t Smisje Sleedoornbier

Brewed by Brouwerij De Regenboog
Style: Fruit Beer
Assebroek-Brugge, Belgium

Big fan - a bold citric and sweet taste in a 6% beer. Would be lovely for the summer. Frothy head atop a yellow body - totally yellow - until the end when it turns pink! Nice sweet-tart taste. Chock full of ingredients - I always get the feeling with Johan’s beers that he throws SO much material into them. Perfect tingly yet not too light feeling in the mouth.

Big thanks go out to JoeMcPhee for sharing this 33cL bottle. It pours a very murky, muddy dark orange with pinkish hues. It is totally muddy with no clarity at all with a small head. Aroma is nicely tart-y fruits and a light yeasty wildness, Comes off slightly spiky and summery. Taste is only lightly tart with some sweet summer berries. A nicely felt mouthfeel with some spikes on the cheeks. Leaves a lightly tart berry aftertaste with a bit of nice dryness. I do not know what sloeberries are but I like them. I am surprised how low most others rate this.

Sleedoorn means sloe(berry). Label by American cartoonist Bill Coleman. Colour: Rosé Champagne with brownish shine. Gushing!, then Champagne-like bubbling with fast disappearing head - more like rosé brut than some pseudo-Champagne beers! Nose is fruity, estery, perfumed. Definitely something wild - wild strawberries come to mind. Also dry sherry nose! Taste: sweet like sweet portwine, but more fruity and lighter, of course. Fruit is inidentifyable to me - but then I don"t consume sloeberries on a daily base. Sweetness however, keeps dominating. Mouthfeel has some tartness,adstingency even, but it is masked by the sweetness. Not really light, there is some body after all.

Bottle. Cloudy red orange colour, small head. nice woody aroma, farmyard and cheese, a treat for the specially interested. Woody flavours, acidic orange zest, brettanomyces, good dry finish. Different, but highly interesting.

I’m not sure when the bottle I had was brewed, but it must have had some age on it (from the cellar of Delerium Cafe, Brussels). Not much of the sweetness mentioned in other ratings. A tart, fruity, complex aroma of apricots and balsamic vinegar that immediately got the saliva glands going. Not much head. Light bodied like many sour Belgian beers. Immediate lactic flavor with astringency and berry flavors like chewing on crab apples or choke cherries - in a good way. The aroma continued to please until the beer was finished. Nothing like any Christmas or winter beer I’ve ever had - almost more thirst-quenchingly summery. Definitely not what I expected, but enjoyable anyway.

33 cl bottle, bottled / ’bbe’ ? Pale red, reminiscent of a raspberry lambic. Fine but very dense turbidity, small frothy head. Aroma: dry, woody, sour, fruity - plums (a dash of sweet, rich cake with plum filling my mother sometimes makes); again some likeness to lambic. Sour-sweetish, light fruity taste with a dry, woody, sour-bitter finish giving off fruit stone notes. Smooth and prickling body.

Darker, hazy, almost fruit juice color. Pineapple juice aroma, more so than any other beer I've ever had. Very fizzy, aggressive palate--too aggressive? Yet, a surprisingly dull flavor. A tingle of interest, but no cigar. (bottle at GBBF 2003)

Bottle - At Brugs Beertje, Bruges, Belgium Rocky, white head. Fair lace. Sparkling, amber body. Fruity, lightly yeasty aroma. Lightly sweet, moderately bitter initial flavour. Lighty bitter, finish. I like this fruit beer.