Looking for Westvleteren 12

I read recently they were selling Westvleteren 12 in the US. At least they are doing it more then they did before. Unfortunately Maryland laws suck and they won't ship it here.

Has anyone seen it in stores where you live? If you see it in a near by state let me know, I'll drive for it.

Does anyone want to buy it for me?! I mean I'll pay you of course.

Or I'm down with a trade. My liquor store always has an abundance of Dogfish head brews.


Here's where it sells
http://www.westvleteren12.com/Purchase_Westvleteren_12.html

The Abbey of Sint Sixtus only sells directly to customers on certain days. They also sell it only under the condition that it won't be resold. It happens, of course, but you'll find very few commercial places that will carry it because they would have to get it from third party sources. Who knows how they handle the beer anyway. Even in Belgium, it's hard to find commercially. When I was younger, I was in Leuven and we were asking at the bars where to get it. It was a wild goose chase. One place said a place across town had it, you go there and they send you to the other side of town. The group I was with included native Europeans as well so I don't think it was just the "special American treatment".

I did finally get it through a friend of mine in Germany who made the drive to pick up cases directly from the abbey. My buddy was nice enough to let me try a bottle of each. I liked the Westvleteran 8 the best. I honestly believe the hype around Westy is just because it's so rare. I had it fresh, directly from the brewery and I much prefer Saint Bernardus Abt 12. I later found out Saint Bernardus actually brewed Westvleteran's recipes for close to 50 years. As a disappointing side note, I've been to the abbey but missed their tasting room hours by 10 minutes. It's a couple hundred yards walk from the parking lot to the tasting room (at least where I parked), right when I pulled the door to discover it was locked, the sky opened up and I was completely soaked for the drive back to Brugges (where I was staying that trip). The saving grace to the ~2 hour trip is that we stopped at De Dolle (!) which is one of my favorite breweries. They had what must have been their teenage sons (youngest was probably 10) making mixed packs and pouring beer at the bar.

Here's a link to their reservation page that my buddy used to get cases. http://www.sintsixtus.be/eng/brouwerijactueel.htm . If you know someone out there maybe they could send you a few bottles. Keep looking for it, but I honestly believe you're not missing much and St. Bernardus is just as good if not better (if not an identical recipe).

I don't believe Shelton brothers is distributing until September.

sfrisby said:

I don't believe Shelton brothers is distributing until September.

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Yep http://beerpulse.com/2012/06/westvleteren-xii-u-s-wide-launch-to-be-delayed-until-september/

Depending on what you want to trade. I got a Westy 12. Just have to be unique beer i'll trade. Something unique and different and of course i cant get in my area PM me what you want to trade with.

sfrisby said:

I don't believe Shelton brothers is distributing until September.

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this.

but they just did a special release of fewer that 1500 cases to people who attended The Festival ([URL="The Festival"]http://www.the-festival.us/a-westvleteren-xii-purchase-update/[/URL]), which i and apparently less than 2000 people attended. the release was authorized by the abbey to quench a small part of the nations thirst for the amazing beer.

as great as the beer is, trying a flight of lambics brewed by Cantillon, fresh from the barrel and making your own blends kindof topped it.

September has come and gone. I can't find any recent articles online. Was Westvleteren 12 ever released here? If not, does anyone know how far it has been pushed?

Only update I can find is here: http://beeradvocate.com/community/threads/status-of-westvleteren-xii-u-s-release.38741/

Allegedly, according to some MA liquor store's word (hearsay if you ask me), release is delayed until November.

I got a six pack as part of a prize package. Brought four bottles to my brew club meeting to share; keeping the other two for some special occasion down the road.

So you just made an account to search "westvleteren 12" and spam links to your little shop that sells rare beer bought in bad faith*, and then questionably handled thereafter to an unsuspecting public at an absurd markup?

Go away. We don't even want you as a supporting vendor, which is what you'd have to be to promote your business.


*From a brewery that explicitly requires you to agree NOT to resell it in order to even remove it from the brewery premises

daksin said:

So you just made an account to search "westvleteren 12" and spam links to your little shop that sells rare beer bought in bad faith*, and then questionably handled thereafter to an unsuspecting public at an absurd markup?

Go away. We don't even want you as a supporting vendor, which is what you'd have to be to promote your business.


*From a brewery that explicitly requires you to agree NOT to resell it in order to even remove it from the brewery premises

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Good call. Two posts, identical text in two different threads. Question is, is that a violation of the rules? Is that a spam profile?

If the threads were current, it would be more difficult to catch, but this one hasn't been posted in for six months. But hey I'm not a mod, but sometimes a stern word's all that's needed.

Beerlover1 said:

WORDS

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Just report it as spam. The mods do a pretty good job of cleaning this stuff up.