99% Invisible - 99% Invisible-55- The Best Beer in the World

Episode Date: May 31, 2012

If you’re a beer nerd, or have a friend who’s a beer nerd, you’ve heard of Belgian beers. Belgians take beer very seriously. Amongst the 200 Belgian breweries, there’s a very specific sub-type: Trappist beers. According to our reporter Cyrus … Continue reading →

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Saroos Farovar is on a mission. He's trying to get a case of beer called West Flatern. West Flatern. I'm not Dutch, so I'm not 100% sure. But I think it's West Flatern. It's not easy to get, but apparently it's worth it. Oh, yes. If you're a beer nerd or have a friend

who's a beer nerd, you've probably heard of Belgian beers. Belgians take their beer very seriously. They're about 200 breweries in a country about twice the size of the Bay Area. We're on from. Now amongst these Belgian breweries and Belgian ails, there's a very specific subtype, trappist beers. Anyone who knows anything about beer will probably start to get glassy-eyed and have a warm, delicious feeling whenever they talk about

them, myself included. Sentences will be punctuated with superlatives and exclamations. Now I'm a person just like you, but I don't actually drink beer, so off the takes of the the sources word for it. Or the word of one of the many beer reviewers on YouTube. It's a beautiful thing. It's all dried fruit. It's boozy. It's earthy.

It looks amazing. It's something that was woody and tannic about it. It's so many flavors going on in there. Yes, and I think we all know what you're going to get there. This isn't a place. I can't, I mean I can't give anything less. That's something else. The flavour just keeps on going and going and going. My tongue is tingling. Yeah, it's...

Wow. Here's what you need to know about trapeze beers. First, they're amazing. Second, they're made by trapeze monks. These monks trace their roots to a monastery in 17th century France and have since spread out to all over the world. The main concept behind the trappist lifestyle is that the Abbi should be economically self-sufficient. In other words, the monks should make something and sell it to the public as a way to fund

the operations of the Abbi itself. Some make cheese, some make spirits, and there's even one in Germany that makes lentil soup. But none of the trappist products are nearly anywhere as famous as the beer. Only seven beer-making trappist Abbey's exist. Sixer in Belgium, and one is in the Netherlands. The most widely available trappist beer is Chime. You can get it in a lot of U.S. specialty grocery stores and some bars too. They make over 3 million gallons of this stuff a year. By comparison, West Bladerin makes less than 4% of that volume annually.

But West Bladerin with its plain brown bottle, no label, and the only writing is on the cap. It's super cool. It's one of the rarest and many say. It's the best beer in the world. But here's the thing about West Bladerin. you can't go there and have as much beer as you want. You can't even have it shipped from the Abbey.

If you want to buy beer to take with you, you have to look up the beer reservation phone number on the Abbey's website. Then you call this certain phone number during certain hours on certain days. As the monks themselves warn on the site, Please take into account that you may often get a busy signal when you call to make a reservation. hours on certain days, as the monks themselves warn on the site. reservations. That means it's a matter of having a lot of patience as well as a lot of luck. And here's what you need to understand about me. I am totally game for this. I love being challenged as a food consumer. In fact, there's a burger place in Connecticut that claims to have invented the hamburger in America. And, you know, true to their

century-old rules, they refuse to serve burgers with ketchup or mustard. And they only serve it on toast. I love that. I mean, if they told me that I had to do 50 jumping jacks and run around the block, and then I could get a burger, I would totally do that too. BEEP. Anyway, back to what's later.

BEEP. BEEP. Later. Good day, bonjour, hello. You went for a bonnum met de biebrecope van de syncixis md. If you're lucky enough to talk to a monk, and yes, you do talk to a monk, to take your reservation, you have to give your license plate number and be available to come pick up your crate during the appointed time that weekend. You're limited to one crate per person, per car, maximum to per car. And you can't buy more than one crate during a 60 day period.

Oh, and you agree not to resell the beer as well. For information, please see our website, www. You got that. There is a list of several seemingly arbitrary hoops that you have to jump through if you want to buy this beer. This sort of thing is not unheard of.

Velvet ropes and random reward have long been imposed to create artificial scarcity and to heighten demand. But the mainstream trend today seems to be more geared towards greater access and accommodation for customers. The new idea is that everything is available at all times no matter where you live. This is the digital age, but clearly this is not the case for the West lettering trappists. They're trying to make it as difficult as possible. No, no, no, no, no, they don't make it difficult. You make it difficult. Too much people want this beer. This is Jeff Von Dynstein. He's the author of a book called Trappist, the Seven Heavenly Beers. And he's even a brewer himself.

Until ten years ago, you could go to the Abbey, except on Sunday, because then they don't work. And except on Friday, because Friday they don't work, because they don't eat Friday. But Saturday they were open, so you went there and without problems you could buy beer, not as much as you want, but normally three crates or two crates, so it was always possible. But then the Americans, it's all your fault. I'm sorry, now the Americans set with flateness the best beer of the world. Because English is a word language, not only in the US, England, but also Scandinavian countries.

So everywhere where they speak or understand English, they could read beer advocate and all those websites. And suddenly the demand of this beer was 10 times bigger. And that's a problem. It's not their problem. They brew now the same amount as they did before. Keep in mind, this was basically the first thing that Jeff said to me when I sat down with him.

And I sort of felt guilty, to be honest, because he was right. I'd heard about this beer for years. And now that I was living within striking distance just over the border in Germany, there was no way I was going to pass it up. Just an older guy with a full bushy, gray beard. And he seems to know just about everything about beer. And having written about the trappest monks, he was the closest that I was going to get to an actual monk. But Jeff as sort of trappist monk by proxy outlined the main reason for putting up

these obstacles to getting West Flatern. They decided we brewed the same amount as the last 40, 50 years and they have enough with that. So why must they brew more? Because you want. No. And they live between the walls of the rabbi, so for them it's not a problem.

So with that in mind, and after spending about 90 minutes at Jeff's brewery, de Glazer Torren, and of course we bought some bottles to take with us, my three friends and I headed out to visit the famed amunks of West Flaterin. Now as we mentioned earlier, you have to order ahead if you want to buy a case of beer. Unfortunately, Ceruse didn't have any luck ordering crates, but he knew he could at least sample someone he got there.

But what I realized as soon as my friends and I got to the Abbey is that Jeff was totally right. The Abbey is in the middle of nowhere. It's surrounded by fields and small houses and it's way out in the western edge of Belgium, very close to the French border. It's totally understandable why the monks decided to institute this new ordering system. If hundreds of cars descended on these tiny roads all of a sudden, it would be disastrous. In other words, designing this whole process to make access difficult to calling the vehicle registration all of it, a lot of it comes down to roads, to infrastructure.

And there are ways to solve the problem, one is bigger roads, but they could also choose to ship the beer out to the distributor and have no one visit the abbey at all. There are solutions, but it's clearly not a problem the monks want to solve. I did finally get to sit down and have a beer at the cafe across the street, which until this year was the only place that was allowed to resell it, although there's been a thriving blackish grey market for quite some time. I wish I could say that the experience was heavenly. Don't get me wrong, this spear really is fantastic. It's got a complex flavor and is obviously crafted with a lot of care and thoughtfulness. But the flip side of having no label, of having this mythology that brings people from

around the world like me to this monastery is that the relationship between customer and brewery feels almost anonymous or generic. It's like my friends and I could have just bought this beer off eBay and enjoyed it almost anywhere, and it would have been basically the same experience, just a lot more expensive. And this is a symptom of the exact same credo that makes the beer rare and exclusive. Clearly, the West Flater and Trappists take pride in creating something great that people enjoy, but you, the consumers of beer, are not the real customer. God is. The head of the Abbey says on their website, we are not roars.

We are monks. We brew beer to be able to afford being monks. This beer is not about you and me. They're not creating a purest mystique and challenging us to come to the monastery and experience their beer in a certain way. I am totally ready to capitulate to the monks just like that Connecticut hamburger place. I will do whatever they want me to do. I want them to know that I am on board, that I speak their language, but it turns out they're not even talking to me. As we mentioned earlier, the limited supply of us later in has created a pricey black market.

As I'm recording, I searched for a case of 24 bottles of us later in on eBay, and the current bid is $550 plus $50 shipping to 23 minutes left. The original price paid at the Abbey was just under 50 bucks. To the delight of beer, aficionados worldwide and spring 2012, Vustlatoran beer was finally exported in limited edition packages of four bottles to various countries, including the US. They are called building boxes because the proceeds are slated to go towards the expansion and renovation of the aging Abbey.

And if you're wondering if I did an episode about rare beer and trappest monks partially as an extended metaphor about bizarre customer service, media piracy, and why I can't legally download new episodes of Game of Thrones every Sunday night? Well you wouldn't exactly be wrong. Come on HBO. Even the 17th century monks are sending their beer out in little boxes. On demand. There isn't like a little button I can click and download something.

I want to pay you. Please. A Lannister always pays his debts. 99% Invisible was produced as weep by Sirouce Farovar and me Ronan Mars was special thanks to Sean Seneca. We are a project of KALW 91.7 local public radio in San Francisco and the American Institute of Architects in San Francisco. Support for 99% Invisible is provided in part by Tiny Letter. Email for people with something to say.

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