“Light, fruity and champagne-like. Fantôme brews special seasonal beers, never repeating a recipe from year to year. This one is for spring.”
We Love the time and effort that goes in to bottling these type of beers. The cap is popped then uncorked and served in to a Trappist tulip. Gorgeous candy red centre that works to amber edges. The pour generates a big fluffy three finger head that settles to a thick overlay, leaving a decent lace trail sticking to the glass.
The trademark funky barnyard aroma is offering really good uplift on the nose. Heady notes of horse blanket, tart citrus, angostura bitters, clove and freshly cracked black pepper mingle with a subtle dry and dusty character that provides another layer of earthy complexity. Definitely getting some herbal undertones in here too. Kind of sweet and floral infused honey malt structure filling it out. Lovely stuff….very intricate.
Quite an interesting texture. It’s all upfront, the rush of acidity, the frothy Co2 and the warmth from the 8% ABV come on strong then mellows in to a malty and slightly dry back palate.
Same kind of deal in flavour. We get the funky and tart citrus, herbal tones, black pepper and other earthy Asian spices on the fore. That black pepper spiciness really prevails, setting up the long dry bitterness until the close. Somewhat of a doughy/bready malt base coming through the mid but it tapers off and clears the way for the dry and bitter finish to hang around on a length.
We can see these guys (like plenty of others in Europe) are still adamant on sticking to the green bottle! We’re happy ours isn’t skunked but furthermore it tasted lovely and fresh, full on with the citrus funk, spicy, musty and herbal. Not overly boozy either, quite pleasant to drink. A delicious Wallonian-style classic.