Chimay

Chimay is the Trappist brand of Scourmont Abbey in Belgium's Hainaut province, where monks have overseen brewing since 1862. For many drinkers it is the gateway to Trappist beer: it travels farther than most of its monastic peers, and it was the first brewery to print the Trappist designation on its labels. As with every authentic Trappist producer, the beers exist to fund the monastery and its charitable work, not the other way around.

Seventeen Cistercian monks from Westvleteren founded Scourmont Abbey on a plateau just outside the town of Chimay in 1850. Twelve years later they completed a brewery — built partly with bricks salvaged from a closed agricultural school — to give the young community a steady income. The pattern set then still holds: patient brewing inside the abbey walls, with the nearby town lending its name to the beers.

Today the range is known by its caps: Rouge, the original copper-hued ale; Blanche, a dry golden tripel; and Bleue, the dark, vintage-dated flagship, joined more recently by the stronger Chimay 150. Brewing still happens within the abbey, and profits still flow to the monastic community and to social projects in the surrounding region.

Chimay Bleue, the flagship, pours deep mahogany with fig, plum and fresh-yeast aromas; a warming, port-like ale whose dark-fruit sweetness dries into a gently bitter, cocoa-tinged finish.