Fantome Saison

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 8 | Mouthfeel: 8 | Flavor: 8 | Overall: 8

75cl courtesy of sebletitje, thanks man! It pours hazy opaque gold with copper hues and it kind of looks like grapefruit juice supporting a thin white head. The modest aroma offers up apricots, peaches and green apples as well as yeasty tartness and a bit of spice accented meadow. The taste begins with modest apricot and peach skin tartness that’s covered with a thin layer of malt sweetness. It stays fruity with light skinned fruits to about midway where a modest yeasty tartness grows and is intertwined with spicy yeastiness. There is a mild amount of hay and flowery wet meadow off in the background. Great refreshing easy drinking brew.

Aroma: 7 | Appearance: 8 | Mouthfeel: 8 | Flavor: 7 | Overall: 8

75cl bottle at Crowbar, Oslo. Pours slightly hazy golden with a big, white head. Yeasty and somewhat fruity aroma with wheat, some acidic notes and hints of hops. Sweet, tasty and quite flavourful with a certain acidity. Nice and refreshing saison.

Aroma: 7 | Appearance: 8 | Mouthfeel: 8 | Flavor: 8 | Overall: 8

Bottle: Poured a clear to orange depending on the sediment, has a thin head. Aroma is musty barn yard like with some fruit berry. The taste continues with the fruit, but also has that refreshing yeast and spice.

Aroma: 7 | Appearance: 8 | Mouthfeel: 8 | Flavor: 8 | Overall: 8

Small white head, fair retention. Hazy straw color, wit like in appearence. Musty, yeasty nose with a pleasent fruitiness, apples, pears. Light bodied, spritzy, lightly acidic. Biscuity malt flavors, hops, spices and yeast are all presented in a delicate manner. Notice some cloviness also. A very delicate brew. Light and refreshing even with its 8% ABV. This brew would probably sneak up on ya after a few glasses. Finish is dry, fruity, spicey. A nice saison.

Aroma: 5 | Appearance: 8 | Mouthfeel: 7 | Flavor: 8 | Overall: 8

really dug this one, and would score it higher if i didnt lose half the bottle upon opening. Farmhouse to a tee, lightly skunked and also slightly sour, fruity, dry, yeasty, with a hint of hops. Dug it, but ended up paying a buck an ounce for what i was able to drink. wasn't THAT good...

Aroma: 9 | Appearance: 8 | Mouthfeel: 8 | Flavor: 9 | Overall: 8

I always cringe when given a saison because I never know exactly what to expect. This is no different. A hazy golden pour with a generous white head. The aroma is earthy, funky, skunky, and pleasantly so. A lot of nature in the aroma. The flavour is just as muddles with a lot of earth tones in the flavour, yeast, dirt, grains, etc. An enjoyable beer if you like saisons.

Aroma: 6 | Appearance: 7 | Mouthfeel: 6 | Flavor: 5 | Overall: 7

Finally get to try this brew.. . Pours with a crazy good head .. . is a murky gold, good haze .. . sour fuk .. . weird .. . odd sourness, some horse .. . did the mexicans get money today too??

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 6 | Mouthfeel: 7 | Flavor: 8 | Overall: 7

OK, my first saison, and this is the winner for the strangest packaging I've ever seen: a cork unconnected to a bottlecap. Pours with a big fluffy head, leaving a lot of real lacing behind (now I know why they call it that!). The head dissipates into a slight cover, but the blizzard of tiny carbonation bubbles doesn't stop. Doesn't smell like anything I can recognize, maybe yeast-is musty smell?-so I rated it on account of it being neither really unpleasant nor pleasant. Has some spicy notes, some yeast, some barnyard(?) tastes. Sour finish (what exactly is lactobacillus, anyway? I recognize that taste in other beers I've had). Golden orange color. Man, that sour flavor lasts for quite a while; it makes you smack your lips quite a bit. I don't know if this was worth the $10, even though I see I paid less than some other people. It's an interesting style; I would like to see a few different examples of it.

Aroma: 6 | Appearance: 6 | Mouthfeel: 6 | Flavor: 7 | Overall: 7

hazy gold with quite a lot of particulates and no head to speak of. I question the integrity of this bottle. Light citrus in the nose with some yeast. Mouthfeel is medium-light, unexpectadly thin but smooth. Refreshing fruit and malt flavors with a tart, spritely finish. Unremarkable and disappointing. MUSIC: Missed the Boat by Modest Mouse

Aroma: 9 | Appearance: 9 | Mouthfeel: 9 | Flavor: 9 | Overall: 9

2007 Release to the US; Sampled February 2008
As I pour this a distinct, interesting, loud, tropical fruit note comes through. The beer is pretty well carbonated as a careful pour easily produces a three-finger thick, pale tan colored head. The beer is a honey color, but shows a lightly hazy, yellow-gold color when held up to the light. Upon closer inspection the amped up tropical fruit note continues; it is perhaps a mix of mango, pineapple and papaya notes. Underneath the dominant tropical fruit note is a dusty, cracker like grain character, some toasty grain notes, a touch of spicy pepper, piquant young ginger, notes of citrus honey and a green, herbal-lemon note with touches of nettle and a substantial lemon character that becomes more noticeable as the beer warms up.

Soft up front, but a fizzy, yet somehow light carbonated froth kicks in towards the middle; strangely this is well carbonated, but the bubble size seems fine enough that it does not make this seem excessively foamy. Only lightly sweet, which seems to reduce the amped up tropical fruit notes from the aroma to an almost equal billing with the rest of the flavor components. This has a very light body to it; it is quite the quaffable brew and drinks way easier than its 8%. This has quite a bit of spiciness to it at times, it can be much more piquant, like black pepper, than is contributed by the carbonation, this note especially lingers in the long finish were it lingers on as a spicy tickle at that back of the throat. There is a very light herbal note here that is slightly green, with an astringency to it as well as a light bitterness and a grassy note, these flavors balance out the noticed tropical fruit flavors that lightly dance around the flavor profile here. A touch of cracker like malt and grassy grain character comes through just a touch towards the finish.

As the beer loses its carbonation the tropical fruit note becomes a bit softer. The second pour of the bottle restores the carbonation and the accompanying tropical fruitiness though. This really is fantastically intriguing; the interplay between tropical fruit, spice and funky herbal notes is quite engaging; somehow, despite the light body and quaffable character, this beer is actually quite contemplative. Apart from the characterful, single yeast strain that is purposefully use in this beer, this is pretty clean. It has not picked up any funkiness yet, but it is still young. As usual, this is a fantastic brew; I am really digging the interplay between tropical fruit and spice found in the flavor.

Sampled May, 2004
Pours a hazy straw color with lots of carbonation that generates a cream colored thick head. A lightly sour/ acidic aroma wafts from my glass, mixed with notes of apple, strawberry, flowers, and a certain mustiness. The taste is lightly sour as well, with some interesting tropical fruit notes, that are picked up by a light sweetness, and some unspecified spicy notes. Typically light bodied, which is just perfect. A soft wonderful beer this time around.

Sampled Sept 7, 2003.
The cork explode from this bottle like a champagne. This beer aroma is one of cider and sweetness, there is a bit of mustyness in the nose as well. A very cloudy straw colored beer that is well carbonated and has a thick off white head. The taste is very complex with competing flavors all over the place; cider, off dry sweetness, an acidity, and yeast character up the wazoo. This beer is just world class, and I love it.

I had this beer with a cheese platter that included some Stilton, and aged funky Brie, a young Brie, a mushroom brie, sharp Irish cheddar, and edam. This beer was able to hold its own with each of these cheeses (though perhaps overpowering the edam). It acted as a nice contrast to each, a palate cleanser so to speak.

This beer can have wildly different flavors depending on the year that one tries it, in the past it has been much more acidic and lacking in the fruit character, but still world class.

Purchased: Plaza Liquors, Tucson AZ