Westvleteren brewery is the smallest of the 6 Trappist breweries and began brewing in 1839 in the St Sixtus Abbey at Westvleteren. The brewery runs to support the monastery on a strictly non-commercial basis which means the beers produced by Westvleteren are very difficult to obtain. Wesvleteren produce 3 beers: Westvleteren Blonde at 5.8% Westvleteren 8 at 8% Westvleteren 12 at 10.8% Westvleteren 12 is a dark mahogany brown quadruple style beer that uses relatively simple ingredients and processes to create a really complex beer that has been rated best beer in the world multiple times. This may be down to both the flavour and the extreme scarcity. To say it is difficult to buy some of Westvleteren's beer would be an understatement. There is no marketing or distribution, production is small at just 5000 hectolitres a year and you have to reserve the beer in a lottery based telephone reservation system, from the brewery.