1956 Abbey Style Tripel

For centuries, monks brewed some of Europe’s finest beer.

Monasteries were among the most stable institutions in medieval Europe. While kingdoms fractured and armies marched across the continent, abbeys preserved agriculture, literacy, engineering, and craft traditions behind stone walls. Brewing became part of that world naturally. Monks cultivated grain, managed farms, hosted travellers, and supported themselves through skilled manual labour. Beer was woven into daily life.

Belgium, positioned between the brewing traditions of France, Germany, and the Low Countries, became one of the great centres of monastic beer culture. Abbey breweries developed reputations for quality, consistency, and refinement. Their beers were not rustic farmhouse ales improvised from season to season, but carefully controlled products shaped by generations of accumulated knowledge.

But the modern Trappist beer tradition nearly disappeared.

The industrialisation of Europe transformed brewing during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Massive urban lager breweries spread across the continent, producing pale beer cheaply and at enormous scale. Then came the catastrophes of the 20th century. Two world wars devastated Belgium. Monasteries lost equipment, farmland, labour, and revenue. Some breweries closed permanently. Others survived only barely.

The monasteries that endured faced a choice: modernise or disappear.

And so, quietly, abbey brewing entered the industrial age.

Steam boilers replaced direct-fired kettles. Refrigeration improved fermentation control. Laboratories allowed monks to study yeast scientifically. Stainless steel replaced aging wood. Ancient religious communities adopted modern industrial technology not because they abandoned tradition, but because they hoped to preserve it.

One monastery would become especially influential in this transformation: Westmalle Abbey.

The Trappist monks of Westmalle had brewed commercially since the 1800s, but in 1934 they introduced a strong pale beer called Superbier. Over the following decades the recipe evolved as brewing science improved and postwar Belgian brewing modernised. Then, in 1956, Westmalle reformulated the beer into something that would permanently shape the history of Belgian ale.

The modern Tripel was born.

At the time, strong beer was usually dark, heavy, sweet, or wine-like. Westmalle Tripel was something different entirely. Pale gold in colour, brilliantly carbonated, deceptively drinkable, and extraordinarily complex, it combined expressive monastery yeast character with continental hops, pale pilsner malt, and large amounts of candi sugar to create strength without heaviness.

The beer became one of the most influential ales ever brewed.

Breweries across Belgium and eventually the world began creating their own Tripels. The style became synonymous with Belgian brewing itself: strong yet elegant, powerful yet refined.

But the beer also reflected its moment in history.

Postwar Europe was rebuilding. Ancient institutions adapted themselves to modern industry. And nowhere was this contradiction more striking than inside the Trappist breweries of Belgium, where monks in white habits used stainless steel tanks, laboratory equipment, and modern bottling lines to produce some of the world’s most sophisticated ales.

Our 1956 Abbey Style Tripel is brewed in tribute to that moment. Based on the famous mid-century Westmalle profile, it recreates the kind of beer that emerged as monastic brewing entered the modern world.

Golden in colour with a dense white head, it carries notes of pear, spice, citrus, fresh bread, and soft alcohol balanced by firm bitterness and a dry finish. Despite its strength, it remains remarkably graceful and drinkable.

This is not merely a strong beer. It is a beer born from reinvention. Medieval monastic brewing rebuilt through modern science and postwar industry.

A beer from the abbeys of 1950s Belgium, where ancient traditions survived not by resisting modernity, but by mastering it.

Availability: Year Round

First Produced: 2026

Alc/vol. 9.5%