Trappist Westvleteren

[Gregg]

A few people have PM'd me about availability of Trappist Westvleteren 12's. If you shoot me a PM, I can put you in contact with an overseas supplier. He is currently charging $180 for 12 shipped to the US, not sure about the other 2 variates.

 

[denverdog]

Thanks for the info Gregg. As odd as it sounds, ebay actually has a better deal on westy right now. LINK - $119 shipped for 6 Westy 12

 

[Satchmo]

Is it $180 for 12 Westy 12's? Just double checking the Rocky Mountain math

 

[denverdog]

Is it $180 for 12 Westy 12's? Just double checking the Rocky Mountain math

Cot Deyam. I am however heavily medicated at the moment and I have never been accused of reading all that well. GTFO me.

 

[NullSmurf]

You guys are nuts!

 

[Gregg]

Yes, it is for half of a case (12 bottles). I make nothing from it, and he doesn't even give me a discount, but I have dealt with him twice already in the past, and he is top notch. He must spend 30 bucks just on packing materials, and he stays in constant contact.

 

[Satchmo]

You guys are nuts!

Hey Bruce, I'll split with ya. Got you down @ $90 for a six pack

I'm sure this is tasty stuff, but I think I'd rather have a couple bottles of rum or tequilla.

 

[MX]

Saint Sixtus

Here ya go fellas, this will tell you all about it.

The Abby is about 90 min away from my house. I am trying to make a run up there soon, but I am waiting on the blond. Please to not blow up my box with PM's as soon as I get up there I will let you guys know, then we can work something out. I am sure it will be a helluva lot less than $180 a 12 pack. That is nuts! You are only suposed to get 2 cases per car, and I am going to stick with those rules, but I promise, as soon as I can get up there I will.

Tim

 

[Gregg]

Yeah, thats the thing. They have a limit on how much you can get, and you are paying overseas shipping with that price. I mean, people have no problem dropping a lot more then $90 on a bottle of wine, and I would argue that this particular beer is more complex, more flavorful, pairs better with foods, etc.

 

[gregm]

Not to mention the shipping originating from Europe is so much more expensive than if a US citizen were send the same package in reverse.

I wish I lived 90 minutes from the Abbey. it's gotta be one hell of a ride home though and a sheer test of willpower to not pop a Westy for 90 minutes after getting 2 cases.

 

[amateuraficionado]

So am I to understand that the only place you can legally buy this actually at the abbey?

 

[smellysell]

Saint Sixtus

Here ya go fellas, this will tell you all about it.

The Abby is about 90 min away from my house. I am trying to make a run up there soon, but I am waiting on the blond. Please to not blow up my box with PM's as soon as I get up there I will let you guys know, then we can work something out. I am sure it will be a helluva lot less than $180 a 12 pack. That is nuts! You are only suposed to get 2 cases per car, and I am going to stick with those rules, but I promise, as soon as I can get up there I will.

Tim

PM sent... :whistling: :sign:

So am I to understand that the only place you can legally buy this actually at the abbey?

I'm not sure about the legality of it, but they don't distribute at all and anything bought from anywhere but the Abbey is "gray market", and I believe you have to agree not to resell it when you buy it at the Abbey, but I'm not sure.

 

[denverdog]

Bus beat me to it, E6!

So am I to understand that the only place you can legally buy this actually at the abbey?

 

[tsmckenney]

After the $180 12 packs of beer, and the $300 boxes of Sharks, where do you guys find money for the prostitutes?

 

[Gregg]

So am I to understand that the only place you can legally buy this actually at the abbey?

Yes, that is correct.

 

[denverdog]

So am I to understand that the only place you can legally buy this actually at the abbey?

Yes, that is correct.

I don't think you are breaking a law if you buy it somewhere else, but like Justin said you are buying from an unauthorized seller on a grey market. Many high profile beer bars like Hop Leaf and The Map Room in Chicago have a small supply that they sell from time to time.

 

[MX]

Anyone that that gets the beer from the abby, or the gift store that is run by the abby, has to agree not to sell it. So if someone is selling it they are breaking a verbal contract with a Monk.....no that just seems like way to much bad karma.

But if I were to get some, and gift it out for good friends to enjoy, well that is different, right?

Tim

Saint Sixtus

Here ya go fellas, this will tell you all about it.

The Abby is about 90 min away from my house. I am trying to make a run up there soon, but I am waiting on the blond. Please to not blow up my box with PM's as soon as I get up there I will let you guys know, then we can work something out. I am sure it will be a helluva lot less than $180 a 12 pack. That is nuts! You are only suposed to get 2 cases per car, and I am going to stick with those rules, but I promise, as soon as I can get up there I will.

Tim

PM sent... :whistling: :sign:

So am I to understand that the only place you can legally buy this actually at the abbey?

I'm not sure about the legality of it, but they don't distribute at all and anything bought from anywhere but the Abbey is "gray market", and I believe you have to agree not to resell it when you buy it at the Abbey, but I'm not sure.

well Justin, you were tops on my list until I ended up with the Rams in the Blind Draw.. :laugh: :sign: :whistling:

But really, as soon as I can find time to make the drive I will.

Tiim

 

[Gregg]

So am I to understand that the only place you can legally buy this actually at the abbey?

Yes, that is correct.

I don't think you are breaking a law if you buy it somewhere else, but like Justin said you are buying from an unauthorized seller on a grey market. Many high profile beer bars like Hop Leaf and The Map Room in Chicago have a small supply that they sell from time to time.

No, of course you aren't. But they have sent out cease and desist orders for retailers.

Trappist Command: Thou Shalt Not Buy Too Much of Our Beer

WESTVLETEREN, Belgium -- The Trappist monks at St. Sixtus monastery have taken vows against riches, sex and eating red meat. They speak only when necessary. But you can call them on their beer phone.
[westvleteren beer] Cassandra Vinograd

Monks have been brewing Westvleteren beer at this remote spot near the French border since 1839. Their brew, offered in strengths up to 10.2% alcohol by volume, is among the most highly prized in the world. In bars from Brussels to Boston, and online, it sells for more than $15 for an 11-ounce bottle -- 10 times what the monks ask -- if you can get it.

For the 26 monks at St. Sixtus, however, success has brought a spiritual hangover as they fight to keep an insatiable market in tune with their life of contemplation.

The monks are doing their best to resist getting bigger. They don't advertise and don't put labels on their bottles. They haven't increased production since 1946. They sell only from their front gate. You have to make an appointment and there's a limit: two, 24-bottle cases a month. Because scarcity has created a high-priced gray market online, the monks search the net for resellers and try to get them to stop.

"We sell beer to live, and not vice versa," says Brother Joris, the white-robed brewery director. Beer lovers, however, seem to live for Westvleteren.

When Jill Nachtman, an American living in Zurich, wanted a taste recently, she called the hot line everybody calls the beer phone. After an hour of busy signals, she finally got through and booked a time. She drove 16 hours to pick up her beer. "If you factor in gas, hotel -- and the beer -- I spent $20 a bottle," she says.

Until the monks installed a new switchboard and set up a system for appointments two years ago, the local phone network would sometimes crash under the weight of calls for Westvleteren. Cars lined up for miles along the flat one-lane country road that leads to the red brick monastery, as people waited to pick up their beer.

"This beer is addictive, like chocolate," said Luc Lannoo, an unemployed, 36-year-old Belgian from Ghent, about an hour away, as he loaded two cases of Westvleteren into his car at the St. Sixtus gate one morning. "I have to come every month."

Two American Web sites, Rate Beer and Beer Advocate, rank the strongest of Westvleteren's three products, a dark creamy beer known as "the 12," best in the world, ahead of beers including Sweden's Närke Kaggen Stormaktsporter and Minnesota's Surly Darkness. "No question, it is the holy grail of beers," says Remi Johnson, manager of the Publick House, a Boston bar that has Westvleteren on its menu but rarely in stock.

Some beer lovers say the excitement over Westvleteren is hype born of scarcity. "It's a very good beer," says Jef van den Steen, a brewer and author of a book on Trappist monks and their beer published in French and Dutch. "But it reminds me of the movie star you want to sleep with because she's inaccessible, even if your wife looks just as good."

WSJ's John Miller travels through Belgium in a quest for a small-batch brew made by Trappist monks that's considered by some the best beer in the world.

Thanks to the beer phone, there are no more lines of cars outside the monastery now. But production remains just 60,000 cases per year, while demand is as high as ever. Westvleteren has become almost impossible to find, even in the specialist beer bars of Brussels and local joints around the monastery.

"I keep on asking for beer," says Christophe Colpaert, manager of "Café De Sportsfriend," a bar down the road from the monks. "They barely want to talk to me." On a recent day, a recorded message on the beer phone said St. Sixtus wasn't currently making appointments; the monks were fresh out of beer.

Increasing production is not an option, according to the 47-year-old Brother Joris, who says he abandoned a stressful career in Brussels for St. Sixtus 14 years ago. "It would interfere with our job of being a monk," he says.

Belgian monasteries like St. Sixtus started making beer in the aftermath of the French Revolution, which ended in 1799. The revolt's anti-Catholic purge had destroyed churches and abbeys in France and Belgium. The monks needed cash to rebuild, and beer was lucrative.

Trappist is a nickname for the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, who set up their own order in La Trappe, France, in the 1660s because they thought Cistercian monasteries were becoming too lax. The monks at St. Sixtus sleep in a dormitory and stay silent in the cloisters, though they speak if they need to. Today, though, Trappists are increasingly famous for making good beer.

Seven monasteries (six are Belgian, one, La Trappe, is Dutch) are allowed to label their beer as Trappist. In 1996, they set up an alliance to protect their brand. They retain lawyers in Washington and Brussels ready to sue brewers who try use the word Trappist. Every few months, Brother Joris puts on street clothes and takes the train to Brussels to meet with fellow monks to share sales and business data, and plot strategy.

The monks know their beer has become big business. That's fine with the brothers at Scourmont, the monastery in southern Belgium that makes the Chimay brand found in stores and bars in Europe and the U.S. They've endorsed advertising and exports, and have sales exceeding $50 million a year. They say the jobs they create locally make the business worthy. Other monasteries, which brew names familiar to beer lovers such as Orval, Westmalle and Rochefort, also are happy their businesses are growing to meet demand.

Not so at St. Sixtus. Brother Joris and his fellow monks brew only a few days a month, using a recipe they've kept to themselves for around 170 years.

Two monks handle the brewing. After morning prayer, they mix hot water with malt. They add hops and sugar at noon. After boiling, the mix, sufficient to fill roughly 21,000 bottles, is fermented for up to seven days in a sterilized room. From there the beer is pumped to closed tanks in the basement where it rests for between five weeks and three months. Finally, it is bottled and moved along a conveyor belt into waiting cases. Monks at St. Sixtus used to brew by hand, but nothing in the rules of the order discourages technology, so they've plowed profits into productivity-enhancing equipment. St. Sixtus built its current brewhouse in 1989 with expert advice from the company then known as Artois Breweries.

In the 1980s, the monks even debated whether they should continue making something from which people can get drunk. "There is no dishonor in brewing beer for a living. We are monks of the West: moderation is a key word in our asceticism," says Brother Joris in a separate, email interview. "We decided to stick to our traditional skills instead of breeding rabbits."

The result is a brew with a slightly sweet, heavily alcoholic, fruity aftertaste.

One day recently, the wiry, sandy-haired Brother Joris returned to his office in the monastery after evening prayers. He flipped on his computer and went online to hunt for resellers and ask them to desist. "Most of the time, they agree to withdraw their offer," he says. Last year, St. Sixtus filed a complaint with the government against two companies that refused -- BelgianFood.com, a Web site that sells beer, cheese, chocolate and other niche products, and Beermania, a Brussels beer shop that also sells online. Both offer Westvleteren at around $18 a bottle.

"I'm not making a lot of money and I pay my taxes," says BelgianFood.com owner Bruno Dourcy. "You can only buy two cases at once, you know." Mr. Dourcy makes monthly two-hour car trips from his home in eastern Belgium.

"Seek the Kingdom of God first, and all these things will be given to you," counters Brother Joris, quoting from the Bible, adding that it refers only to things you really need. "So if you can't have it, possibly you do not really need it."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1196283880...s_editors_picks

Mike Burmil, manager of Hop Devil Grill (129 St Marks Pl at Ave A, 212-533-4467), gets a little giggly discussing his newest acquisition—24 bottles of the mythical Westvleteren 12, a Quadrupel Belgian made by the monks at the Abbey of Saint Sixtus, who don’t export their beer and forbid resale. Burmil tells us that since RateBeer called it the best beer on earth in 2005, the small Belgian town where Westvleteren 12 is made has been flooded with tourists, forcing the monks to sell the brew one case at a time, by appointment only. This Holy Grail of suds, known for its fruity notes of dried figs and plums, a silky-smooth mouthfeel and carbonation that Burmil says “dances on your tongue,” will be on sale at Hop Devil starting Saturday 1. Don’t ask him how he got it. “It’s a total cloak-and-dagger mission,” says Burmil. He’s charging $55 for an 11.2-ounce bottle—not a bad price if his claim that he’ll be the only Westvleteren 12 vendor in the country is true.

http://www.timeout.com/newyork/articles/re...582/the-splurge

 

[Carbonless]

Wow, I really want to get ahold of this stuff! I dont know if I trust anyone that doesn't eat red meat though...

 

[amateuraficionado]

So uhhhh.... where can I get a bottle of this again? :whistling: