Westvleteren 12 XII Clone Beer Recipe
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.
Recipe Details
| Batch Size | Boil Time | IBU | SRM | Est. OG | Est. FG | ABV |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 L | 60 min | 35.4 IBUs | 55.3 EBC | 1.087 | 1.011 | 10.2 % |
Fermentables
| Name | Amount | % |
|---|---|---|
| Pilsner (2 Row) Bel | 4.392 kg | 58.59 |
| Pale Malt (2 Row) Bel | 2.424 kg | 32.34 |
| Candi Sugar Syrup D-180 | 680 g | 9.07 |
Hops
| Name | Amount | Time | Use | Form | Alpha % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brewer's Gold | 30 g | 60 min | Boil | Leaf | 8.5 |
| Hallertauer Mittelfrueh | 30 g | 30 min | Boil | Leaf | 4 |
| Styrian Goldings | 30 g | 15 min | Boil | Leaf | 5.4 |
Yeast
| Name | Lab | Attenuation | Temperature |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trappist High Gravity (3787) | Wyeast Labs | 76% | 17.78°C - 25.56°C |
Mash
| Step | Temperature | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Mash In | 64.5°C | 75 min |
Download
| Download this recipe's BeerXML file |
Getting Your Hands on A Westvleteren 12
The beer has to be reserved by calling the monasteries beer line and entering a lottery with other would be buyers. As more people want to buy Westvleterens beers than the brewery makes the telephones are usually engaged. The beer is sold only from the brewery and the monastery visitor cafe.
Reselling of Westvleterens beers is a no-no and should only be sold from the brewery so home brewing your own version is the only way to try something like this for most.
Bottles are not labelled and the only way to tell the difference between the beers is the crown caps which are colour coded: Green = Blonde, Blue = 8 and Yellow – Westvleteren 12.
I highly recommend Brew Like A Monk by Stan Hieronymus if you are interested in Trappist beers it is a real wealth of information as well as insights into how to create your own versions of Belgian and Trappist beers.
Recipe Notes
- There is a couple of different recipes for Westvlereten 12 on the internet. One uses lots of different malts whereas this one from Candi Syrups LLC uses two base malts and a simple dark sugar syrup which seems the most likely in my opinion.
- The Oxford Companion to Beer suggests that Westvlereten makes all the beers with just pale malts with a range of sugars added to the kettle supporting the recipe here.
- The brewery doesn’t market or publicise their beers or do brewery tours so there is little chance of information about the beer recipes coming from the brewery themselves.
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