My name "Abt", is short for "Abbot" and it refers to a title for the highest-ranking monk in an abbey. As the most prized and respected beer of St. Bernardus, I account for more than half of the total brewery's production. I am a classic Belgian Quadrupel beer and have been brewed based on an original Sint-Sixtus Trappist Ale recipe since 1946.
I pour a creamy dark brown with a full ivory head that offers an aromatic, fruity and slightly spicy bouquet as well as a complex, hoppy yet malty, bittersweet flavour. Here's a less well-known fact about me: my iconic laughing monk label changes to a winking one on every 1000th bottle that rolls off my brewery's production line!
100 points - RateBeer
99 points - Beer Advocate
Bronze - World Beer Awards 2020
Gold - World Beer Awards 2019
Gold - Brussels Beer Challenge 2018
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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