The Brewery That Was Never About Beer: The Story of Chimay
Dear Reader,
It began with twelve monks, two horses, and a patch of soggy forest nobody wanted.
It became one of the most remarkable breweries in the world.
The beer they make is outstanding, but that’s perhaps the least impressive part of the story. This brewery was founded in a monastery and run by monks with the goal of improving life in the surrounding region.
But the Nazis almost destroyed it.
And yet it only got better. The brewery grew into a global brand whose profits support the Abbey Notre-Dame de Scourmont and charitable causes in the surrounding Chimay region.
This is the story of the Chimay Brewery. One of the famous Belgian Trappist breweries whose beers I’m proud to carry. And that’s not just marketing speak. This brand is one of the reasons I got into brewing.
The Brewery That Was Never About Beer
On 14 November 1850, six monks gathered in a castle with the Prince of Chimay. The Prince granted them forty-eight hectares of bad land in a wooded, under-developed, and poor region. They were going to found a monastery.
These were Trappist monks, members of a strict branch of the Cistercian order devoted to prayer, simplicity, and manual labour. They were expected to support themselves through the work of their own hands. That made them particularly well suited to what the Prince had in mind.
According to the foundation cross placed at the site, the Cistercian monks founding the monastery at Scourmont began to praise God and clear the land.
When they began clearing, they said the ground was so soggy that spring water would shoot up if you poked a stick a metre into it. It was tough work. They cleared the trees first. Then, over two months, twelve Brothers and two horses dug up and moved 2,600 cubic metres of stone by hand.
They were only one quarter of the way done.
But why were a dozen monks toiling in the woods to clear some of the worst land in Belgium? For that, we need to go back seven years.
On 2 March 1843, François Joseph de Riquet de Caraman, Prince of Chimay, died.
His son Joseph succeeded him. Prince Joseph continued his father’s work improving the lives of his people. He founded both a hospice and a shelter for poor children during his first year in office. But he had his own interests.
Prince Joseph wanted to develop the unproductive woodland in Chimay and grow its economy. He would soon get help.
Six weeks later, on 12 April 1843, Jean-Baptiste Jourdain started his first day as the parish priest of Virelles, one of the Chimay region’s towns.
Within a year, Father Jourdain and Prince Joseph would set in motion a chain of events that would change the course of brewing history.
Both were active community-builders, and although it’s unclear how they met, we do know that Father Jourdain pitched the idea of a working monastery to help develop the region. Prince Joseph decided to help by donating land.
The monastery, named Scourmont, was founded in 1850 after years of discussions between the Prince and monks at Westvleteren and Westmalle, abbeys that today also house famous breweries.
For all his effort to found the new monastery, Father Jourdain never joined it. He remained the dedicated parish priest of Virelles and lived a life deeply devoted to the service of his people. He once had to borrow money from his housekeeper because he gave too much of his own away.
Then in 1853, while hurrying to deliver the last sacraments to a dying parishioner, Father Jourdain fell and badly injured himself. He was lame for the rest of his life. His friends at Scourmont bought him a donkey, harness, and carriage so he could get around. He remained close to the monks, regularly visiting Scourmont and hosting them at his home when they travelled.
Jourdain lived just long enough to see his dream of a working monastery realised. Scourmont brewed its first beer the year he died, in 1862.
By then, an ambitious young priest who had helped found Scourmont was in charge. Hyacinthe Bouteca had been named Prior in 1859. He was a trained carpenter and played a key role in the monastery’s construction. He also served as what we would today call a general contractor, directing the other monks during construction. He helped build the brewery and a dairy, both founded in 1862.
Father Hyacinthe personally directed the first brew, made with help from the laymen who had installed the equipment. It resembled a Bavarian doppelbock, but after a few batches the monks decided it was too weak. Hyacinthe responded by making something stronger, laying the foundation for the beers Chimay makes today.
By 1865 the monks were brewing consistently. Visitors could buy bottles at the monastery guesthouse for 50 cents, and the monks made deliveries themselves, walking to Forges and Chimay with baskets of bottles hanging from shoulder yokes.
Chimay also developed a reputation as a health beer. Physicians and chemists studied its strong ale, describing it as nutritious, pure, and hygienic. Some doctors even recommended it to their patients.
Strong beer does, after all, make you feel better.
Beyond beer, Father Hyacinthe sought to grow Scourmont into an abbey. Prince Joseph again threw his political weight behind the monks, gaining the support of a bishop and a cardinal. Then, after years of lobbying, Scourmont finally attained abbey status on 24 February 1871. Hyacinthe became its first abbot.
Now that Scourmont was an abbey, it seemed they could turn their attention to other pursuits. Their brewery was growing, but their dairy was still only producing butter. So, in 1876, Brother Benoît van Loon was sent to the French Abbey of Sept-Fons to learn its secrets of cheesemaking.
In return, he taught his hosts how to brew beer.
Chimay cheese had a rough start. The brothers were not “scrupulous enough about the article of cleanliness,” and by the late 1880s the dairy nearly failed. Hyacinthe changed personnel, improved hygiene, and modernised the equipment. Customers came back. By 1895, Scourmont was producing 1,000 hectolitres of beer per year and its cheese business was thriving.
Then the brewery caught fire.
It began in the malt kiln while the monks were at prayer. Neighbours saw the flames before they did and rushed to help. The fire was extinguished within two hours and the brewery was saved.
Scourmont had been founded to help the community and, that afternoon, the community helped save Scourmont.
The brewery survived. Over the following decades, Chimay continued to grow. Then came the Second World War.
The occupying Germans dismantled the brewery and removed its equipment to feed their war machine. Scourmont, like much of Europe, was left to abandon its business or rebuild.
The monks chose to rebuild. But rather than simply reconstruct the old brewery, they would modernise it.
One monk, Father Théodore, was sent to study brewing at the Catholic University of Leuven, where he worked with the renowned brewing scientist Jean De Clerck, who visited Scourmont himself. Together they brought modern brewing science to monastic brewing.
In 1947, Théodore isolated the yeast strain that still gives Chimay its distinctive character today.
The monks rebuilt the brewery and produced its first modern prototype for Easter 1948. Then, in 1954, they brewed a special Christmas beer.
It was a hit, prized for its depth and ability to age gracefully for many years. It’s rich, dark, and contemplative, changing as it warms, with notes of sweet dried fruits and subtle baking spices. It was renamed Chimay Blue in 1956 and is still sold today.
The brewery began to grow aggressively. By the 1960s, Trappist beer was known across Europe. Chimay had over seventy monks involved in production and a team of laymen operated a local bottling plant. Trappist beers, those associated with the Trappist order of Cistercian monks, were becoming globally renowned.
Suddenly, everyone wanted to be a Trappist.
Commercial breweries started calling their products abbey ales, using monastic imagery, and sometimes even using the very specific religious word Trappist itself, which refers to a certain type of Cistercian monk.
The monks were not pleased.
In 1962, the Trappist monastery at Orval sued one of the pretenders. Veltem, a brand owned by a commercial brewing company, claimed to be a Trappist beer. The defendant argued that Trappist had become a style of beer, like Pilsner. Orval argued that it meant something very different: a product originating within a Trappist monastery.
The court agreed.
Orval won. They asked for one franc in damages and restrictions on how Trappist could be used in marketing. Veltem was left with 9,500 wooden crates of beer bearing now-unusable branding.
But the growing success of Trappist breweries like Chimay and Orval presented the monks with a deeper problem.
These breweries had grown far beyond the little enterprises established to make abbeys self-sufficient. Chimay was becoming an international business. It employed laypeople, owned valuable assets, exported around the world, and generated substantial commercial wealth.
The monks at Chimay had founded their brewery to serve their monastery and their region. They did not want commercial success to change that mission.
So, in 1996, they did something remarkable.
The monastic community created the Chimay-Wartoise Foundation and transferred to it the shares of the commercial companies that constituted the abbey’s economic assets. The monks retained the rights associated with the Chimay name and its Trappist identity, but the commercial wealth itself would now be held by a foundation charged with contributing to the economic, social, and environmental development of the Chimay region.
In effect, the monks gave away the capital but kept custody of the purpose.
Through the Chimay-Wartoise Foundation, the brewery helped finance the creation of L’Épicéa, a social grocery store in the Chimay region. Vulnerable families can buy high-quality food and hygiene products there for 50% to 70% below market prices. The project also includes budget counselling to help families work their way out of severe debt.
Beer sold around the world is helping put affordable food on the tables of families living in a rural community in Belgium.
A year after the creation of the Foundation, in 1997, Chimay joined seven other Trappist monasteries - Achel, Koningshoeven, Mariawald, Orval, Rochefort, Westmalle, and Westvleteren - to create the Authentic Trappist Product label.
To qualify, production must take place at Trappist monastery under the supervision of monks or nuns. The proceeds must support the needs of the monastic community, solidarity within the Trappist order, development projects, and charitable works.
It’s a unique certification that certifies both where a product comes from and what its success is ultimately for.
And that brings us back to Father Jourdain and Prince Joseph.
More than 180 years ago, a parish priest approached a prince with an idea. They would put a working monastery in a swampy forest and see whether prayer, labour, and productive enterprise could make the place around it better.
Six monks signed an agreement.
Twelve Brothers and two horses started moving rocks.
Eventually there was a brewery.
Today Chimay is known around the world. Its beer and cheese support a monastic tradition stretching back centuries. They provide employment and generate wealth that is returned to the people who need it.
That might be the most remarkable thing about Chimay. It makes extraordinary beer.
But the beer was never really the point.