Wang Dang Doodle Is 9.01 Percent, and That Is the Point

Soul & Spirits put its imperial oat cream IPA out on September 1, the day Memphis celebrates its own area code, and set it at 9.01 percent to match. The brewery lists silky mango, dried apricot and lime gummies.

Style: Imperial IPA
Release Date: 2026-09-01
ABV: 9.01%
Soul & Spirits Brewery (Memphis, TN)

Nobody arrives at 9.01 percent ABV by accident.

Soul & Spirits Brewery released Wang Dang Doodle on September 1, and the number on the label is a local reference made with a hydrometer. Memphis answers to the 901 area code. September 1 reads as 9/01, and the city has marked it as 901 Day since 2011, with block parties, music and a great many $9.01 specials. The brewery's imperial IPA arrived that day at 9.01 percent.

The brewery's own beer list files it as an Imperial Oat Cream IPA, and the tasting notes Soul & Spirits supplies run to three: silky mango, dried apricot and lime gummies.

The oats are the part worth explaining. Oats carry proteins and beta-glucans that survive into the finished beer, where they add body and a rounder, softer texture than barley alone produces. In a hop-forward beer at nine percent, that softness is doing defensive work. Strong IPAs have a tendency to finish warm and a little abrasive, and a cream-style build is the usual answer to it. The brewery's first descriptor being "silky" rather than a fruit is a fair signal of what it is reaching for.

The name follows a house rule. Soul & Spirits says it builds beers around songs written by, performed by or featuring musicians from the Memphis area and the greater Southern region, a nod to brewing in the Home of the Blues. "Wang Dang Doodle" qualifies comfortably. Willie Dixon wrote it, Koko Taylor recorded her version in December 1965, and the single that followed on Checker the next year became the record she was known for the rest of her career.

That naming convention runs through the whole operation. The taproom menu is sorted into sections called Classic Hits, Hot 52, Cask Covers and Hits On Repeat, and Wang Dang Doodle sits in the last of those - the section reserved for beers the brewery brings back rather than retires.

Soul & Spirits is at 845 N Main Street in Memphis, open Wednesday through Sunday. Wang Dang Doodle remains on the brewery's current beer list following its September 1 release.

Editor’s Take

There are breweries that put a number on a can because the fermentation stopped there, and there are breweries that put a number on a can because the number is a postcard. 9.01 percent is not where an imperial IPA naturally lands. It is where you steer one when the release date is September 1 and the city you brew in answers to 901. Memphis has been doing 9.01 jokes since 2011, mostly in the form of discounts, and this is the first one I have seen that has to clear a fermentation and a lab test before it works.

What saves it from being purely a gag is that the beer underneath is built for the occasion. Oats in a nine percent IPA are a hedge against the thing nine percent IPAs do, which is arrive hot and leave a rasp behind. The brewery's own notes run silky mango, dried apricot, lime gummies - soft, then dried and concentrated, then sharp and artificial in the most flattering way. That is a pleasant arc to ride on a September afternoon. If you are drinking it now rather than on the first, it would sit very happily next to something off a smoker with a vinegar sauce, where the lime end of it has something to cut through.

Source & Editorial

JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.