(Belchertown, MA) – Shelton Brothers just issued this note regarding its festival coming up next weekend. The good news is that attendees of The Festival will be able to get some Westvleteren XII early. The bad news, tucked quietly in the release, is that wide distribution throughout the U.S. will be delayed. What was initially thought to be an April, 2012, release in U.S. shops won’t be until September.

Full news release below…

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Shelton Brothers Importers is pleased to announce that, next weekend, for the first time ever, Westvleteren 12° beer will be legally available for beer lovers in the United States to taste and enjoy.

Westvleteren 12° has consistently topped the best-in-the-world rankings at beeradvocate.com and ratebeer.com for many years. Due to its quality and the fact that it is brewed in small quantities and very hard to come by, it is as well the most sought-after beer in the world.

Westvleteren 12° – painstakingly brewed by the Sint-Sixtus Abbey in Westvleteren, Belgium – was initially scheduled to debut across the U.S.A. this month. For reasons known only to higher powers, the Abbey has requested that the official public release be delayed until September. However, the Abbey has now given its blessing for a small quantity of the beer to be previewed at The Festival, which takes place on June 23rd and 24th at Mechanics Hall in Worcester, Massachusetts. The Abbey hopes in this modest way to slake the thirst and reward the patience of true beer aficionados as they continue to wait for the Big Release later in the year.

At each Festival session, eight cases of Westvleteren 12° will be poured, with samples limited to one per person.

Better yet, all attendees of The Festival will be offered the opportunity to purchase their own Westvleteren XII gift boxes (6 bottles of beer and two commemorative glasses) from Julio’s Liquors, Westborough MA, which has generously agreed to join Shelton Brothers in donating profits from these sales to fund much-needed renovations of the Sint-Sixtus Abbey.

This is an exceedingly small window of opportunity to buy the Abbey’s special gift boxes in a relatively calm setting. The boxes will not be available again until general release in September – and never again after. (Wait until September, and risk getting caught up in a beer-fueled frenzy.)

The Festival will feature many of the Abbey’s Belgian neighbor breweries and dozens of other small brewers from around the world. For more information, visit www.the-festival.us

ABOUT WESTVLETEREN AND SHELTON BROTHERS

The Abbey of St Sixtus, located in the far west of Belgium, is home to 24 monks, and the Trappist Westvleteren brewery that they have operated since 1838. The brewery is one of only six Trappist breweries in Belgium, and is the second-smallest of them. (Only the Achel Trappist brewery is a bit smaller.) It produces about 50,000 cases of beer per year, which is sold only at the gates of the Abbey, one case per customer only. It makes only three beers – Westvleteren Blonde, Westvleteren 8°, and Westvleteren 12°. About half of the brewery’s production is of Westvleteren 12°, the most popular of the beers and, as every beer aficionado knows, the highest-rated beer in the world. The Abbey has created the Westvleteren XII gift boxes, and allowed the sale of its beers outside of the Abbey’s gates for this one time only, in order to raise money for much-needed building renovations.

Shelton Brothers is a beer importing company based in Belchertown MA. Since 1996, it has been the premier importer of hard-to-find, small production, artisanal beers from all over the world.