Fantome is nothing to boo! Foodery is!

Some beers are better than others. Yuengling Lager is better than Sam Adams Lager. Magic Hat #9 is better than Lowenbrau. Warm, salty piss is better than Budweiser (a fair analogy, since neither are actually beer).

Other beers are better than most - Saison Dupont, Guinness (don't let its bandwagon popularity turn you off - a good pint of the black stuff is still a treat), most of the stuff I've had from Dogfish Head. And then there are beers that are just on a level of their own - Dupont's Biere de Miel, for example, and possibly DFH's Theobroma (more testing required).

And then there's Fantome. At $24 for a 750ml bottle from the Foodery, I was fully prepared to be let down. Instead, I was elated. A note about pricing - I split the cost with my buddy Len of Philabeer, and from what I hear $24 at the Foodery translates to about $14 anywhere else. But more on the Foodery in a bit. Fantome turned out to be the kind of beer that changes my perception of a genre. It declares itself a saison, but it's unlike any other saison I've tasted. It had all the hop presence of a well-crafted farmhouse ale with just enough sour cheese funk to make my nipples hard. I think this was mostly because I'm a little lactarded and my body was fooled into bracing for the inevitable consequence of dairy consumption, but I was also pretty excited.

This was one of those beers where I regretted not having a second bottle handy the moment I took my first sip, and you should definitely spook up a bottle of it for yourself as soon as possible. See what I did there? Fantome - spook? HA! There was a lot going on in the glass, but it was blended and balanced perfectly. This could be a great introduction to the sour beer world, a stepping stone to training your palette for things like Oude Gueuze and some of the other exceptionally tart lambics. But to think of this beer solely as training wheels would be foolish, like thinking of Florida as anything other than America's Penis or believing the New York Yankees don't have sex with one another before, during, and after their games. Let's just say that dugout floor alternates between sticky and slippery with alarming alacrity.

As for the Foodery, this was my first trip there and I hope never to return. After all the hype I've heard, I was expecting to be blown away. I was not. They have a decent selection, but they are not the Beer Mecca people make them out to be. Realistically, they're about on-par with my local Wegmans but about 50% more expensive. Yippee. I was at the Northern Liberties location, but I don't think it would be much different at the original. The only reason to be impressed by the Foodery is if you've never been to a good beer store. Try Abe's in Bethlehem or State Line down in Maryland if you want to know what a true Beer Mecca looks like. Shit, just try a Wegman's. Anything but Foodery. Some of my most extreme beer geek friends are actively boycotting the Foodery, which is a good way to encourage lower prices and something I support fully. I also just like the idea of boycotting things in general, so take me with a grain of salt. Then boycott salt and grains in general. What have they done for you lately? UP WITH THE WORKING CLASS!

But in all honesty - serious beer nerds need to visit State Line. I wanted to weep the first time I went there. Weep and set up a small living space in their back room. Here's the link to their Belgian selections. If you click that link, you'll see 100 varieties of beer, arranged alphabetically and cutting off at Corsendonk. Care to guess how many hundreds of varieties they have? And remember, that's just their Belgian selection. They've also got just as much wine variety, if not more, in case you are a pussy.

And if you go, tell them Man Vs. Beer sent you. They'll have no idea what you're talking about. Then buy a bottle of Fantome for $16 and tell the Foodery to eat its own ass.