Birmingham pub selling world’s rarest beer at £25 a bottle

A pub in Birmingham is celebrating after getting hold of a batch of the world’s rarest beer.

Westvleteren is brewed in Belgium inside the Trappist Abbey of Saint Sixtus of Westvleteren and is now, briefly, available at Birmingham’s Post Office Vaults pub – for £25 per bottle.

Co-owner of the pub, Mike Perkins, told the Birmingham Mail: “It’s incredibly hard to get hold of.

‘‘You can’t order it, you have to go to the monastery. But it’s worth the trouble. Westvleteren is superb.”

The monks at Saint Sixtus brew three types of beer Westvleteren Blond, a 5.8% ABV brew, Westvleteren 8, at 8% ABV and Westvleteren 12, which is a strong 10.2% ABV beer. The pub is currently selling Westvleteren 12.

Perkins said that even at £25 each, the bottles are proving very popular, he added: ““We’re over the moon. It has gone much better than we expected.”

Buying the beer is now limited to one order, per person, every 60 days and the monks do not sell to people who simply drive up to the monastery hoping to buy beer.

Production at the monastery is limited to 60,000 cases per year and it has been at that level since 1946. As with all other Trappist breweries the monks only make the beer in order to support the monastery financially and to help other charitable causes; despite the beer’s popularity the monks refuse to increase production.

As well as being rare, the beer is very well respected it is currently listed as the world’s best beer by ratebeer.com and is second best according to beeradvocate.com.