I can't imagine there's anyone out there who would pick up a can of Noodledoof's G Is For Goodness and guess correctly what's inside. The brightly-coloured concentric circles look more like something found on a poster for a psychedelic music festival, or the work of a kid armed with a Spirograph* who's opted to use only the gaudiest pencils in their collection. Yet waiting inside is a black IPA.
There's good reason for this too, as G is also for Gaynor. She was one of Noodledoof's best locals, who sadly died suddenly overnight while on a trip back home to Scotland with her husband Harry. She had vibrant, multicoloured hair and her favourite beer was their previous black IPA. So this is the Noodledoof team's tribute to "a very animated and well-loved person".
And it appears they've taken "vibrant" and "very animated" into consideration when drawing up the recipe: this is full-bodied and oily of texture, with aromas reminiscent of mint extract trading blows with the drying roast bitterness and landing somewhere around After Eight Mints. There's a touch of bitter citrus in the midst of the sizeable, quenching, drying, lingering bitterness too, making for one seriously bold black IPA.
Eclipse IPA sees them continue to play around with variations on the IPA style, here showcasing Aussie Eclipse hops alongside a pair of US varieties (Citra and Mosaic for hop-spotters) in an amber beer. While the specialty malts required to create that colour do add a little sweetness, taking Eclipse's mooted mandarin into deeper, richer orange brittle territory, it's rather leaner than you might expect. We'll put that down to the hefty, earthy piney bitterness. Clearly, it's not just G Is For Goodness that's been injected with that little extra.
James Smith
*One for the ancients among you there.
Published October 17, 2023 2023-10-17 00:00:00
