Bières de Chimay

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Bières de Chimay

Location	Chimay Belgium
Year opened	1862
Annual production	123000 hL
Active Beers
Chimay Red	Dubbel
Chimay Blue	Belgian Dark
Chimay White	Tripel
Chimay Dorée	Pale Ale

Bières de Chimay is a Belgian trappist brewery and cheese maker. The brewery is located inside the abbey Notre-Dame de Scourmont, in the Belgian municipality of Chimay. It produces four trappist beers and four cheeses.

The beers, all top-fermented, are:

Chimay Rouge (Red), 7% ABV dubbel. In the 75 cl bottle, it is known as Première. It is a dark brown colour and has a sweet, fruity aroma. The malt in this beer has a nutty character that goes well with the hints of pepper from the house yeast.
Chimay Bleue (Blue), 9% ABV darker vintage ale. In the 75 cl bottle, it is known as Grande Réserve. This copper-brown beer has a creamy head and a slightly bitter taste. Considered to be the "classic" Chimay ale, it exhibits a considerable depth of fruity, peppery character. The taste continues to evolve and develop with a few years of age, and is extremely popular with the Belgian population.
Chimay Blanche (White), or Chimay Triple, 8% ABV golden tripel. In the 75 cl bottle, it is known as Cinq Cents. This crisp beer bears a light orange colour and a very bitter taste (like most high-density pale-ales), and is the most hopped and dryest of the three.
Chimay Dorée, 4.8% ABV light ale, brewed from the same ingredients as Red, but paler and differently spiced. It is a rare variety, intended only to be drunk at the abbey or at the nearby inn Auberge de Poteaupré which is associated with the abbey. The monks themselves drink this variety rather than the stronger three. There is no official market for Dorée, and the rare bottles which make their way out are through unofficial sources. Even the brewery's own web site makes no mention of this variety.

The cheeses are:

Chimay with Beer, whose rind is soaked in Chimay beer.
Chimay Grand Classic, a semi-hard pressed cheese.
Chimay Grand Cru, made from pasteurised milk and matured for six weeks.
Old Chimay, a hard cheese matured for at least six months.

Bières de Chimay, or just Chimay, has been brewing beer since 1862 and making cheeses since 1876. The brewery was started primarily to give work to the region, one of the poorest in Belgium.

The four varieties of Chimay, with Chimay Bleue in the glass.

As with all other Trappist breweries, the beer is only sold in order to financially support the monastery and some other good causes. The brewery business pays rent for use of the property within the abbey, which is used to support the monastic community. All of the profits from the sale of the beer is distributed to charities and for community development around the region.

Like many strong Belgian beers, those produced at Chimay age well and can be cellared for at least five years whilst maintaining quality. The Chimay Bleue variety can be aged for upwards of fifteen years. Cafes such as de Kulminator in Antwerp cellar Chimay Blue and offer varieties for sale that have been aged for up to 25 years.

The water for the beers is drawn from a well located inside the monastery walls. The filtered solids from the beer mash are recycled into livestock feed which is given to the same cows that produce the milk for Chimay cheeses.

Once brewed, the beer is transported from the monastery to the bottling plant 12 km away, which can fill 40,000 bottles per hour, of which many are returns. The beer is then refermented in the bottle for three weeks before being shipped around the world.