So I reached a monumental rating on the beer site by rating my 500th beer. Its a cool achievement for a beer geek like myself, but more importantly I wanted to do something special for the rating. I drank a Westvleteren 8, a beer that is rather difficult to come by. Why you ask, well let me give a little background:

The Westvleteren beers are brewed by the Abbey of Saint Sixtus in the Westvleteren region of Belgium. The Abbey makes Trappist beers or those made by Trappist monks. Of the world's 171 Trappist monasteries, seven produce beer (six in Belgium and one in The Netherlands). These seven breweries are authorized to label their beers with the Authentic Trappist Product logo that indicates a compliance to various rules edicted by the International Trappist Association (mainly that the beer be brewed within the walls of a Trappist monastry and the profits go toward assistance and not economic gain).

Of all the Trappist breweries, St. Sixtus produces the smallest amount and also produces by some to be the worldest best beers. These beers are not supposed to be sold outside of the Abbey, but I obviuosly did not travel to Belgium to pick up this bottle. I came across this bottle through some fun beer hunting.

Now back to the point, this bottle, with which I celebrated my 500th rating was about 5.5 years old. As expected it aged wonderfully, but if you want to see exactly what I thought you are going to have to go read the rating.