Patrick L.
Yelp
While I've been to some beer bars in my day, rarely have I been so excited as I was before stepping into La Fine Mousse. We were there for the Brasserie Cantillon's Zwanze Day, you see - a much-anticipated simultaneous sour beer release in the world's best beer bars.
This is by no means the kind of place a tourist will just stumble upon. It's located on a small back street of a rather nondescript Paris neighborhood, not really near any of the major mainstream attractions.
The Paris craft beer scene is still relatively new, so beyond the sour beer I was ostensibly there for, I was also curious to check out the beer culture itself. What I found was something uniquely Parisian - a motley crew of punters, hipsters and plain locals - it is first and foremost a locals' scene. I think some of the people in there didn't even know what Zwanze Day was, but they ended up toasting and enjoying the beer as much as anyone else. It was, in some way, a more "authentic" beer scene than going to Zwanze Day in the United States would have shown, with a swelling crowd of obsessive American beer geeks executing beer trades and holding impromptu bottle shares while in line to get into the bar.
It was nothing more than a disparate group of open-minded people enjoying good beer, free of pretension. And for that, it deserves 5 stars. I think some of the locals were mildly annoyed that we had staked out one of the bar's better spots, on the couch. Hey, I get it. I get annoyed when tourists stroll into my local bars and take my favorite spots, too. Sorry - if it's any consolation, we very much enjoyed it! It was a lot of fun....good energy in there.
Before the Cantillon orgy began, we made sure to drink a couple French beers. Most casual observers don't know that France also has a history with beer, not just wine - the farmhouse bieres de garde of northern France are some of the most food-friendly, drinkable beers with character in the world. Of course, I didn't drink one....I went with an odd IPA variant from a brewery I'd not heard of....and my Untappd is acting up, so at the moment, I can't tell you what the hell I drank, sorry. But it was French, I swear.