Fantome Perceptions

It seemed to be in all the usual tourist beer shops in Brussels and Bruges.

 

The bottle shop I try to frequent won't stock anything but the saison. I was told QC is to unpredictable to purchase the beer...in the tourist bottle shops in Brussels Fantome is more expensive then Cantillon so why would I buy it?

 

I made almost all of my beer purchases last week at Carrefour supermarkets in Belgium - amoungst other purchases, I stocked up on bottles of Rochefort 10 for 1,65€ each. I saw Fantome on the shelves but didn't purchase.

 

What Carrefour stocks Fantôme?

 

I am pretty sure I saw one of their beers at the Carrefour in the old town part of Bruges last week. There is a chance I might be confusing Carrefour with another store however, I visited several shops during the same time period.

 

Fantome's considered a bit of a rarity. Not a rock star, or (worse) something in the category of (let's not name names here) brewers that are aimed mainly at the export market. I think it still has some credibility as a classically quirky Ardennes producer, even though few of those would even make it to Bruges, let alone a Carrefour with a particularly rockin' selection.

 

bier temple in brussels had a lot of fantome bottles, including a sante and magic ghost. also, the tulip glass

 

I photoed this at a tourist beer shop near the Grand Palace in Brussels:

 

asking what Belgians think about one of their beer is like stoping an Asian person on the street and asking for their opinion on good Chinese restaurants.
when you go to Belgium and the Netherlands, you quickly learn that there are more beer geeks per capita in the US than there are in those countries.
Jupiler and Palm run amuck in Belgium. locals love drinking cold Tom Collins-sized glasses of draught and re-ordering frequently. when you go to cities like Antwerp, you're luckier because La Chouffe Blonde and De Koninck are more readily available on tap. in Maastricht, you feel like a lunatic for not wanting to drink Brand. man, they love their pilsners.

Anyways, Fantome is what it is. Dany's loved and coveted around the world, so if/what they drink in Belgium is unimportant. i went to a Brussels restaurant. Found a bottle of Saison Fantome on the menu. was bloody happy. the waitress gave me a frowny face and said there's something wrong with that beer and she hates it. she opened the bottle and i took a smell. lovely bubblegum and mushroom came out. i let her try some and the frown grew. i polished off that bottle. absolutely amazing.

Westy 12 is also similar. it's not like Belgians run around coveting it or drinking it all the time. i'd suggest that 90+% of the population's never tried it and isn't interested.

in the end: to each his own.

 

atomeyes is right. Though I would contest the last point, about Westvleteren.

True, 90+% of the population never tried it, and most people don't go around drinking it all the time, but there is a bit of a buzz among beer "amateurs" (as in, the people who drink more than just Stella and Leffe but who probably don't know who Cantillon are or what an Imperial Stout is). It's the one name they like to brag about ("It's the best beer in the world, you know! I have two crates in my cellar! Me and some friends go to Westvleteren every year!"), and it does have a bit of a mythical status with that part of the population. Even those those who don't drink beer at all know the name, and in my town alone there's at least three bars that sell all three Westvleterens.

On the other hand: Fantôme? Unknown. Ask anyone of the aforementioned amateurs if they know Fantôme, and 9 times out of 10, they won't have heard of it. Let's not even mention the non-drinking crowd. It is also relatively hard to find. I have never, ever seen Fantôme beers in a supermarket, and I would be shocked if I did. Specialized stores occasionally have some, but even then you have to be lucky.
I'm guessing they have them in Brussels because of tourists, but not because of Belgians.

So to answer your question: Belgians don't think about Fantôme or their brewing philosophy. Belgians barely know about Fantôme. Heck, I myself only picked up my first bottles of Fantôme because I'd read about it on some American website...

 

I was going to say, well, they do get name-checked on bierbel from time to time.... but not that much of late!

 

That's the bier temple.

 

i'm also betting that I've been to Soy more than 98% of Belgians have.

i really wanted to visit the brewery and wanted to go to the underrated southern parts of Belgium

 

I stayed with two extreme Belgian (Belgian) beer fans when I was in Ghent, both of whom easily knew more about Belgian beer than I ever will. These guys would go to their cellars and pull out old bottles of obscure Rodenbach beers, aged Struise Black Damnations, old Westvleteren 12 vintages, etc.

Neither seemed aware of Fantome.

 

The south of Belgium .... great, nice breweries there so small that the most are not in the popular list of the Belgians.

Had once a beer with honey and found another brewery that just bottles enough to sell in his little bar ... never goes a bottle out of his bar... i fell in love with this place...

 

if you go to Fantome, you will understand the charm even more.
it's basically a farmhouse. i'm guessing that the whole place is 3000 sq feet? (Dany, correct me if i'm wrong).
Dany gets his friends in town to help him out with the whole process. it is as down to earth as one can imagine.

Fantome picked up legendary status via exports. it definitely isn't a big local beer, but the saison is still quite lovely.

 

I suppose my only question would be... has the smoky band-aid character so prevalent in recent batches started to subside at all, or is that just now part of the character? Because the Saison went from being in my top two or three favorite beers to being something I've actively avoided buying after a litany of bad experiences. Or did I just get a bit unlucky and there's been plenty of good batches in with the bad?

 

Every bottle I have had tastes like cigarettes. Maybe we were getting the same batch lol

 

thats why they export so much and sell so little in Belgium we have to get the crapp out of Belgium