This is not beer direct from the monastery. It is but it’s the special packaging imported into the US at $100 for a six-pack. A friend sent me 6 of them and I poured one of them into a chalice. I’m going to re-review this beer when I have it the last weekend in May at the monastery. I’m going there with a co-worker to Belgium on a Saturday to pick up 2 cases of it and to try some there in person. I feel like this 6-pack is very off and am a bit disappointed.
AROMA 8/10 APPEARANCE 5/5 TASTE 8/10 PALATE 3/5 OVERALL 16/20
adamjackson (194) – Canaan, New Hampshire, USA – APR 5, 2012
A – Poured a cloudy dark brown into the glass. Produced a 2-finger coffee colored head that subsided to a half finger almost immediately and was gone after 2 minutes. There’s still some head lacing around the edges and center of the glass. In the glass, the beer is a nice deep dark brown like cedar wood color with a lot of cloudiness to it. Very complex in appearances but standard to most Belgian Quads like Chimay Blue or St. Bernardus 12.
S – This is the standard Belgian Quad scent you’d expect. Great bready and earthy yeast make up a great deal of the scent. Smells like a bakery. The dark fruits like figs and prunes make up the rest. There’s this different musty smell that I don’t get from other quads. Smells like an old cellar or attic full of old photos and clothing. There’s also a slight bit of sweetness from brown sugar or maybe it’s just the dark fruit sugars that I’m getting.
T – Wow. Incredibly sweet! Far more sweet than I was expecting and unlike any other Belgian quad I’ve ever had. The sweetness and malts are almost borderline very watered down whiskey. There’s a burn that starts on the roof of my mouth and goes down my chest. Not expecting that at all. I get this syrupy sweetness that you’d get from a flat pepsi and brown sugars. The standard quad bready yeast and dark fruits are there but masked by this overly sweet overly boozy feeling that really hit me in the face! Another sip and it’s still hitting me in the face. Insanely strong.
M – 90% carbonation on a single mouth swish. The booziness of this beer stays around long after you’ve swallowed. It’s so insistent that you almost want to grab a glass of water to drink it down. Very very strong. Heavy bodied beer for sure.
O – I’ve heard the arguments that Westy12 compares to Rochefort 10 and St. Bernardus 12 in almost every way and those beers are fare more easy to find. I disagree. This beer is more sweet and more boozy than those beers in every way. I almost don’t want to rate this beer and I promise to re-rate it after I go to the St. Sixtus Abbey in May to pickup my 2 cases of beer and have a glass that was brewed fresh. I feel like this bottle was very off for being the best beer in the world. I disagree and Belgian Quads are my favorite beer-style. This was a great quad but not #1.
