There have been a lot of firsts in the DC beer scene since 2010, but here's another one from Port City Brewing Company: a patent on brewing technology.
U.S. Patent No. 9,303,241 now belongs to the Hopzooka.
If you're a pacifist and you don't get into war games, that's okay: the Hopzooka is not used for violent purposes. Instead, it helps to make Port City's beers super hoppy without exposing them to oxygen.
From the PCBC website:
Hopzooka works hard, each and every day, to ensure our beer is never exposed to oxygen. It’s an important job at PCBC, and no one in the whole world can do it better than Hopzooka. Really! He’s our own
patent-pending[patent-obtained] contraption, using C02 to force hops into the fermenter without exposing the beer inside to oxygen. Not just any dry-hopping machine, Hopzooka is the king of dry hopping — and he’s changing the game in brewing technology.
The Hopzooka is used on beers like Essential Pale Ale and Manical Double IPA (which just hit the market in bottles for the first time).
Now that the Hopzooka is patented, other breweries may come knocking for this technology. That's pleasant, but nothing will ever compare to the love between a brewer and his patented dry-hopping mechanism. See below.
