Beersel #1
Odonata Beer Company

On tap at City Beer in SF.

Pours and awesome hazy bright yellow/golden color with a small white head.

Intense lemony sour aroma. Damn this one is citric.

Flavor is also very tart and almost all citrus. Lemon, orange, grapefruit, and sour apple. Some mild acetic notes. Comes together extremely well.

Great intense acidity on the palate. Sharp and biting, yet very crisp and refreshing even, like an awesome lemonade without the sweetness.

Overall, this is excellent. I think I like it better than Beatification. Odonata is brewing some great stuff. If they start bottling more, they're going to be hype city.

On tap at City Beer Store. Hazy blond body with a small white cap that quickly dissipates almost entirely. The aroma is very lactic and tart, very lemony - both peel and zest. Funk is restraned. Similar on the palate, gueuze-like, lemony and juicy with a faint bready backbone. It's very lactic, clean and dry, not necessarily complex but very flavorful. Nice stuff from a promising new brewery.

On tap at City Beer Store.
Pours a glowing yellow color with a slight haze and very short head (possibly due to its very cold presentation). Minimal lacing.

Smell is slightly solventy with a bit of vinegar and lactic sourness. Other than that, there's a bit of a hay smell coming through with a strong scent of lemon oil.

Flavor is pretty nice. Lots of unrestrained lemon sourness with some underripe pineapple or passion fruit flavors taking the back seat. Acetic and lactic sourness is not as up front as in this beer's sister, Rosa, but still present in a big way; the pucker accumulates as you drain your glass. Nicely dry, but without too much funk from the brett that this beer apparently contains (see previous reviews).

Light bodied with an effervescent carbonation made up of small bubbles. Puckeringly sour with slight astringency, there is a lasting mouth coat on here that will leave the taste on your tongue for a lot longer than it takes to finish your beer.

Overall, I was in no rush to finish my glass, and it stuck around for quite a while. That said, it's a sour; you aren't supposed to slam this one. And it's a relatively nice sour at that. I do feel, however, that this lacked a bit of the grace that similar, more well-known, examples of this style possess (I'm looking at you Temptation and Beatification).

Tap, City Beer Store. Rosa is still quite fresh in my mind, so I can compare the two fairly easily. Pours a hazy pale yellow-orange with a very small head that dissipates quickly. The aroma is lemons, light funk, grapes, clean grain and oak. The flavor is rather sour, though not up to Rosa, with lemons, limes, grapefruit rind and sour grapes. The brett is mild but more forward than R. Feel is quite dry with less pucker than R. So, Beersel seems brettier and less tart than R. The brett is still relatively mild with some light funk chiming in and a drier feel. Excellent sour. Odonata makes great beer.

On tap at City Beer Store My Sour Valentine event on 2/11/10.

Pours a cloudy, hazy yellow/gold color, very little carbonation or head retention.

Smell is very gratifying. Nice sour, vinegary tartness, similar to Beatification.

Intensely sour flavor, very puckering, sets off the salivary glands in a big way. Nice lemony, vinegar sour bite, but I think I detected a smidge of pine in there somewhere too.

Nice feel on the tongue, goes down very smoothly for me.

Overall a really nice surprise from Odonata. These guys seem to have something figured out. It was a bit of a toss up for me between the Beersel and Rosa on Thursday night, but both are outstanding sour additions to the beer community.

On tap at Triple Rock during Sour Monday 2/8/2010

Pours hazy and dark yellow with enough head and some decent lacing and retention.

Aroma is of a sour brune (lactic, malty, and a hint funky with a touch of vinegar).

Flavor is great. Floral comes to mind with tons of flavors contributed by the bugs. I get passion fruit, grape, a little vinegar, some barnyard type of stuff, and some lemon. The beer is plenty sour and dry. Picture Beatification meets Temptation.

Body is thin and dry as it should be. Very drinkable if you like the mouth puckering quality. If you dont then you may rate the drinkability a bit lower.