A few guys from the Bay Area Brew Crew and I recently put together an order from Belgian Shop. The beers arrived a couple days ago and I'm drooling just thinking about them. Belgian Shop ships beer anywhere in the world direct from Belgium and if you can get a few people together for an order, it is a really economical way to get rare Belgian beers for reasonable prices. For example, I paid $4.80 (plus $1.86 shipping) for a bottle of Westvleteren Abt 12°. When you can find it domestically--which isn't very often--the same beer sells for $9.00 in the store and $15.50 in the bar. The key to getting a good deal is putting together a large order and maximizing shipping value. Shipping is prohibitively expensive on a small order but for a larger order--our order was for just about three cases--the per-bottle shipping rate drops dramatically. Here's my portion of the order:
- Achel Bruin 8°
- Fantome BBB Blond 8°
- Prior Watou Abt (replacement for out-of-stock Halloween)
- Rochefort 6°
- Rochefort 10°
- St Bernardus 8°
- St Bernardus 12°
- t Smisje Tripel 9°
- Val Dieu Noel
- Westvleteren Blond 6°
- Westvleteren 8°
- Westvleteren 12°
- Prior Watou Abt (replacement for out-of-stock Halloween)
And a couple pictures (click the thumbnails for a larger version):
I tasted the Westy clone last night as I was bottling my holiday ale. It's getting better! The alcohol aroma and flavor is becoming more subdued and I'm not getting the cidery flavors any more. It's surprising what two weeks of conditioning will do. I'm not sure if my clone is going to end up close to the real thing but I think it's gonna be good! It tastes a bit more attenuated than last time, although there's still a fair amount of sweetness. I didn't take a gravity reading. The most striking difference from Westy so far is that the clone is the color of a single-malt scotch and crystal clear (see picture to the right) rather than dark brown and hazy.