Paul-TeckerPaul Tecker

My name is Paul Tecker and I am a long time home brewer, craft beer enthusiast and self-proclaimed hop aficionado. For nearly 15 years, I have been involved with the thriving natural and organic beverage industry and continue to be convinced that the future is bright for healthier food and beverages. One of my hobbies is growing hops in my back yard for home brewing. This led to the creation of my H2OPS brand hop water. Although I was born in the Pacific Northwest (where hops flourish) I now make my home in Southern California with my wife and two growing boys.

All articles by Paul-Tecker

 

Our Story – Its not easy being first

Like many of us working to balance family, career and health, I moderated my alcohol consumption mostly with sparkling water. Its a truly healthy alternative, but not very satisfying or social.  As you might imagine, I found moderation especially challenging as a passionate homebrewer of craft beer.  One day, after home brewing a fresh hopped
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What a Journey

It is hard to believe it has been over 6 years since the H2OPS trademark was officially born.  After years of development and testing, we launched in November 2014 at a BevMo! Beer Festival at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco.  That’s my sister Anne in the photo, who gratefully dropped everything to help
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Maintaining a Healthy Immune System

Many of us craft beer fans have been self-medicating to numb the bad news of this health crisis.  Hand raised.   I have also been consuming more news and doing research.  What I have discovered is that there is a lot of science backed information on things to support your immune system. As it turns out,
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Celebrating 5 Years of Happiness Through Hops

Its hard to believe that it was back in 2012, when I was home brewing with some backyard grown hops, when lightening struck to create what may be the first ever hop brewed sparking water.  After 2 years of trials (watering the yard with less than perfect batches) and blowing the minds of beer drinkers
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Drinking at Work – Fueling Tech Innovation?

We are continually learning about what type of occasions people drink our H2OPS Sparkling Hop Water.  Somewhat surprisingly, several notable tech companies have begun stocking us in their office fridges and offering H2OPS as a non-alcoholic alternative at company parties. No there is no caffeine in H2OPS hop water, but for some reason it seems
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Growing Hops at Home – You Can Do It!


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H2OPS & Beer – a perfect pairing

After seeing this photo someone posted on the H2OPS Instagram page, it reminded me what a great session extender H2OPS is. As an example, I was cleaning up my garage this weekend.  To make it more enjoyable, I put on some music and cracked open one of my favorite beers.  After two, I could tell
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Relax Don’t Worry Have a Homebrew

Its National Home Brew Day today.  For some it’s just another “drink a beer day.”  To me, home brewing is personal and meaningful on many levels. Home brewing kicked off when Senator Alan Cranston from California sponsored a bill to legalize it in 1978. It was a different time back in 1978.  In these early
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Growing Your Own Hops at Home – You Can Do It

I was checking out my hop garden for signs of life this evening and sure enough this year’s crop is starting to peek out from the ground.  It’s hard to believe it was five years ago when I first took the plunge into growing my own hops.  In hindsight, I wish I would have done
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H2OPS Harvest 2015

To be in the Yakima valley for the hop harvest is on the bucket list of many craft beer brewers and aficionados.  Check!  Visitors to the farms this time of year get to see the towering hop bines at their peak height basking in the warm sun and shimmering with bright green hop cones.  I
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The Freedom to Home Brew

On this Independence Day, we give thanks to those in history who were responsible for the Declaration of Independence and the freedoms we enjoy.  While not specifically in the document, we Americans have long enjoyed the freedom to brew and to choose to “drink local.”  This dates back to George Washington, who grew hops and
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Hydrating hop heads at LA Beer Week

What an incredible day and venue for the #LABW7 festival Saturday at Exposition Park Los Angeles. Thank you to all who came by and sampled our hop water. It was so gratifying to see the faces of people trying it for the first time. It typically started with an “I am intrigued” and ended with
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Zero alcohol?

So how can it be that h2ops hop water doesn’t have any alcohol? Well it helps to understand where alcohol comes from.  In beverages, the source of alcohol is from sugars, which are fermented by yeast, which in turn produces alcohol.  Our hop water may be loaded with hops, but there are no fermentable sugars
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h2ops hop water design

We have received many compliments on our hop drop graphic and  h2ops hop water label, so I thought it would be cool to give credit where it is due. Ross Buswell at Atmosphere Design is the artist who created the h2ops graphics and label. Ross has some pretty amazing craft beer brand work in his
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How do you pronounce h2ops?

How do you pronounce H2OPS? Is it H2-OPS, just H-2-O-P-S or some other arrangement 2.0? Clearly whoever named this doesn’t understand good branding.  To me, it’s an unconventional drink and an unconventional brand name. A wise person once said, “call me what you want, just don’t call me late to dinner.” H2OPS the brand is
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Hop water research

So I thought it would be interesting to post some more information on what is hop water and what others are doing with hops in beverages. To update my knowledge, I spent quite a few hours on Google and it seems that “hop water” is a long established generic term for hops and water and
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Genesis

So what is hop water and how did I come to discover it? It’s actually similar to the story you may have heard about the discovery of green tea. In the case of tea, the story goes that leaves blew off the tea plant into the emperor’s cup of water, he tasted it and it
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