Westvleteren 12

Brewed by Westvleteren Abdij St. Sixtus
Style: Abt/Quadrupel
Westvleteren, Belgium

Serve in Trappist glass

My last Trappist Beer finally... but the best, worth wating for..got a giftbox, with help of a good friend in Belgium :) It really was good aroma, and soooo smooooooth. Good taste, but to much in mouth could give a tast of alcohol....but reasonable drinking, best beer ever tasted :-)

Cap reads 20.05.14 making this born on 5/20/2011 I believe. Huge thanks to a kind soul on another forum for sending this to me! Poured into a chimay goblet and allowed to warm up for a while. A - Great dark brown body that allows a bit of light to pass through. There is a little bit of sediment that settled at the bottom of the glass. Fantastic off white/light khaki head that sticks around forever. Really creamy and tight bubbling with some moderate lacing and retention. S - Loads of dark candied/caramelized fruits. Figs, prunes, plums, raisins etc. This is followed by a great spice note and some light yeast and alcohol. Extremely well balanced. T - Follows the nose. Candied dark fruits, caramel, and then the spices. The aftertaste is of Belgian yeast. The flavor is so well balanced and delicious. I could down pint after pint of this stuff. The alcohol is not noticeable at all. M - Creamy, medium mouth feel with just the right amount of carbonation. It coats your mouth but doesn’t stick around for too long. Fantastic. O - I actually wanted to not like this beer as much as I did. I know it has a great deal of hype and I figured since I invested $0 on the bottle I would be going into it unbiased. It blew me away though. This is an excellent quadrupel and its worthy of its high ranking. I enjoyed it much more than the easier to find examples, and the only other quad that I have had that surpassed this was pannepot grand reserva.

Flaske 0,33l på Heeren van Liedekercke i Denderleew 1 Mai 2011. Dyprød / sort. Klar. Pent kremaktig skum som varer. Skummet henger på glasset. Deilig krydder & fruktaroma. Godt integrerte smaker. Ikke påtrengende - men her er det mye. Mørk frukt, sjokolade. Lang ettersmak med innslag av lakris. Litt tørr bitterhet i ettersmaken. Litt bunnfall. Bedre blir det neppe!

Huge thanks to Saarlander for giving me the chance to finally try this beer. This pours a murky dark brown color with a thin frothy head on top. There’s not really much lace left on the glass here. The aroma is nice, consisting of rich dark fruit and yeast with caramel, nuts, and perhaps light clove. The first thing I noticed while drinking this, is it’s incredibly smooth going down. There is no trace of the 10.2% abv whatsoever. This beer is quite good. The body is perfect; it’s very rich but with soft flavors. Vanilla is added here with soft dark fruit and Belgian yeast, creamy caramel, raisin, and bread pudding. This is obviously worth it’s high praise and is a high abv beer you can drink and wonder where the glass went. With that said, I’m not completely convinced it’s any better than Rochefort 10 or even St. Bernardus. I don’t know, it’s definitely not worse though. Distribution is a factor. Hopefully sometime down the road I’ll get another crack at this one. Thanks Aaron!

What am I even supposed to say? I mean, sure - it’s the best thing I’ve had. But like the bartender said, it’s not so much better than Roche 10... it’s just rarer. It’s an amazing taste - sour, sweet, and bitter all in the same sip at different intervals. There’s a world of taste too complex for me to judge properly after one try. The real problem is, where do you go from here? Once you’ve tasted the best beer in the world, will reality begin to dull? Will I feel life, excitement and flavour in the ordinary beers readily at my disposal? It may take a while... In any case, this one is for you Lu - a taste of lucid happiness, a celebration.

Tasted bottle from 2009. Pours clear brown. Sweet aroma of malts, dates, fruits. Taste is about the same, quite complex, I’m definitely missing some of the flavours here but I’m to eager to taste some more to be able to properly finish this rating. Verrry nice!

Worth of the hype? Yes and no. Perhaps the best quad in the world, fig, clove, chocolate tones, smooth and solid. I prefer one other quad, however, this is worth the buzz. My only qualm is that I had this on two occasions, and the two were night and day flavor profile-wise. They were both exceptional however.

roasty, coffee, basement aromas, brown, hazy, brown foam, light sweetness, lightly bitter, very very balanced, full body, creamy, average carbonation, long finish, slightly bitter finish,