My brewery, St. Bernardus, has been producing the Sint-Sixtus Westvleteren abbey beers since 1946. However, in 1992, the monks of Westvleteren made a decision to start brewing their beers within the abbey walls again. Although we were allowed to continue brewing the same ales, my brewmasters were concerned about the competition. This gave rise to an idea of producing me, a blond Tripel that will join the ranks of my famous dark siblings – the Pater 6, Prior 8, and Abt 12.
As a St. Bernardus original, I use hops grown in-house, right next to my brewery. I pour pale gold-amber with a silky-soft head of froth that preserves my sophisticated profile of spice, orange, grass and warming alcohol. Today, I am one of the most popular Belgian Tripels in the region and am known to be delightfully quaffable with my floral and banana-like fruity notes.
St. Bernardus is an abbey brewery with a history connected to Trappist monks. Back in the 1800s, anti-clericalism forced the Catsberg Abbey monks to leave France for Belgium, where they founded the Refuge Notre Dame de St. Bernard and produced cheese to finance themselves. In 1946, shortly after the second World War, they entered into an agreement with a neighbouring abbey called Sint-Sixtus Westvleteren, to brew and market their full-bodied and quality Trappist beers. After decades of brewing the famed Westvleteren Trappist ales under license, it was in 1992 that these ales became known as St. Bernardus. As such, the St. Bernardus abbey ales are today, the closest commercially-available match in both flavour and recipe to the great and elusive Westvletern ales.
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