this mess up else we’ll all end up in jail… those test tubes and the scale… just get ’em all outta here…”
The label continues:
He was referring to the complex super-critical-CO2 hop extraction equipment set up on the table in the lab across from the brewhouse. Hop extracts are for the BIG brewers, he thought – suitable only for crummy sub-standard and barely passable industrial lagers, not the subtle and elegant craft beer made here. But wrong he was. The New Brewer does not eschew any possible inputs. In this case the extract will replace the mountains of hop vegetative material in the kettle thus creating cleaner hop flavors and preventing the otherwise spinach-like mess of a kettle full of super-hopped wort from clogging up a pump or worse. The sensuous honey-like amber ooze was administered intravenously to the wort kettle and the sacrament was complete. Another kettle of Hop Stoopid is once again raised up and fermented on high.”
Appearance
Clear, golden, almost orange
Aroma
Very tropical and sweet – mango, pineapple, Grapefruit, apricot, berries; perhaps even bubblegum?
Taste
Tart and fruity at first – mango, pineapple, melon, citrus; then sweetness kicks in as the hop flavor shines; finishes with harsh piney bitterness and lingering sweetness
Mouthfeel
Medium bodied at first, but seemed to get thicker as I drank more; lots of carbonation
Overall
Surprisingly well balanced and satisfying. When I was in San Francisco, some people claimed to enjoy this more than Pliny the Elder. Hard to say, but they are both amazing west coast Imperial IPAs.
Wanna pick this one up? Hop Stoopid is sold in 22 oz. bottles. Click here for a lost of distributors.
Check out… this video from Lagunitas to learn more about Hop Stoopid.
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