Founders – Hoppy Mood

At first I thought, “Not enough hops,” too subtle. But it’s nice that a hop water (or any sparkling water) has the boldness to be light and subtle, breezy and barely there—that’s one of the things I like about this! And then my next taste, and next can, I could taste it more—there’s plenty of hops—and it’s a particularly nice hop flavor balance, too. This is from Founders Brewing, in Grand Rapids, just across the pond from Milwaukee. No wait, the Atlantic Ocean is “the pond”—so what’s Lake Michigan, that emphasizes how relatively small it is, you know, compared to the Pacific? Maybe it’s just Lake Michigan. Of course, if we go forward with the plans to rename it Lake Wisconsin, that might make it hard to obtain this Hoppy Mood, since it’ll all be a warzone, and that’d be too bad, because it’s good. In a pretty, light blue can, and on the other side from the name there’s an odd drawing—it looks like a woman (though, could be a man) with either a hop hat, or else it’s a personified hop cluster, wearing clothes, and dancing, listening to music through earphones and a phone. Oddly, the person doesn’t have hands, but instead paddles—where hands should be. Is that just because hands are hard to draw? Or are future people going to have paddles? No need for fingers, since we have AI, I guess.

No. 130 – 11.12.25