#41: Westveteren XII

OK, so still playing catch-up a little…
Picture this scene: It’s Friday night, I am moving the next day, and people are turning up to help us move at 10am, I haven’t packed a single thing, and I have just finished work. What is the best thing I could be doing to prepare?
Yup, you guessed it, drinking some big, strong beers!

…just to clarify, I’m not quite that irresponsible. We had packed up most of the flat, it was just my little room to go… And we were drinking for a good reason! I can hear some of you say, when isn’t it a good reason? Well, Dave had managed to drag us out into town on Wednesday for his last day, but friday was the night of his official leaving drinks. I couldn’t very well say no…?

We started with the Kaimai Brewing Co. Pale Ale NZ Cascade, which was probably best described as well… a little disappointing… But it served its purpose effectively by cooling the fires from our Chicken Boona (one of the best Indian dishes I’ve had in ages!) and wetting the palate for what was to be the main event! The Westevleteren XII, a beer that is on just about every Beer Geek’s bucket list.
For those that don’t know the Westy (the beer – not to be confused with the mullet sporting bogans from West Auckland) is consistently rated as the worlds best beer. A beer that you won’t see on the shelves of any old bottle store.
You see, Westvleteren XII is made in the Trappist Abbey of Saint Sixtus of Westvleteren in the Belgian municipality of Vleteren, where production is very limited due to the traditional methods of brewing used, they have not increased production since 1946. As you can imagine though, since it is such a highly regarded beer, there is an incredibly high demand for it, meaning that getting your hands on this puppy is not a simple as ringing your local supplier. To ensure that everyone gets their fair share, the monks strictly limit the amount that can be sold to visitors when they come to the monastery. They will only sell one crate of 24 bottle per license and number plate, every 60 days. Plus, to secure said crate you must call ahead and reserve your crate by leaving a message on the “Beer-phone” (yes that is actually what they call it), and when you purchase it, you are given a receipt stating that the beer is not to be resold. The monks go through a lot of trouble to make sure that their beer is only sold in two places, the Monastery, and a café/visitors centre across the road. Of course with something so rare and wonderful, there is always someone unscrupulous, looking to make a little cash, and willing to take the risk to sell them onto wholesalers, which I guess you’d call “grey market” beer.

A couple of months ago though, the Westy was released into a Belgian supermarket chain Colryut for the first time ever!
They were sold in gift packs, containg 6x Bottles and 2x Glasses.
For all those who may be worried this as the beginning of the end for such a rare and exclusive beer, fear not! This is by no means the beginning of things to come. It was strictly a needs must situation, the monks did this in order to raise money for some much needed renovations to the monastery.
Generally  all of the beers from the Westvleteren Monastery sold in unlabelled bottles, they choose to put  all of the necessary information on the cap. But for the release into supermarkets, it was decided that labelling the bottles was much more “retail friendly” so for the first time since 1946 Westvleteren not only sold bottles outside of the monastery, but they actually labelled their bottles. What will these crazy monks think of next…

The bottle we had was purchased here in New Zealand, and had all of the labelling on it. Which means that the bottle we had was one that was sold through Colryut, where no-one signed anything to say that they would not sell it on (as far as I know) …making me feel a little better about buying it over here…

Now that you have read a novel on why it is so hard to get this beer, what was it like?
Well, it poured a hazy mahogany colour, with about a finger of tan head. The nose was a little more subdued than I expected; red fruit, banana, candy, hints of caramel and just a little bit of booziness.
It wasn’t overly weighty on the palate, but it was packed full of really well balanced flavours; sweet fruit, a little breadiness and just a light prickle of alcohol around the edges of the tongue, moving into a long lingering finish that just kept developing… It was very complex, and my nose was starting to get a little stuffy, which means I may have missed out on a little bit. Rotten timing to start getting sick huh…?
It was a pretty damned amazing beer …but! I just didn’t feel like it livved up to all the hype, not to mention its $60 price tag!
I just couldn’t get past the fact that while yes, it was a particularly great beer, when I compared the experience to drinking something like the La Trappe Quadrupel, or St. Bernadus Abt 12, which are around $8 a bottle, and pretty great too… It’s just a little hard to justify.

**I have since been told though, that on tap, at the café/visitors centre, it truly does live up to all the hype… Trip to Belgium anyone?

There is actually a very good reason you could say that the St. Bernadus Abt 12 is so similar, but I’ll save that story for another post…

While the Westy was definitely the main event, it was not the only notable beer of the night!
Once we had drained our glasses of every last drop of the Westvleteren we could, we cracked into a bottle of the Dogfish Head Red & White. A whitbeir to which the Dogfish Head boys added Pinot Noir Juice, fermented it, then put it all into Oak Cask (1/2 new oak and 1/2 old Pinot barrels) and then blended it all back together, ready to bottle. Sounds pretty interesting right?
Alas, another beer which just didn’t quite live up to the hype… Don’t get me wrong, well balanced beer, with a nice creamy mouthfeel, and very drinkable …but it just  didn’t taste as interesting as it sounded. I think I was looking for some nice red wine characters which were just nowhere to be found…
I really can’t think of much else to say about it… Good beer, but at $40 a bottle it’s not one I will be going  out of my way to have it again soon…

By this point we had been given the word that it was time to move on, so we made our way down to House on Hood for a glass of the Nogne C!tra, a Collaboration Ale made by the incredible minds at Liberty, in New Plymouth, and Nogne from Norway. Unfortunately on the walk down to the bar, the cold that I had been fighting off (pretty successfully I thought, up until this point…) hit me like a tonne of bricks! And all I can really say is that it was really good, and I wish I could have had more…
But with my head quickly becoming clouded with  a fluey grossness, and an impending move the next day I decided it was probably best to call it quits and leave them to rage the karaoke room by themselves…