Hop, as in beer, yes; essentially a boiled pine-cone-looking flower. The beer is hoppy if you can taste its hops. [Pellinore restrains himself making dreadfully unsatisfying puns about the Ephemeral Hoppiness derived from drinking beer. He contemplates a more sophisticated series of jokes about bandwagons or scotch, but decides such would be lost amongst the inebriates, and instead leans on the corporal with a sigh.] The hops brewed for beer come from the female version of the plant, about which you must not make nor have judgment. It’s the resin inside the female’s cones which give your beer that bitter/mellow taste and aroma you crave. The poor male version of the hop grows flowers as well, but they never turn into cones, but remain as droopy panicles. PELLINORE: Ah, droopy panicles. I wish I could take credit for having written that phrase (which means essentially a cluster-looking tuft, such as you see in oats or grasses), but credit given where credit is due. “Droopy panicles” comes directly from the Oxford English Dictionary. I should like one day to write a character in a British pantomime and name it Droopy Panicles. Or perhaps describe some ill-fitting gown of an overly-gussied-up politician: Look at Madame Senior Senator and her droopy panicles! Freshly picked hops must be dried in kilns before they can be brewed, but after drying, they are cured and baled and are then ready for marketing. Much like senators.
Hop
