Noodledoof held their first Oktoberfest in 2024, and as well as bringing all the Bavarian-themed festivities to their home in Koroit, they poured no less than four German beer styles. The Helles is the one you'll find there year-round but the other three were brewed for the season.
That said, you may have come across Schwarzbier when it appeared at the start of 2023. The aim with the reboot was to make it a little drier; the outcome is a lovely, smooth showcase of darker, chocolatey, roasty malts, all swirling together like the gold ribbons on the label. There's a little coffee, plenty of dark chocolate, a little nuttiness, a dry finish, and lots to enjoy.
The German Pils, like Spider Pig, does what a German pilsner brewed via traditional decoction mash methods should. There's plenty of herbal, floral, spicy hops that both subtly decorating a crisp pilsner malt base and provide the lingering, flavoursome bitterness.
Which leaves Hefeweizen, their spin on the Bavarian classic. I deliberately splashed the liquid into my glass from a fair height in order to recreate the steepling head with which such beers arrive in Munich and am pleased to report it stuck around, firing off its bouquet of esters and phenolics. Pouring pale in colour, unlike a fair few local hefes this one doesn’t sit in lolly banana territory; instead it's much more about soft, aromatic spices and a little white pepper / herbaceousness that kindles thoughts of the beer’s white ale brethren across the border to the west. Smooth and rounded of texture yet cleansing to finish, you can see why there's a small but passionate bunch of brewers and beer lovers in Australia who can't fathom why these beers aren't more popular.
James Smith
Published October 22, 2024 2024-10-22 00:00:00
