lot ab 03 24 best before end 2027.

Usual Fantôme presentation, and a usual pour with a golden orange body and some lovely, pillowy head. Head is a bit wispy and does not leave the very best lace.

Hugely noticeable, citrus-like tart, sweetness up front, BUT it all hangs against the backdrop of a classic, phenol, band-aid herbal note. That’s the canvas that the sweeter notes are painted on.

I keep thinking the tart sweetness is going to be orange based, and then it turns into something else that I can’t put my finger on. There’s a carbonic mineral note too, but that’s more classically Fantôme. The sweet, tart, hard-candy based element feels a bit like a soda of some description. As it warms the tart and sweet element backs off a little. Remind me a bit of an orange/lime/lemon soda. Front and mid-palate notes are lively with carbonation and this adds to the soda feel for me.

Apparently brewed with buckwheat which makes some sense of the N City collaboration and the reference to “ukrainian soul”.

As unique as ever, but also with the usual Fantôme signature notes lingering, this is a very hard beer to pin down. I like it a lot, but it’s hard to categorize as initially I thought it was going to be sweet, and then it backed off a bit and came around to something that all seems a lot more familiar. Weird stuff in some ways, but of course it is.