Fantôme Printemps

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

Bottled. dark orange hazy appearance with a fluffy white head. Intense and quite beautiful aroma mango, bloodoranges, quantalope melon, over-riped peasrs and lemon with a funky yeasty undertone with notes of flowers and spices. very fruity and concentraded flavour of flowers, oranges, honey, mango and apricot with a dryish finish of funky yeast, oranges, leaves, fudge and mild spices. Spanking good stuff!!!

This is a nice beer for a warm evening. Printemps is a sweet, flowery saison. The aroma is light hops with light yeast and fresh flowers. Flavor is on the sweet side, more yeast, light spices, and sweet fruit. One of th sweetest saisons I have had. Very tall but short lived white head, and a cloudy gold beer. Well balanced and very drinkable.

Bottle. Cork marked 086/47704. Pours with a very pale yellow body with a fluffy white head. Aroma has light skunk and grass followed by lemon, flowers, vanilla, green pepper kernels, wormwood, anise and orange peel. Taste is lemon, citrus tartness, hay and a lightly spicy-herbal finish. Citrus soda like. Tingly bubbles and dry mouthfeel.

Bottle. Somewhat hazy amber beer with an off-white head. Light hay, honey, and malt aroma. Tart, light sour, lemon, and green apple flavor with hay and light malt. Medium bodied. Sourness lingers with a light acetic note, lemon, and hay. Great balance. Very refreshing.

Sampled at le Mondial de la bière 2005. Slightly dark orange / brown pour with a ring of offwhite lace. Aroma and flavor of perfume, barnyard and spices, the finish is bitter. Light to medium body, creamy texture.

75cl bottle. Another overrated Fantome. I really wonder why everybody rate this stuff so enormously high. Just taste it and don’t let the high ratings impress you. Just be honest... And to be honest, I think this one is not that worse, I had worse of this brewery. I think they just have fun adding a lot of ingredients forget it all when they start with the next batch. Well at least it works for the major part of Ratebeer. :-P That might be an art as well. Some bonuspoints for that.
Aroma has yeast, citrus and some malts. Orange milky coloured with loads of yeast flunks. Almost no lace. Taste is sweet with some sourness and a hint of lactics. Yeast and some fruitiness. Most likely loads of calories.

In short: A very wild and rather tart blonde Saison. Complex and mega-refreshing
How: Bottle 750ml. Age unknown (but tasted fresh and lively). Sent to me by ygtbsm94, thanks a lot Brad
The look: Cloudy yellow body topped by a medium white head
In long: The nose is barnyard, flower petals and cheese. Oh man I’m in for a treat!!! Taste of bubbles gum, green apples, white cheese, apricots, mangos, flower petals juice, super nice tartness. Very wild. Full body. Chewy doughy mouthfeel. This bottle really tasted like a cross between a good batch of Fantôme Saison and a good batch of Fantôme Pissenlit. The type of quality batches Fantôme were putting out 3-4 years ago. Either this bottle was old or Fantôme Printemps is the new Fantôme Pissenlit. Given Fantôme less-than-inconsistent releases I’m not sure that my next Printemps bottle will be half as good as this one. One thing for it wont’t be twice as good, because if it is I’ll have to hack the site to enter my rating.

Fruity nose, hazy, murky apricot colour, with a small cream head. Flavours of apple, pear, lemon and yeast? Sweet, but not funky as would be expected from this brewer. Light bodied, spritzy. Good stuff nevertheless! Thanks IPFreely!