Westvleteren XII is a beer lovers wet dream, but someone is using those nocturnal emissions to run a devious scam.

A guy posted a link with the photo above in the Chicago Craft Beer Enthusiasts Facebook group this morning. My heart jumped for the slightest moment at the idea that I might be able to get my hands on some Westy 12, but it quickly came back to resting rate when I realized this was too good to be true. I don’t use that phrase all willy-nilly like people who find a $20 on the ground and suggest it’s too good to be true when it clearly just happened. No, this is literally too good to be true.

As any beer lover knows, Westvleteren XII is only available through the brewery, the visitors center, or on the rare occasion when the Sint-Sixtus Abbey needs a new roof or something which compels them to ship some beer to America. Sure you can find a few rogue bottles here and there, but there aren’t any online stores selling Westvleteren XII in bulk. The idea that this website has a stockpile is funny. The suggestion that they’re be offering it with a 15% discount is hilarious. Hilarious if there weren’t people getting suckered into buying it.

I don’t know if the guy who posted it on Facebook was one of the scammers or if he really was trying to share what he thought was a great deal on Westvleteren XII. Either way it sucks to be him. He’s either a terrible human being or an unfortunate sap. Neither is a great option. There were a dozen comments after those above in which he showed the beer he got and repeatedly said it’s legit… which seems like a lot of effort for someone just being a good Samaritan.

I’m not much for internet justice, but for some reason I was compelled to prove I was right. I did a little digging and found that the site was registered with Domains By Proxy. I’m pretty confident that the most respected brewer in the world wouldn’t need to register a website behind a hidden name in Arizona. Domains By Proxy is also notorious for being the end-game of scams. If you Google their address you’d see countless different scams with their location tied to it.

While that’s not concrete proof that this site isn’t selling legitimate Westvleteren XII, it casts a shadow larger than the moon during a solar eclipse.



I’m not going to link to the site, but you can see below that they’re running a pretty intense operation. They give all the information readily available about Sint-Sixtus Abbey without actually saying this is the abbey’s homepage. I hdon’t know for sure if what they’re selling is fake, but I highly doubt it’s real. Buyer beware.

