Fantôme de Noël

Brewed by Brasserie Fantôme
Style: Saison
Soy-Erezée, Belgium

Foam Rangers tasting. Dirty brown with tan head. Nose of sour cherries, chocolate and bready yeasts. Flavor is over spiced, which kind of hurts the body.

Bottle from Dranken Geers. Gent, Begium. Had this 23-03-08 Pours murky dark brown with a fresh spicy and zingy yeasty aroma. The flavour is softened considerably by heavy spicing (maybe too much in this type of beer?) Light-med carbonation pretty good fruity tang to this, ends with a slightly sharp bite.

from Holiday. Brown with a tan fluffy head. Chocolate and Belgian yeast aroma. Rather boring taste with some unpleasant spice.

Pours chestnut brown, thick loudly crackling tan head. Very weighty alcoholic brew. Flavor of tart cherries, strawberry jam, bitter "cherry pits". Thick yeasty "sawdust" texture. Certainly interesting, even though it’s not really my favorite kind of beer.

750 pours deep dark ruby brown with a big French vanilla ice cream colored head that seems to become part of the tulip - solid lace. The aroma is sweet, malty, spicy, and coriander. The flavor has vinous fruits, dark fruits, plums, coriander, hops somewhere in there, vanilla, and all sorts of things going on. I chilled it too long, so will need to drink slowly to warm… Begins to show some of the more musty and earthy notes as it warms. Pepper also starts to show. The palate is rich for the style (even though I taste more of a BSA). Overall, very nice.

750 mL bottle. Dark brown opaque pour with a tan head. Interesting and complex aroma. Lots of fruit - berries and citrus as well as chocolate. Complex taste to complement the aroma. Sour with some sweetness. Lots of cherry. Bitter malt finish. Nice balanced flavor.

750 ml Bottle.

Pours deep brown with a long-lived off-white head. Nice spicy aroma, cut grass, compost pile, yeasts, raisins (in a dry way), cedar balls. Fascinating, deep, challenging flavor with immense house character. At first sip it’s a bit hollow, like as if it’s missing the salt, but this quickly departs and I’m sensing so many levels of flavor in the beer. Spices for certain, pepper, extremely dry with a notable hop close, interesting kelp flavors. Lots of barnyard dust, a bit of cardboard. The mouthfeel could not possibly be more than 7%, you’d think 6%, and it’s going to my head as if on mission to prove otherwise. So drinkable, so smooth.

Over and over the aromas and flavors of this one keep taking me back all different facets of summertime at the homeplace in Minnesota: the compost pile behind the vegetable garden, the growing cornstalks, chickens scratching in the dusty chicken yard, shafts of light filtering through the holes in the roof and broken windowpanes of the old garage with the grease and oil and rusty metal of the half-century-old tractors. Strange perhaps that a Christmas beer would take me there, but I I love it.

Pours to an opaque dark-caramel color. Slightly sweet aroma, some fruit, maybe hay or grass. Many different subtle flavors. Slightly rustic tastes. Mildly hoppy mid tones with a slight bit of sweetness towards the end. Slightly dry, lasting hop finish. Mildly foamy mouthfeel. Once this beer warms up, there’ a lot of character. Lots of subtleties, although not nearly as bold I was was expecting.