What's the Hoplark HopTea origin story?
In an attempt to get healthy, after years of failed attempts, Dean Eberhardt gave up alcohol for a month while doing WHOLE30. With five days left on the program, Dean and his best friend Andrew Markley went to a craft brewery where Dean grabbed Andrew’s double IPA, smelled the aroma of the hops, and imagined something that replicated the experience he was missing but without the calories or alcohol. The concept of a hopped tea was born on that afternoon and the guys left the brewery, drove straight to their local home brew store for hops, and started to experiment.
What was the most challenging part of bringing hops and tea together?
Balance. Since hops and tea have some very similar and grassiness characteristics, we needed to match flavors in order to not layer and make the flavor unbalanced.
What are your hopes for the tasting room in Boulder?
We got so much value out of starting the company at a Farmer’s Market that we didn’t want to lose that opportunity to spend time with our fans, have them share what they like about the brand and just get to know them better. The primary goal of the Taproom is to offer a place to continue to connect with fans and give them a really unique brewery experience.
Anything exciting on the way?
This fall we are launching The Hoplemousse One which we are particularly excited about. We love the simple complexity the organic grapefruit juice brings to The White Tea One and think fans are going to really appreciate the level of refreshment it delivers.
We also have a new Keg program launching in November. We'll mail full recyclable kegs to anywhere in the continental U.S. (yes, once the keg is empty it can be recycled!) HopTea is the first company to ship kegs direct-to-consumer and HopTea fans around the country are so excited to have it on tap at their favorite local hangouts.