About Hoptrollop

Hoptrollop is my Nom de Plume or really Nom de Beer, but I’m just Jennifer O’Connell. A wife, mother of 2 and cat owner that lives in Decatur, GA.

Everyone has a hobby and for the past 10 years+ mine has been beer. The last year has been pretty busy with beer in fact. I started a women’s craft beer appreciation group called Georgia Ale and Lager Sirens (GALS) with a good friend. Then a couple of months ago my husband and I started to revive Georgians for World-Class Beer, a lobbying group aimed at making our state a better place to drink beer.  Speaking of my husband John, he is an excellent homebrewer. And I like to think of myself as his “muse.” I try to help come up with recipes I would like to drink and he has the talent to figure out how to make them. Our most successful collaboration was an Oat Pale Ale which won 2nd Best in Show at the biggest local homebrewing competition.

For 10 years I was a professional chef and catering manager. So when I need a creative outlet from doing contract work in architectural drafting or just being a stay-at-home mom cooking is where I’m led. I’ve enjoyed using beer in recipes for years. The depth of flavor that beer gives food is incredible. The one complaint I get about my meals is from my husband, he never gets to eat anything more than once. I told him to follow me around with a pen and paper, he suggested a blog. (Actually no he didn’t, he just whined.)

For the blog I want to give a big thank you to Stevie Caldarola and her Ladies of Craft Beer website  http://ladiesocb.com/. If she hadn’t let me post my first recipes there and with all the LOCB’s positive feedback I never would have started HopCuisine.

What do I see for the future of HopCuisine? Just not running out of recipe ideas every week would be more than I could hope for. A Cook Book would be amazing though!