Well, we opened the final bottle of Westvleteren beer we bought when we visited Abbey Saint Sixtus in December of 2004. It was an “8” (or “blue cap”).
It’s our wedding anniversary. Made it easy.
Great beer. Make that a really great beer, because you couldn’t taste the floaties. That’s the end of the drinking note, and I won’t bother you with the story about losing a bottle (and the sock it was stuffed inside) in transit.
Be happy for us. This is what life is about.
Mazel tov!
Happy anniversary!!!!!
I am. I have witnessed a few great beer things and one was watching you two drink. Happy anniversary from us!!
I want to know what the second beer was. Then I’ll know whether to be happy for you or just plain jealous.
So the beer was at least 6 years old, right? How long do you recommend aging the Westevltren beers? Would the 12 last longer than the 8?
Andy – I’m not sure how many different batches of Westvleteren a person would have to try and over how many years to be qualified to answer that question. But more than I have.
The bottle we split last week stood up quite nicely, but I don’t know if it was any better than a bottle (from the same run) we drank three years ago. And the best single – and as skeptical as I try to be about the Saint Sixtus beers it was breathtaking – bottle I’ve had was a ’12’ that had been bottled little over a month before.
The real answer: I don’t know.
Well, I am fortunate enough to drink Westvleteren fairly often and aged as well as new. There is no such thing as “better.” It is all a question of personal taste. The fresher beers have more or less the same flavours as the older beers, however, they tend to blend more – lose the rough edges – in the older beers. If you can imagine drawing a circle or diagonal line with Etch-A-Sketch, that is how the young beers taste. Now imagine drawing freehand with a ruler or compass – that is how the older beers taste.