Hop Caen (Heard It Through The Hop Bine) — March 2018
Hop Caen
Heard It Through The Hop Bine
For our 30th anniversary issue, we have given old Hop the column off to celebrate. Below are some of his “witticisms” from past issues. We hope he remembers to come back for the next issue…
Hoppy Birthday to Facebook! That now-indispensable social networking service was launched on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg and his college roommates at Harvard to keep tabs on each other. It now helps billions of people to keep tabs around the globe. For beer lovers, it is nothing short of a miracle in helping us justify our alcohol to our alcoholism… burp…
Photo Finnish Department: The Finnish have a word, kalsarikännit, which means getting drunk alone at home in your underwear. I know Finland has a lot of long, cold, lonely nights, but… Alvarado Street Brewery & Grill has a great name for its coffee-infused stout. Be sure to ask for The Best Part of Waking Up, a nitro milk stout. I’m thinking not your grandma’s Folgers in your cup…
If yoga isn’t embarrassing enough for you, try introducing goats into the festivities. Lainey Morse had the brilliant idea of combining goats with yoga. Yep, curious, friendly goats wandering around while you are stretching and assuming unnatural positions and sticking your stretch pants–covered derriere toward the heavens. Well, what could be even better than goat yoga? You guessed it: Goat Yoga Beer! Practitioners of goat yoga now have their own beer — Goat Yoga IPA. The beer is made by a collaboration between Yachats Brewing and Claim 52 Brewing on the Oregon coast. The beer is a Brett IPA (a little goaty?) and is now available in the tiny coastal village of Yachats (pronounced “yeah-hots”), as well as in Portland and Eugene…
Working for Tips Dept.: When a mohel (pronounced “mo-el” or “moi-hel”) walks into the room with his sacred ritual instruments steeped in Jewish significance and honed with years of handiwork, the adults (and one particular eight-day-old male child) could generally use a beer… or several. A new beer from the always fastidiously appropriate Shmaltz Brewing in Clifton Park, N.Y., captures 4,000 years of Jewish tradition carried down from Abraham to Jon Stewart and offers up the perfect bubbly balm to soothe the bubbes and other bystanders and sanctify such a precious moment. If you’re destined for a session with a circumcision, a Circum Session Ale might be perfect for you. Oy…
Send Lawyers, Guns and Money. The Shit Has Hit the Fan: The former CEO of Anheuser-Busch, August Adolphus Busch IV, was arrested recently after he awkwardly landed his helicopter in an Illinois business park (not an airport) and returned appearing too intoxicated to take off, according to published reports. Police said officers identified the pilot as the heir to the Busch fortune. Police administered a standardized field sobriety test. Busch appeared unable to keep a single train of thought, and his mumbling speech appeared slurred, but he blew a .000 on a Breathalyzer test. His wife told officers Busch has anxiety issues and is off his medication because of recent fertility treatments. Officers also believed Busch may have been under the influence of a controlled substance, according to court records. The 53-year-old then told officers that he had a concealed carry license and had a Rohrbaugh R9 9mm gun in the front pocket of his pants, adding that the weapon was “hot.” Busch then removed the gun from his pocket. A further search of the helicopter turned up several loaded weapons, including a loaded Ruger LCR 22 LR revolver, and several bottles of prescription drugs. Police gave Busch more sobriety tests, said he was unable to focus, and placed him under arrest. Busch is the former head of Anheuser-Busch, and he ran the brewing giant from 2006 until it was bought out two years later, after stating that the sale would occur “over my dead body.” He seems to be working on that…
“Would you like for me to hold your beer?” offered a witness. “No, I got this,” said the true, honest-to-goodness Florida Man atop a camo-print ATV at the bottom of a swimming pool. He didn’t put down the beer to drive his four-wheeler through the house and drive it into the backyard pool. However, doing backwards wheelies in the pool is a pretty good reason to set the beer down. He needs both hands for that. He did more stunts on his Can-Am while he was waiting for Hurricane Irma to show up. Anderson Cooper, you missed this, buddy. Your kind of story…
Any day now, the White House will get a case of beer — free of charge, we might add — from the Scotland-based, punk-inspired brewery BrewDog. On the outside, the beer will seem appropriately branded for the current administration: a slogan derived from “Make America Great Again,” with Donald Trump fighting a polar bear with a machine gun. But really, it’s a huge “up yours” to the White House, courtesy of BrewDog, according to Esquire magazine, which doesn’t take lightly Trump backing out of the Paris climate accord or denying climate change. “Make Earth Great Again” is BrewDog’s new protest beer. It is not subtle. The beer is fermented at the highest temperature of any beer style. Its water is sourced from the Arctic ice caps (responsibly, we’d hope). It is made using Arctic cloudberries, which are doing about as well as the ice caps. The beer will be dispensed at BrewDog’s bars — in the U.K. and outside Columbus, Ohio — through a symbolic, life-size polar bear’s mouth. Proceeds from “Make Earth Great Again” will go to 10:10, a U.K. charity combating climate change at a local level…