Westvleteren Brewery is the smallest of the six Belgian Trappist breweries, with yearly production around 5,000 hl (4,200 US barrels). In 1831, the prior of the recently founded Catsburg monastery took a few of his monks into the woods of Westvleteren, near the hop fields of Poperinge. There they founded the Trappist Abbey of St Sixtus in Westvleteren. Brewing commenced in 1839, with a strict focus on the support of the monastic life of the community. The monks brew only about once per week, and they remain resolutely noncommercial, showing no interest in increasing their output. By the time they replaced their brewing equipment in 1990, the former brewhouse was nearly a century old.

Westvleteren allows little contact with the outside world and is the only Trappist brewery where all the work is done by the monks themselves. The monastery itself rarely allows guests, and the Westvleteren beers are difficult to obtain, even in Belgium. It is available only from a drive-up outlet at the monastery, through a telephone-based lottery system that is cross-checked against the license plates of drivers who arrive hoping to pick up beer they’ve reserved. The beers themselves are rather inexpensive, topping out at 38 euros per case of 24 bottles, but each customer may only buy one case. The rules for the phone lottery and the beer pickup are so strict as to be nearly comical. The monks are entirely aware of the popularity of their beer, telling prospective buyers on their Website:

Please take into account that you may often get a busy signal when you call to make a reservation, due to the fact that our beer lines are overburdened! You’re not the only one who is calling at that moment. Due to our small-scale production, the number of telephone calls is much greater than the number of available reservations. That means it’s a matter of having a lot of patience as well as a lot of luck.

If anyone tries to reserve beer more than once in a month from the same phone number, the call is automatically cut off. Beer can sometimes be bought at their visitor’s center and café called In De Vrede, but amounts are strictly limited, and often they do not have any beer at all. Westvleteren’s marketing is nonexistent. The bottles have no labels, only wooden crates, and the three beers are to be recognized by only their crown caps. All of the beers are made from pale malt, along with a range of sugars added in the kettle, and they are all fully bottle conditioned. The dark Westvleteren “8,” 8% alcohol by volume (ABV) and sporting a blue cap, and “12,” 10.5% ABV and sporting a yellow cap, are both russet brown in color, with complex earthy rum and fruit flavors backed by aggressive hop bitterness. In 1999 the blond “6” was added to the range, replacing the monks’ own table beers. This is a modern “singel” at 5.8% ABV and has a green cap, a powerful earthy, an herbal aroma, a light, firm body, and an intensely appetizing hop bitterness. Westvleteren’s beers, both because of their quality and also inevitably because of their scarcity, are among the most highly sought in the world. The monks forbid the resale of the beer, but this, of course, is widely ignored.

Ben Vinken