St Billie

@ 2017

Bottle 33 cl. Pours an opaque, cloudy yellow with a small, white head. Looks like a Belgian Wit. Spicy, enticing aroma - very tropical. Kinda light in body, dry, peachy fruitiness. Tart, but not to an extreme degree. Actually very refreshing and well made. 101018

Bouteille 33cl, BB 21/7/2018, still holding up nicely. Dorée sur touche paille, col blanc. Arôme sur de belles effluves de brett, fruité sur de belles agrumes - citronné avec léger rétro de tropical. Note un côté sour kettle. Palais est brett, fruité sur fine note sourish, citronné avec petite pointe de menthe. Effervescence reste haute - citronné agrumes en rappel d'un côté pomello voire yuzu. Le tout penche vers un côté IPAish.

Hazy golden color with white head. Aroma is passion fruit, yoghurt, lime. Taste is passion fruit, lime. Silky mouthfeel with high carbonation. Good!

Imported from my RateBeer account as Tempel / Totem St Billie (by Tempel Brygghus):
Aroma: 6/10, Appearance: 4/5, Taste: 9/10, Palate: 4/5, Overall: 17/20, MyTotalScore: 4/5

30/IV/18 - 33cl bottle as an early bird gift from Billies Craft Beer Festival @ home - BB: 21/VII/18 (2018-588)

Clear pale yellow beer, small creamy irregular white head, little stable, bit adhesive. Aroma: very lemony, some rotten fruits, funky, bit spicy. MF: lively carbon, medium to light body. Taste: bit sourish, lemony, little bitter, some citrus peel, grapefruit. Aftertaste: bitter touch, some citrus, more lemon and lime juice. Nice one.

Hazy yellow colour with thin head. Aroma and flavour have a lot of sharp citrus notes. Lemony and refreshing.

Collaboration of Totem with Tempel, a ‘happy sour’ quite obviously made for last years’ (first) edition of Billie’s Craft Beer Fest, with the eponymous French bulldog unambiguously portrayed on the front label - a friendly animal I was happy to meet at more than one occasion at the pub that organised this epic beer fest. Bottle at Kantien in Ghent, glad I got the chance to catch up with this, as I didn’t have it at the festival itself. Thick and regular, frothy, stable, snow white head over an initially clear yellow blonde beer with noble ‘old gold’ hue, turning misty with sediment. Expressive aroma mixing sour ale and IPA aspects, resulting in impressions of raw rhubarb, green gooseberries, lime flesh, unripe pineapple, juniper, withered cut flowers, boxwood leaves (or perhaps even cat pee as my girlfriend put it), cottage cheese, yoghurt. Refreshing, crisp sourness, lime juice and green berries, rhubarb and Granny Smith apple but with a very faint pineapple-ish sweetishness underneath; brisk and sour but not too acidic, lively due to sharp, initially even numbing carbonation. The lime- and sour yoghurt-like dryness cuts through a soft “white bread dough”-like maltiness with slightly soapy wheat side notes; something buttery lingers as well. Ends with ongoing soft but crisp lactic acidity, a chalky note reminiscent of classic Berliner Weisse and a zesty and subtly piney New World hop aromatic quality retronasally, but adding very little bitterness so as not to interfere with the refreshing sourness. The aroma is perhaps a bit challenging when warming up, I am still not entirely convinced that New World hopping and sour ale work well together and not everybody will appreciate this, but to me personally this was in any case a pleasant, Berliner Weisse-based kettle sour turned into a sour IPA, bearing both breweries’ technical-level quality stamps.