westvleteren12.com is For Sale, But is it Right?
Here’s a new one: It looks like westvleteren12.com and the site that goes with it is for sale at Flippa.com. According to the site’s owner, he started westvleteren12.com back in April as a fansite of 
the widely-regarded “best beer in the world”. But after a few weeks on the web, the owner received a whole bunch of requests to buy the beer. Well apparently he was able to locate a drop shipper in Belgium with 50+ cases willing to sell the beer for $9 a bottle plus the shipping costs from Europe. In addition to the dot com and adjoining site, the sale also includes the domains www.westvleteren12.be and www.westvleteren12.net. As well as an accompanying Twitter account with more than 600 followers. The owner also claims, based on some of his own market testing, that the site will easily clear $1,100/month in revenue.
Now I certainly understand people wanting to get their hands on this beer; without hesitation it is certainly one of the best in the world. But does selling the beer online make it lose some of its mystique? Or for that matter, is it just downright wrong? For those that don’t know, according to Wikipedia,
Buyers of the beer receive a receipt with Niet verder verkopen (“Do not resell”) printed on it. The abbey is very much against resale of their beer, and it is their wish that the beer is only commercially available at the two official sale points. To this end, any Westvleteren beer which is sold anywhere else in the world is grey market beer, as no wholesalers or pubs are supplied with the beer, and the abbey is actively working to eliminate the illicit sales.
While the site does help promote the drinking of Better Beer — I’ll give it that — and it allows people who might not otherwise ever get to the abbey (or even Belgium for that matter), it also goes against everything the beer’s brewers (the monks) stand for and want in their beer.
So here’s the question, would you buy the site? And is the site’s existence (and sale) even right?
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Filed under: General Beer News
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Hi There. My name is Logan and I run BlogAboutBeer.com. I live just north of Portland, Oregon, which has the most craft breweries than any other city in the US. I'm a full time Internet marketer, blogger, and dad to the most beautiful girl in the world. I'm also a beer fanatic and enjoy trying new beers as well as homebrewing my own creations.
Well I am disappointed that I can not order the beer from the site. It only seems to be offering a wooden crate so perhaps his source dried up and that is why the site is for sale?
Hey Luke, Whoever that dude is that was running that site has got some issues. First off, he shouldn’t be selling that beer for his own profit, that is 100% the opposite of what the Trappist community is all about. Second, if he is claiming he had the site as \Fan Site\ that is total BS, it was set up to make a profit and that is it. Also, I emailed him about the crates he was selling and he replied to me that he is NOT selling the crates on their own but that is the additional cost to have the crate if you buy a case. If you want Westvleteren got to Belgium, do NOT buy it online. If you can’t get to Belgium go buy some St. Bernardus 12. Just my opinion on that whole thing. R
Hell no! I think part of the charm of drinking this beer is due to making a really special effort. I went to Dark Lord Day this year at Three Floyds. I have some bottles of Dark Lord and wouldn’t dream of selling them. Would I crack them with a friend that had never tried it? Absolutely! People like this make me sick. I think it was the late Michael Jackson (the real Michael Jackson…as un-thrilling as the might be to some) that said of this specific brewery that they sell to pray, not pray to sell.” Further, they are on the record as saying that they refuse to get into the endless cycle of brewing more so they can sell more and selling more so they can brew more. I get sick when I see people selling this stuff on ebay and the like. The other problem is that there is a demand for it. Here are people who don’t want to put the effort into procuring some. $9 a bottle is still cheapening the real value of this stuff. By the way, I’ve never had it…but I will some day…the right way.
I am a beer guy. I just want to drink good beer. I actually appreciate the fact that it can be ordered online. I say let the guy continue. I sleep better at night knowing I can order a couple of Westvleteren 12 beers from the web. Just my 1wo cents.
Roy
What the market will bear.