Westvleteren 12 - BEER 365!

We're about an hour away from the crush of people coming to the Beer Every Day Great Success Party. David cracks open our last beer, the highest rated beer in the world, the Westvleteren 12, a quadruple. I'll let the video do most of the talking.

It really is the smoothest quadruple, at 10.2%, I've ever had. There isn't a whole lot of complexity, but jebus it tastes so good and smooth. BAD BOYS rating, obviously. I'm a little high on the excitement right now, I can't believe this milestone is happening.

A cookie and a cake, the best of both worlds. THANKS TIFFANY!

A lot of people didn't think we would actually drink a different beer every day. Most thought there weren't that many beers available, to which I respond with:

or:

I don't really blame them for thinking this, it's a huge commitment and required focused dedication. And let's be honest, my longest relationship with a girlfriend is 6 months. 3 years ago. This year has doubled my longest relationship and guess what baby? It's still go'n strong. So whoever out there thought that I would date someone for a year before I drank a beer for a year, you obviously didn't realize I had my priorities straight. Zing.

A few people I'm especially thankful for, who experienced so many of the beers with us, are Karl, Tiffany, and Nick G. You guys were incredible this year and I am so proud and thankful that you are my friends. Karl is the most mentioned person on the blog besides David and is tagged in over 40 posts, nearly 1/9th of the beer we had this year, which if you consider the number of nights David and I were sitting in our apartment or having beers across town or countries from each other, incredibly impressive.


And, if I can toot my horn for a minute, I'm freaking damn proud that I've written about each and everyone one of these beers. Half of life, some people say, is just showing up. Well I showed up, drank a beer, and then chronicled my experiences. Too-tooot.

Having a blog is a lot of work, but it's also immensely rewarding. 14 months ago I had never thought I would be a blogger, but I really encourage everyone if that have a passion, to write about it. Take a picture every other day. Express yourself. Even if you don't share the blog, just go online and write about anything and everything, your life will change for the better. Anywho...

THE PARTY
So for our party, Karl orchestrated a blind tasting of five different beers from the year for David and I to compete with. I'll let the video I put together tell the tale of that and the overall party. About 25 people came to celebrate and celebrate we did. The evening was an amazing way to end an incredible year. I joked the next day with David, that even though we just finished drinking a every day for the last year, apparently, we can still party.

I'm going to post in the forthcoming weeks additional posts describing my year and what it meant to me. In the meantime, I put together a video slide-show of photos created from freeze frames in the 60 minutes of footage to hold you over in the meantime until I can edit the film down to an viewable duration.

This was an incredible year, thank you following along!

Slide-show below:

Tomorrow, David is going to take his first day off in 365 days from drinking a different beer, but I plan on continuing the experience until I reach a nice round number, maybe 400 or 425. And after that, I will absolutely still be reporting on beers and experiences. I can't just get enough.

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Awesomeness prevails. Onward and upward!

Westvleteren 8 is uniquely dubbel

David is headed to Carlsbad tomorrow for the night so we're doing our first midnight beer in a long time. Beer 363. Wow. Never would've thunk that our last 12:01am/next day beer would be the sought after Westvleteren. The real irony can be found in Davids 'beer a day' calender, announcing today's beer as the Ballast Point Calico Amber. I not only dislike ambers, but this particular one is...blerg. The Westvleteren 8 is basically the highest rated Dubbel in the world, so it should be a billion times better than any amber. Phew

As this is our return to the Westvleteren series, here is the original post discussing the brewery's history: http://www.beereveryday.com/2011/05/lost-abbey-inferno-weclomes-karl-and.html

There is a frothy, thick head that introduces a crisp body that's cleaner than most dubbels. It's richer too, with a bready center that numbs the sweet caramels down. What's really interesting and unusual, is the 8 has a grainy characteristic, probably from the use of a flaked malt. Imagine walking up a museum's modern, polished marble steps and then seeing the Rosetta Stone. Later, you probably don't remember the marble walking into the museum, but you remember the Rosetta Stone, its face marked and scratched up. It has history and character. For me, the grainy quality of this dubbel and the subtle construction of malts make this a truly unique brew. It's something to behold, not quite meeting my lofty expectations, rather, surprising them instead. BAD BOYS rating.

Westvleteren Blonde is one of the Emanuel brothers

Got a big night ahead! I left for Whole Foods with the Mavericks game in the toilet and I return with 1 minute left and the Mavericks have pulled it off! Hot damn! Time to celebrate their win and our 301st beer (since we didn't realize yesterday was 300) with a real treat from the one Trappist Brewery whose beers are hardest to find, Westvleteren - Westvleteren info (Lost Abbey Inferno post).

The Westie Blonde is actually the least sought after of this brewery's beers - although the other two are the highest rated beers in the world for their style Beer Advocate Westvleteren. It's kinda like the Emanuel brothers. Ari is the president of the second largest talent agency in the world and has a character based on him in Entourage; Rahm was the Chief of Staff for Obama and is now running for the mayor of Chicago; and Ezekial is the Director of the Clinical Bioethics Department at the U.S. National Institutes of Health and a leading proponent to legalize euthanasia. They are all leading men in their fields, but let's be honest, the Westie Blonde is probably an Ezekial Emanuel.

This lady is one smooth talking blonde who gets a little sassy as the night wares on. There is a malty sweet smell and I'm really enjoying the creamy, buttery and herbal flavor profile, but the grainy bite at the end jolts me. It's a grainy or clove like bite and it shadows my every sip. This is very well rated on every beer site, but the finish really nags me, like an itchy bug bite or a woman (winks). I want to say it's a Transformers rating, but I know that it's a Westie and other might enjoy it more than I, it gets a THE ROCK rating. However I personally wouldn't buy it again - not that I plan on going to Bruge anytime soon.

Next on the books is the great Sea Salt and Caramel experiment of 2011. I'm forging new ground with my next homebrew and so I need to test it. It's a wild recipe with a lot of new ground to cover. I have to reduce part of the wort to aid caramelization and then actually caramelize the brown sugar while I boil the wort for an extended time (90mins) - at least that's the plan. We'll see how it actually goes down.

The recipe is in the final stages of development and is go for brew this Sunday. It's based on these chocolate caramels that have sea salt on top, which explodes the flavor in your mouth. Love it. Here's my recipe: Savory Caramel Sea Salt

I'm testing how much salt should be used in the boil. Too little and I make an overly caramel beer, too much and I ruin it for everyone. I bought a can of caramel and dumped it in a specific amount of water in order to provide some flavor consistency, and then I'm adding sea salt at specific increments and tasting.

1/4 and 1/2 teaspoon yield nothing. 1 teaspoon we're getting there. 2 teaspoons and we've ruined it. This is a 2 quart batch and in 5 gallons there's 20 quarts, so we're multiplying by 10 and thus I'm looking to add 10 teaspoons to the boil. I'd rather go under rather than over. Another reason to test the salt now rather than later is, if I miss the correct salt amount in the boil, I can't add it when I bottle because salt de-carbonates beer. You've probably seen people add salt to beer at bars, particularly to Corona in the summer. That's why. Adding salt at bottling will make my beer flat. #notwinning

Tonight I'm also making a yeast starter for the brew, which is the easiest and quickest part of the process. My math is a little fuzzy, but each container has roughly 50 billion cells of yeast in it, and a yeast starter can double that amount. It's important to the fermentation process that there is enough yeast to eat the sugar. I think it's important to make one with any beer over 4% and more importantly, your beer will ferment faster, sometimes as soon as 4 -6 hours after pitching it. Party

Lost Abbey Inferno weclomes Karl and his gift of the world's highest rated beer

Our good friend and frequent drinking collaborator has brought back the Holy Grail of beers from his European trip, The Westvleteren 12 (and his two brothers). It is quite simply the highest rated beer on any beer review site Beer Advocate. Why is this such a HUGE deal? Why does we love Karl so much right now (as always)? Because it's virtually impossible to buy this beer in the United States.

I'm not yanking your chain. The abbey monks only brew a finite amount of beer per year (a number that hasn't changed since the 1946) and the demand is so high, they don't allow wide distribution of the beer. Karl had to rent a French car and drive out to the abbey in order to buy a case of the stuff.  Sales are limited to one order a month per person per license plate and phone number and they only distribute a few days a month. They only make 60,000 cases a year. From Wikipedia:

"Buyers of the beer receive a receipt with Niet verder verkopen ("Do not resell") printed on it. The abbey is very much against resale of their beer, and it is their wish that the beer is only commercially available at the two official sale points. To this end, any Westvleteren beer which is sold anywhere else in the world is grey market beer, as no wholesalers or pubs are supplied with the beer... In an interview with The Independent, monk Mark Bode explained that the abbey had no intention of increasing its production, despite demand: "We make the beer to live but we do not live for beer."

Can you imagine how sad we would be if Karl wasn't able to return with this rarity? Well, there was a close call during Karl's flight back. The windows were frosting up and Karl was worried there would might be catastrophe occurring in his luggage below. The luggage he received was soaked through. SHIT. Please be a Blonde, don't be a #12, please be a blonde, please be a blonde (not the first time you've said that, eh Karl?). Unfortunately, a beer had exploded. Fortunately, it was a blonde. Hip hip hooray! God was smiling upon Karl that day.

We're still contemplating whether we'll taste this next week or at the end of the year in celebration. In the meantime, how does the highest rated beer in the world taste to Karl? He describes it not as a mind-blowing/reality shattering beer, but it is the perfect execution of a belgian quad. As always, Karl is very eloquent and dead-on in his critique, and it serves as a very good reality check for something so highly revered and rated. Without knowing this, I would drink the beer with exorbitant expectations and I'm glad Karl steered my away from the mindset.

While Karl regaled us with stories of his travels to Paris, Bruges, and London, we thought it fitting to open a bottle of Belgian Strong Ale we bought during out San Diego trip, the Lost Abbey Inferno.

So many Belgians, so little time...

Karl's stories included drinking a Westvleteren 8 for breakfast, a Westmalle Trappist for lunch and a Rochefort 10 for dinner -  some of the world's greatest beers, all for under 4 Euro. Ridiculous. He spoke of the picturesque scene in Bruges, wine festivals in Bordeaux, crepes in Paris and schwag parties in London. Thanks Karl, for proving how awesome you are, can we drink some beer yet?

Lost Abbey was a brewery David and I weren't in love with before our San Diego trip, but we returned enthusiastic supporters. The Inferno smells and tastes like spicy yeast, bread and apples. The flavor is a strong golden ale with spicy notes and a bitter aftertaste. David compares it to Duvel but with an imperfect finish. The Inferno is a beer with character and I'd love for my daughter to marry him, but I'm not going to invite my the guy to poker night. TRANSFORMERS rating.