Benzai (24654) reviewed Red Fruit Pastry Sour from Totem 10 months ago
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 6.5 | Texture - 7 | Overall - 6
Can at home shared with Laura. Bright darker red color, virtually no head. Aroma is weird, it reminds me of pudding, desserts. Fruit, yoghurt, sweetness and distant chocolaty notes. Flavor is sour and red fruit. Berries mainly imo. Berry juice. Not my thing but I think it is what the label says, so we'll done.
Kraddel (15872) reviewed Etznab from Totem 11 months ago
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 5 | Overall - 5
Pours very dark brown with a huge tanned head of medium good stability. Scent is quite ashy, lactose, almost a bit metallic, BE (bit stressed) yeast profile. Remembering one of my homebrews trough this ;) Taste is roasty, bit ashy, very carbonated, dominant yeast slickness, esters, bit stress, making it fairly oily-chewy coffee-with-milk like. Overcarbonated and not really my thing at all. I had this happening to one of my homebrews as well - even though Totem are much better brewers than I'll ever be, but this one doesn't really cut it for me. Truth be told, it's a few years past it's BBD, and it shows little to no negative age factors, its just the overcarbonation and yeast vs roast balance that does it for me.
Bierridder (4353) ticked Red IPA from Totem 11 months ago
tderoeck (22946) reviewed Imperial Stout from Totem 11 months ago
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 9 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 8.5
1/V/25 - on tap @ Klaas’ BBQ with Ama & Charlotte, BB: n/a (2025-425) Thanks to Klaas for sharing the beer!
Clear dark brown to black beer, small creamy beige head, unstable, non adhesive; Aroma: nice roast, some caramel, malty, chocolate notes, pleasant! MF: soft carbon, medium body. Taste: malty, a bit oxidized, good roast, some chocolate notes, a little oxidized. Aftertaste: malty, sweet touch, more malty, some liquorish, lots of chocolate.
beerhunter111 (50837) reviewed Chilli Vanilli Stout from Totem 1 year ago
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 8
A black beer with a beige head. Aroma of roasted dark malt, vanilla, cocoa. Taste of roasted dark malt, chocolate, coffee, cocoa, liquorice, some chili.
beerhunter111 (50837) reviewed Double IPA from Totem 1 year ago
Appearance - 7 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 7 | Overall - 8
A hazy deep golden beer with a white head. Aroma of apricot, mango, tangerine. Taste of orange fruits, tangerine, citra, long bitter finish. Quite fresh.
beerhunter111 (50837) reviewed Red Fruit Pastry Sour from Totem 1 year ago
Appearance - 7 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 7 | Overall - 7
A clear pinkish red beer with a white lacing. Aroma of sour red berries, grapes, brett. Taste of sour dry tart cherries blueberries, lacto, not too sweet.
tderoeck (22946) reviewed Chilli Vanilli Stout from Totem 1 year ago
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 9 | Flavor - 9 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 8.5
30/I/25 - 33cl can from the brewer @ home, BB: n/a (2025-44) Thanks to Klaas for sharing the beer!
Clear dark brown to black beer, small creamy beige head, a little stable, a bit adhesive. Aroma: nice, vanilla, vanillin, quite some chocolate, lots of caramel, sweet impression, nice! MF: ok carbon, medium body. Taste: sweet, caramel at first, nice, gentle chilli burn indeed, malty, hoppy, some alcohol, bitter touch. Aftertaste: caramel, chocolate, good roast, vanilla, more caramel, bitter roast in the finish, nice stuff, love it!
Tinus (5082) reviewed Imperial Stout Woodford Reserve from Totem 1 year ago
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8.5 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 8.5
Black, dissipating tan head. Roasted malts, vanilla, Bourbon. Roasted malts, bittersweet. Sweet bourbon vanilla finish. Nice!
Alengrin (11675) reviewed Red Fruit Pastry Sour from Totem 1 year ago
Appearance - 7 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7
Totem is back after a period of discontinuation – good news for the Flemish craft beer scene, I hasten to say – and builds on a theme they already explored before with elegance and bravoure: the fruited pastry sour. This one seems perhaps a tad less exotic than its predecessors, in using ‘red fruits’: cranberry, raspberry and redcurrant, possibly an ironic nod to the rouge hype still plaguing Belgium… Anyway, thanks tderoeck for sharing the can! Medium thick, pale pink, opening and dissolving head, hazy ruby red robe with fuchsia glow. Aroma of molten raspberry ice cream of the kind my grandmother offered me as a child, candied cherries as on ‘rijstpap’, sweetened fruit yoghurt but less ‘industrial’ than that, redcurrant coulis on vanilla flan – all aromas centering around the same theme, but very convincingly so. Same in the mouth: soft yoghurty ‘kettle sourness’ with a sharper red-fruity edge, but also compensating ‘candied’ or ‘jellied’ red fruit sweetness, together creating the desired desserty effect, especially when the vanilla comes in retronasally – flan with red fruit coulis again. A rounded cereally core supports this flavour combo but like the other pastry sours created by Totem in past years, the whole feels dedicedly, and intentionally, ‘unbeery’ – but given how this brewer has always sought to explore the novelties in craft beer, and given how this particular type of beer could in no way be better if it were more ‘beery’, this is a strength rather than a flaw; in fact, with this and its preceding creations, it is safe to say that Totem is (by far even) the leading pastry sour producer in Belgium, with ‘leading’ in the qualitative sense rather than quantitative, of course…