Belt’s Beer Garden: Goo-d to the Last Drop

After a tasty barrel-aged cider last week, today we’re back to beers. And this week’s entry comes from the middle of Indiana and 2Toms Brewing.

2Toms hails from Fort Wayne, Indiana and has been open since the spring of 2018. The brewery crafts each of their beers with a specific flavor experience in mind and has been making waves in the region lately.

With distribution limited to Indiana still (from what I’ve seen anyways), it’s hard to find them even in Chicagoland. However, I was recently able to snag a few cans of their most popular hoppy brew and wanted to share it with y’all - their New England-style IPA, Gooey.

Gooey is made with Strata hops and packs a nice little punch with a 7% ABV. Each 16-ounce can cost me $6 but you can snag a four-pack at the brewery for $18. My can was packaged 2/28/20 and this review was written 4/28/20 (sorry for the delay in getting the review out there).

Gooey poured a cloudy dark orange color with a massive amount of head forming. The Initial pour ended up being something like 50/50 head to beer. The incredibly dense off-white foam takes forever to fade down to a reasonable level and laces the glass with thick lines as it does so.

This brew was packed with dank citrus fruit aromas and a nice backing of flaked wheat and oats. Up front was a massive amount of passion fruit, grapefruit, and lemon with a hefty backing of herbal kush. The grist added some cereal-esque sweetness behind the fruits and balanced out the smell nicely.

Gooey began with a soft and pillowy mouthfeel that seemed to expand as the sip progressed. Up front a pithy grapefruit and lemon zest appeared, along with a slight twinge of hoppy bitterness. Soon joining the citrus rind flavor was a wave of juicy passion fruit and some bright strawberries.

Midway through the dankness levels rose along with some of the flaked grain notes which eliminated almost all of the hoppiness this beer had up front. The oats and wheat give off almost a fruity Cheerios flavor for a moment or two.

The beer then begins to fade away and it does so really, really cleanly. There is no lingering aftertaste at all. Instead it just ends with some light dryness. It was quite a sessionable 7% brew.

For as easy as it goes down though, it is on the heavier side of things...filling up my stomach rather quickly, making it a brew that requires some time to complete.

Overall, this was a very nice surprise. Crushable and tasty with a higher ABV. The only drawback being how heavy it sits...and that’s not a bad problem to have at all.