29/IV/22 - 33cl can @ home, BB: 1/XII/23 (2022-449) Thanks to Klaas for sharing the can!

Clear dark brown to black beer, no head. Aroma: roasted start, bit sweet impression, alcohol, caramel. MF: soft carbon, medium to full body. Taste: sweet start, sugary, alcohol, lots of whisky, a bit malty, speculoos cookies ("Biscoff") flavour indeed. Aftertaste: hoppy, resinous, bitter roast, speculoos, bitter, hoppy, malty touch. Where did the vanilla (bourbon) go?

29/IV/22 - 33cl can @ home, BB: XII/2024 (2022-449) Thanks to Klaas for sharing the can!

Cloudy orange beer, small aery irregular off-white head, unstable, non adhesive. Aroma: sweet, lactose, vanilla, nice spiciness, cinnamon, smells like an actual carrot cake. MF: ok carbon, mediu mbody. Taste: nice, good acidity, bitter touch, good sweet-sour balance, cinnamon, vanilla. Aftertaste: spicy, a bit sweet, vanilla notes, lactose, some cinnamon. Very decent!

Can from Beers@Moviefun. Hazy orange, thinning, off-white head. Aroma of ripe tangerine, mango, melon, orange juice, biscuit, honey, peach, lime zest. Taste has sweet tangerine, melon & peach, zesty citrus and softly bitter mango in a honeyish malt body. Floral hoppy finish, bit piney & spicy, quite malty still yet with lingering ripe & juicy tropical fruits; dash of warming fruit liqueur-like alcohol (almost 'Obstler'-like). Medium body, oily texture, soft carbonation. Expressive and crafty.

Pale blond and hazy with thin head. Aroma and flavour have lots of lime zest. Leafy hops and a slightly soapy element which again points towards lime. Not too heavy despite the high alcohol.

Small if persistent white head over well-carbonated yellow beer. Fruity-aromatic nose, with hints of lemonade, chewing gum, nougat and marshmallow. Sourish, lemon-ade fruity impression with marshmallow behind. Weird. Finish and aftertaste have a very light chili-like heat. As to rhubarb...? Light, good carbonation, light slickness. Definitely not bad, but Klaas & Liesbeth, I absolutely don't agree with the values for sour/bitter/sweet/... given on the label. Thanks to Stef!

New pastry sour by East Flanders’ top experimentalist Totem, in Evergem north of Ghent; thanks Craftmember for sharing the can. Snow white, thinnish and open, ring-shaped head eventually dissolving all but completely; opaque, pure and intense carrot orange colour with almost rosy tinge, so with the head gone, the whole thing looks exactly like carrot juice. Utterly unusual, but expressive aroma associating with carrot cake right away, along with strong cinnamon and impressions of lemon zest, ripe Cantaloupe, white chocolate, warm apple pie, sour cream, actual carrots (indeed physically used in here), pumpkin pie, honey. Sour onset, hints of redcurrant and unripe mandarin, lively carbonated; a lactose sweetness appears briefly after the initial, pungent sourness, moving forward over a smooth cereally malt core (but very little malt flavour) – straight to its goal, that is evoking a liquid carrot pie experience. There is some earthiness from carrots but the whole stays relatively clean and very juicy, while the cinnamon becomes increasingly strong and starts to even dominate retronasally. Lactose and carrot sweetness go hand in hand with yoghurty lactic sourness till the last drop – as it ought to be in a pastry sour. The concept reminds me a bit of that rhubarb pastry sour Totem made earlier: using a ‘cold’, northern European ingredient and turning it into something exotic and cocktail-like; this one is intense, original, boldly experimental and pungent, you will certainly have to be open-minded (and really love cinnamon and carrot cake), but there is no denying that this is both conceptually and technically very well done so deserving of a high score for me. Even if I know that this one will certainly divide opinions!

New saison by Totem, hopped with Hallertau Blanc, one of those postmodern 'New World style hops' created in the Old World, namely in Germany in 2012, by hybridizing Hüll with Cascade and aimed at creating tropical aromas in the same way you get from many New World varieties. Big thanks to Klaas, the brewer, for this can. Egg-white, thick, very moussy, tightly paper-lacing, large-bubbled yet dense and stable head, lightly hazed pale yellow blonde robe with vaguely greenish tinge and lively sparkling all around. Exotically spicy and fruity aroma of jasmin blossom and rose mallow, white dessert wine, meadowsweet flowers, bergamot, kumquat, green melon, spice bread, camphorwood, cilantro leaf, oxidized dry coconut flakes, vague hints of lychee, 'brut' champagne, cardamom, purple mangosteen or even slight passionfruit, paraffin. Crisp onset, colourfully fruity with notes of pear, pepino, cherimoya and melon, deceptively seeming sweet but actually very dry from the start; very active carbonation, minerally, but the carbonation is just about right for a 'saison' and adds liveliness and fullness. Supple body, bread-crusty and cereally, vaguely retaining some sweetness in an altogether dry environment, the dryness strongly accentuated by the hops - Hallertau Blanc at its most powerful, zesty, flowery, peppery and pungent, with lots of exotic-spice and tropical-flower assocations retronasally, but also this typical sweet dessert wine scent I tend to associate with it. Jasmin, fresh clove, lime zest, camphorwood and bergamot, however, are more prominent impressions of what ends as a notably exotic, spicy, dry but still somehow 'traditional' saison. Another Totem masterpiece: the old saison (the Belgian way) pimped with a huge amount of New World exotics created in the Old World. Conceptually, this reminds me a bit of their rhubarb pastry stout, where an exotic effect was created with an ingredient that is all but exotic. Only Totem seems capable of pulling this off, in East Flanders at least. Highly quenching, elegant and 'drinkable' but at the same time layered, powerful and surprising - this is Totem creativity 'pur sang', at least when it comes to quenching Belgian-inspired beers like this. A gem.