West 12
The Brew Keeper

22oz bomber received in a trade a while back.

Pours dark brown in the glass which shows through a deep, hazy copper when held up to light. There is a short-lived off-white head that leaves no lacing and a tiny collar.

The aroma is pretty good for a quad with sweet candi sugar, dark malts and sweet fruits. It's pretty one dimensional but not bad in the nose.

The taste has a very faint fruity tartness up front, like some sour cherries maybe, before the sweetness of the malts and sugar take over. The finish is sweet as well and slightly dry.

The mouthfeel is medium bodied but seems a tad thin for the style and lacks the body I expected.

This is a decent beer overall but fairly average for the style. It lacks the complexity and mouthfeel of the best quads.

Live review. Poured from a 22 oz. bomber into my Westvleteren silver rimmed goblet (I had to do it...I don't use this goblet all that often!). Purchased for $7.99 at Reider's Market in Painesville about 2 months ago. No observed "best by" or "freshness date" found by me on label or the bottle. 10.50% ABV.

A Pours with an absolutely gargantuan head, probably 6 times the side of the body when first poured, and there was a huge head visible inside the bottle as well! Really, I love a big head on a beer but this was over the top (pun intended). Luckily, the light brown head settled down (and stayed about 1 cm interestingly) after about 7 to 10 minutes. The body is a nice burgundy, akin to the original but too translucent to really be compared with the original. The head is more like a "West 12" than the body appears. This is a good look for a beer obviously trying to emulate a classic.

S Dark malt but not as sweet as a "real" West 12 and also not nearly as complex and interesting. The smell is like a red Chevette compared with Westvleteren's red Corvette. On to the taste....

T There is certainly a nice sweet malt but again (I can't help it...the beer is called "West 12") MUCH less complex than the beer it emulates and it does not have the presence that other Quads command but you know, it is still a tasty beer, much better than last night's "Bunsen Bock" from the same brewer. I might taste some Belgian yeasts and the sweet malt is a bit cheap, like someone simply added sugar or Sweet -n- Low to a beer.

M Moderate with somewhat big sweetness, high ABV and a nice smoothness that comes nowhere close to the original "Westy" but is present none the less. I think that this quality contributes to the nice, creamy head as well.

D Reasonable but no Quad is supposed to be particularly "drinkable" in that one is supposed to drink one (or maybe two!) only.

Notes: I looked forward to trying this since I searched for it and found it here on BA when trying to find the real Westy. I am not dissapointed and it really shows some versatility from the brewer, something that is always welcomed by me.

Brilliant black cherry with orange slice edges and a smallish crown of caramel colored suds. It took an increasingly high-altitude pour to generate even one finger of foam, so it looks like there might be carbonation issues. No lace makes it to the glass. Not a good start.

The nose is actually pretty decent. I *might* have guessed quadrupel if blinded, it's hard to say for sure. Belgian yeast is appreciated, as is dark caramel and brandy-soaked fruit. More power might have delivered more complexity.

West 12 Trappist Ale is (I'm guessing) supposed to be a Westvleteren 12 clone. Has any craft brewer ever had the guts to try something like this? It seems that the possibility of coming anywhere close to the flavor, mouthfeel and quality of 'the world's best beer' is laughably low. Let's see how The Mad Brewer fared.

Wow! West 12 is almost indistinguishable from Westvleteren 12! Yeah, I'm kidding. In fact, this is a pathetically bad quadrupel and is easily the worst beer of this style that I've ever had. There's nowhere near enough malt and the flavor is about as complex as grape juice. There's also an off-putting tartness that I've tasted in this brewpub's beer before.

It's difficult to know where to begin. It tastes and feels like West 12 is past its prime. That couldn't be the case though, since I bought the bomber at the brewpub in December 2008. Any 10.5% quad should have lasted at least that long... unless The Brew Keeper sold me a bottle brewed in years past. Maybe the brewer forgot to add some of the ingredients. Like half the malt.

Specifics include watery caramel, tangy fruit juice and the smallest amount of spicy clove imaginable. It's hard to get a bead on the flavor profile because nothing has a chance to sink into the taste buds. It gets washed away milliseconds after contact. At least alcohol isn't very prominent. I would have guessed the ABV at 7.0%.

The body/mouthfeel is atrocious. I'm struggling to come up with an interesting way to say watery, watery, watery, watery. A serious shortage of bubbles means almost completely flat beer with less mouthfilling volume than water (if that was possible).

I don't have the heart to continue to beat this dead horse of a shamefully bad quadrupel any longer. The Brew Keeper West 12 'Trappist Ale' shouldn't be compared to 'the world's best beer', to great beer, to good beer, to average beer or even to below-average beer. It's in a league of its own. Okay, so maybe I wasn't done.

Not quite so sure what's behind the favorable impressions on this site; while I've had other beers from Brew Keeper I've really enjoyed, I found this one to be pretty marginal, despite the aspirational Abt/Quad style and high alcohol content (high alcohol content usually = good). A good brewer, but not their best effort, and certainly not worth of comparison to Westvleteren 12, one of the best beers I've ever had.

This poured a generally clear brown head. There was no head. Aroma was very malty, with lots of dried fruity. Flavor and mouthfeel were flat first, and secondly offered dry fruit, yeastiness, diacetyl, and butterscotch. Not a bad flavor, and rather true to other Belgian beers, but flat and just not quite right.

I would weakly recommend this beer. I bought this beer at From the Vine in Lewis Center, although it is also available at Blacklick Liquor on Broad Street, amongst other places.

Enjoyed on-tap at the brewpub, and a bottle for ageing obtained. Yeasty musty aroma, bit above average mouthfeel. Reddish colour with dot lacing, a small head. The taste is yeasty and while drinkable, disapointing in expected complexity. Boozy. Good carbonation.