Bottle sample during Gents Bierfestival '21 - shared with Tderoeck and Nathan.
Dorée, col fin blanc.
Arôme oscille sur un bouquet léger fleuri noble avec de suite un léger apport de fumé et de minéral qui rend ce côté salin - malté fumé.
Palais est plaisant - ajout malté fumé classique qui tranche bien vace le caractère salin. Ici, léger houblonné noble noble allemand type Hallertauer, pas certain d'y trouver du Sladek. Belle pétillance sur le haut avec un fini terreux et finement fleuri/fruité. Le fumé revient à la charge en fin de bouche aidé par l'effervescence conséquente.
Correcte mais un peu trop vivante et pétillante en bouche.

Thick tan head over jet-black beer. Old cookies and macarons kept in granma's cupboard box for half a century. Copra. Coconut, roast, copra, Bounty bar, very sweet. Chewy as a Bounty bar, good carbonation. Ouch! Knew it, but my fellow tasters needed to try it.

Draught Small but stable yellowish head over cloudy orange beer. Mandarinepeel, other citrus and some herb, difficult to specify. Mandarine, citruspeel, dry-bitterish, like a dry powdery spice. Subtle jenever-like alcohol flavour. Does nowhere feels as 10%, let alone more. Dry finish throughout enjoying. Bit neutral for an IPA; booze is seriously hidden.

No head, virtually black beer. Roast, meatroast, chocolate. some fusels. Smoke and benzene. Banana (indeed unmistakable), chocolate (idd). Sweet roast notes. Very full bodied and viscous, low carbonation. For the sweet tooths, but it's just not my thing.

Fluffy, light yellow head over fully hazy yellow beer. Again this sulphury, almost rotting nose, drainwater. Fruity hops, yellow fruit. Bitterish, and thankfully, the decaying fruitaroma does not repeat retronasal, but the sulphur remains present. Yellow & green fruit and hop notes. Light body but not lean. Good carbonation, slick. Nose is a pity, rest is quite OK!

Average of three separate ratings; bottle, nitro and regular draft. Funny to see that all three totaling scores were almost the same. Regular draft seemed to smell better, nitro tasted better, or... it was just circumstances of course. :p Bottled version was practically the same as the drafts.

25/XI/22 - 33cl can @ Mash of the Titans tasting, Gentse Biervereniging, BB: I/2025 (2022-xxx)
Ap: 6, Ar: 8, Fl: 7, Txt: 6, O: 7, Total: 7.0

Clear amber beer, small creamy beige head, little stable, a bit adhesive. Aroma: nice, lots of vanilla, sugary impression, funky, ripe banana, sourish impression as well? MF: ok carbon, medium to full body. Taste: sourish, funky, bitter, dry, spicy, yeast, some banana. Aftertaste: caramel, bitter, malty, banana, a bit hoppy, earthy, dry, some tannins, decent.

15/IX/21 - on tap @ DOK Brewing Company (Gent), BB: n/a (2021-xxx)
Ap: 6, Ar: 8, Fl: 7, Txt: 6, O: 7.5, Total: 7.1

Clear deep amber beer, practically no head. Aroma: sweet, lots of caramel, overripe banana, a bit of vanilla, more banana peel, more caramel, rather oxidized. MF: ok carbon, medium to full body. Taste: lots and lots of alcohol up front, sweet impression and then a very harsh bitterness punching you in the mouth, very oxidized as well. Aftertaste: bitter notes, lots of caramel, some jam, dry, a bit of vanilla. Not bad, but was expecting to taste more barrel in this one…

21/VIII/21 - on nitro tap @ Gents Bierfestival (Gent), BB: n/a (2021-946)
Ap: 6, Ar: 6, Fl: 8, Txt: 8, O: 7.5, Total: 7.1/10

Pretty cloudy beige bond beer, big creamy beige head, stable, bit adhesive. Aroma: weird, oxidized, fruity, some dead yeast. MF: ok carbon, medium body. Taste: bit sweet, some cookies, caramel notes, bit sugary, hoppy, gentle roast, bit resinous, weird. Aftertaste: alcohol, yeasty, bit sugary, coconut, bit fruity, good stuff!

4 July 2021. At Dok Brewing Festival. Shared with the lovely Anke! Cloudy dark brown, no head. Aroma of candied banana, macaroons, coco flakes, date, 'pralines', pistachio, mocha, chocolate sauce. Taste has very sweet banana candy, date & fig with a sourish undertone, thick chocolate sauce-like maltiness with a hint of toffee & coconut. Very slightly spicy too. Herbal hoppy finish, lingering banana candy, fruit-liqueur pralines and boozy banana liqueur alcohol ('Boswandeling'). Full body, oily texture, soft carbonation. Quite heavy to drink and just too much on the sweet side. Well done again by Totem but I prefer their other flavoured Stouts.

Totem’s latest creation, a second DIPA but to a completely different recipe than the first (and I am not even including Totem’s ‘first period’ as a gypsy brewer here). Thanks to the brewer himself for the can, enjoyed in his company at Dok’s premises in Ghent. Snow white, medium thick, small-bubbled, slowly opening head on a cloudy apricot blonde beer, turning a bit milky in the end – the looks of a NEDIPA for sure. Aroma follows suit: sweet red onions, unripe pineapple, orange juice, ripe melon, lychee, wet dough, apple peel, touch of stale armpit sweat dankness. Sweet and fruity onset, pineapple, rambutan, guava, melon – in a slick and oily, softly carbonated environment; lovely malt sweet core, sugar bread-like with drier cereally edges, carrying something minerally along the sides as well before it plunges into this mixture of herbal, grassy and tropical hops, adding retronasal impressions of pomelo, papaya, lemongrass, lemonbalm and dank overripe onion. A softish bitterness is deposited on the tongue’s root, making everything very quenching, and the alcohol, though considerable, remains almost perfectly hidden. Lovely citrusy impressions remain, making this perhaps even more rewarding than the first Totem DIPA – though I admit that comparing them is tempting more than justified; this is a perfectly focused, sophisticatedly executed, balanced DIPA compromising on different IPA traditions at the same time, as is so often the case in ‘international IPA’ these days.