After sampling the Westvleteren Blond for beer number 100, I was planning to save this one for when we reach 200 and, well, you’ll see where I was going with this.

But reality got in the way and this was the second of three beers left in the cupboard before a long-distance move. Also there’s a Belgium World Cup game on at the moment. Any excuse, right?

This was another one sourced from De Biertempel in Brussels, seemingly in February 2014. I make that over 12 years it has been sat around “maturing” so it’ll be interesting to see how it has fared. Sadly I don’t have a fresher one to compare it to.

In fact I’ve talked about the scarcity of Westvleteren beers before, and you can read all about it on the internet, so I won’t labour it again here. Suffice to say, this is the first chance I’ve had to try the 8% Westvleteren Extra, often know as the “8”.

In the book this is listed as a Trappist Ale, which seems to be a bit of a catch-all term, style-wise. I believe this is pretty close to a Dubbel, which is a much darker, maltier syle than the Blond, or something like the Westmalle Tripel.

It pours an almost copper colour, with a surprising amount of fizz. There’s no head retention and not a great deal of body after so long. There’s a hefty amount of very dark, almost black, yeasty sediment, and of course I’ve poured it like an idiot so quite a bit of that makes it into the glass.

There isn’t much in the way of aroma, and certainly no hop character has survived the passage of time. To taste though, it’s full of black treacle, dates, raisins and toffee. It’s really quite sticky on the lips, which perhaps surprised me.

Hopefully one day I’ll get a chance to try a fresher one, as I suspected it would be quite different. This one was in no way unpleasant, but I wouldn’t say the lengthy period of ageing has worked magic.

Facts and Figures

Brewery:	The Abbey of Saint Sixtus of Westvleteren, Flanders, Belgium
Style:	Trappist Beers
Strength:	8% ABV
Found at:	De Biertempel, Grasmarkt, Brussels, Belgium
Serving:	330ml bottle