Qualla: Westmalle Abbey

Westmalle Abbey: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit FrDr, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 10 December 1836, the abbot Martinus Dom served the first brew of Trappist beer at lunch in the refectory at Westmalle Abbey. The monks were not pioneering anything they would have recognized as such. They were following a rule written by Abbé de Rancé in 1677 - that monks could drink the popular local beverage with their meals besides water - and in Flanders the popular local beverage was beer. They built a small brewery rather than pay outside brewers. Two centuries later, the names of the beers that descended from that lunch - Westmalle Dubbel, Westmalle Tripel - are spoken with reverence in beer halls from Tokyo to Portland. The Tripel, refined here in the 1930s, defined an entire style of Belgian brewing. The monks still brew it. They still serve it at lunch.

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Image: FrDr | CC BY-SA 4.0

Westmalle Abbey: The Group Bound for Canada

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pvosta at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1791, in the chaos following the French Revolution, the novice master of La Trappe Abbey - a man named Augustinus de Lestrange Dubosc - fled France for Switzerland and settled with refugee monks at a vacant Carthusian house near Fribourg called Val-Sainte. The Sacred Valley fi...

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Image: Pvosta at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Westmalle Abbey: Closed, Reopened, Closed Again

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Tbc assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. Six weeks after they arrived, French troops invaded the Austrian Netherlands and the monks fled to Münster, founding a new house in Darfeld. They returned in 1802. In 1811 Napoleon closed every Trappist house in his empire. They left again. After Napoleon's defeat in 1814 they ca...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Tbc assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 3.0

Westmalle Abbey: What the Monks Send Out into the World

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit FrDr, CC BY-SA 4.0. Westmalle has spent two centuries founding daughter houses. Achel Abbey was established in 1846. Saint-Sixtus at Westvleteren - now famous for the rarest Trappist beer in the world - received material support from Westmalle in its early years. In 1884 the monks founded Ulingsheid...

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Image: FrDr | CC BY-SA 4.0

Westmalle Abbey: What a Trappist Day Looks Like

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User Hsf-toshiba on nl.wikipedia, Public domain. The monks rise before four in the morning for the first office. They sing seven services through the day, eat in silence in the refectory, and work the rest of the hours in the brewery, the cheese dairy, the farm, the library, the gardens. The cattle the abbey kept for decades we...

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Image: User Hsf-toshiba on nl.wikipedia | Public domain

Westmalle Abbey: The Beer That Made the Place Famous

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit FrDr, CC BY-SA 4.0. Westmalle Dubbel was perfected in 1856 - dark, malty, secondary-fermented in the bottle, the ancestor of every Belgian dubbel since. Westmalle Tripel arrived in 1934, pale golden, strong, dry-finishing, and so distinctive that the style now bears its name. The abbey does not aim ...

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Image: FrDr | CC BY-SA 4.0