Westvleteren 12

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

Aroma of fermented fruits, yeast, dhow and alcohol. Appearance is dark brown with medium white head. Flavor of fermented fruits, raisins, prunes, nuts and warming alcohol. Overall an amazing beer. However I don’t really thinks it lives up to the hype.

300th rating for me, 1600th for Westy 12! Bottle shared by DuffmanSW. Pours a cola brown color with a short light tan head. Aroma is dark fruits, dates and figs, with some very nice buttered toast and all kinds of sugars like honey, caramel, and brown sugar. Flavor is initially buttery fresh croissants...you must be joking, right??? Also caramelized fruits and a nice slight spiciness. Full bodied and smooth with soft carbonation, it melts in your mouth. Didin’t think it would be as good as everybody says, I was wrong.

Beer pours a deep brown with hues of ruddy character coming through. Aroma is incredible with raisin, plums, dates, biscuits, and rich malts. The flavor is much the same. This beer is rather soft, not harsh in any way. Its so dangerously easy to drink. This is a very special beer indeed. I definitely hope to have this one again!

Thanks Cavie for splitting the Number One beer. Poured dark reddish brown with a small head. Ridiculous amount of floaters. Flavors run from ginger to raisin with ever so slight tinge of alcohol. Cinnamon finish.

11.2 oz bottle Best buy 19.03.11 9/21/09 (Courtesy of ygtbsm94)-Pours a reddish brown with a small ring for a head. Aroma of sweetness, fruits, chocolate, and wood. Taste of all the aromas plus so much more goingon but in the best way possible. This is very well balanced and pleasantly smooth beer. This beer KICKS major ASS. Great brew.

Bottle 01/17/2007 shared with and compliments of danielcurtis81, many thanks bud! Pours an elegant dark reddish/brown. Has a fantastic aroma of chocolate, red fruit, slight bourbon barrel. Flavor is mostly the same and all meld perfectly. Very smooth and pleasant mouthfeel and extremely complex, just a little lighter overall than I expected. Top Notch Brew...way to go monks!

12 oz bottle via trade with ygtbsm94. Best by date of 17.01.10. This is the first beer of my wedding week celebration. Appearance is a murky cloudy flat drab brown with no real carbonation and a good amount of sediment. Aromas and flavors of melted milk chocolate, medium/dark fruits like cherry and dark cranberries, some wooden notes. Mouth goes down easy as water with a slight creamy smoothness to it. A wonderful beer for sure. Glad for the opportunity to try this one.

Acquired this legendary beer on eBay. I cannot go into detail on just how great this brew is, as words do not seem to do it proper justice. In my opinion it was simply awesome - in the original, undiluted sense of the word. It left me pondering which little details would refine a beer to this level, the myriads of processes behind its making, and its journey from the abbey to my apartment in Bergen, Norway. The Westvleteren 12 is so balanced and fine-tuned that a traditional dissecting analysis of its contents seems only to disenchant the entirety of the tasting experience. Thus, I can only describe it in the ways of an entity, a combination of flavor, aroma and palate so tightly interwoven that it seemed to represent a different tactile sense altogether. The only keyword that has stuck in my mind in hindsight is: honey. And I like honey a lot. Particularly when it seems to have been gathered on clouds by angelic bees, sifted with stardust and filtered through the Pearly Gates themselves. Am I going over the top here? Indeed. But it feel sooo goood to find a beer worth doing it for. Much praise goes out to the monks of Westvleteren Abdij St. Sixtus; you do seem to have attained a closeness to the Divine after all.