Original Stormtrooper: Goon Squad (IPA: England: 5.5% ABV)
Visual: Clear with just the slightest bitty haze to the yellow body. A large white mound of large bubbled head that leaves lots of sud remains.
Nose: Orange zest. Crisp hops. Lemon juice. Slight gritty bitterness. Slight crushed rocks. Fresh. Cake sponge. Light malt drinks.
Body: Bready feel, moderate bitterness. Lemon cakes. Sugared orange jelly sweets. Crushed rocks air. Slightly thicker feeling middle, but moderately dry in general.
Finish: Orange – a mix of blood orange and tangerine. Solid gritty bitterness. White bread feel. Drying.
Conclusion: Now, I have repeatedly said that in general the UK doesn’t match the USA when it comes to West Coast IPAs. It makes sense really, they have home court advantage. Ones in the UK almost always seem to not quite get all three aspects that I adore – the dry, well attenuated body, the heavy hop bitterness and the layers of complex hop flavours on top of that. They seem to manage two of the three ok, but always seem to miss at least one.
This one … does pretty well actually. I feel that, as they probably have a wide net of potential buyers from the definitely not Star Wars imagery, they are holding off on going fell bore with the harsher edges of the West Coast IPA style, so not to put people off, but even with that said this is a very solid take.
What this nails is the fruity hop flavours, lots of orange notes, from sugared jelly sweets to blood orange to tangerine – it is very well layered around one simple concept for the most part and very enjoyable. It also leans into lemon notes with fresher lemon juice to sweeter lemon cakes. That cake sponge aspect seems to come through quite a bit – which leads us onto how well this manages a dry attenuated base.
It is pretty well done there, not super dry, but with enough attenuation that you can recognize the style. There is a bit more malt showing than normal, some sweeter notes giving a slightly thicker mid body than I would expect, which matches with the bit extra weight of mouthfeel that aforementioned cake sponge character adds but nowhere near east coast style malt levels or sweetness. So, a bit more malt led than expected but generally dry and out of the way so pretty well done.
Finally, the bitterness! Also pretty good – me, I could do with more, I want a west coast that kicks, but I am aware I like silly bitter stuff – this is still solid. Not full USA West Coast, slightly toned down, but still enjoyable.
Overall, yep as you may have guessed a very solid beer and a pretty good take on the style. No complaints here.
Background: This was part of an x-mas present pack of Stormtrooper beers from my Sister and her family, many thanks! I decided to do notes on this one first as I am such a sucker for West Coast IPAs. Like a huge fan. Shocking I know. What did shock me when I saw this was all the stormtrooper Star Wars imagery, how the heck did they either a) afford that? Or b) get around Disney’s lawyers? Turns out it is pretty simple, this is not Star Wars themed. They instead got the rights to use the Stormtrooper armour, which exists completely separately from Star Wars – so it looks Star Wars linked, but is not. Clever marketing. The glass used came with the pack, which, while pretty, all the images on it did make it hard to look at it properly for the visuals section of this guide. Went with The Cybertronic Spree: Ravage as music for drinking to – more sci-fi themed tie ins made sense – a fun 80s feeling bunch of metal from a band that cosplays as transformers. Because of course!
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