Chimay Starts Brewing At Scourmont Abbey

In 1862, the monks of Scourmont Abbey near Chimay in Belgium began brewing beer. The monastery itself had been founded only a few years earlier, after a small group of monks settled on the Scourmont plateau in 1850 and established a farm, brewery, and cheese creamery around the abbey. Chimay became one of the defining names of Belgian Trappist brewing. Its beers are produced at Scourmont Abbey under monastic supervision, and the brewery’s development linked beer, cheese, local employment, and monastic self-support in a model that later became central to the modern public image of Trappist beer.