Chimay "Red"

Belgium is a well known for making great beer as France is for making excellent wine, and Chimay Rouge (red cap), a Belgian abbey beer, is no exception. In my opinion, Chimay rouge is one of the greatest Belgian Trappist bottled beers around and (unusually) easily available in supermarkets. There are many Belgian abbey beers, but most of these, although having roots in monastic brewing, have become large corporations and are no longer made by monks. Not so Chimay. One of the most famous of the lessening number of monasteries still making their own brews, the art of brewing this beer goes right back to medieval times, where monasteries were mainly self ...  Read the complete review

Strange as it may seem monks make great beer, but why! This is an opinion about Chimay Rouge (Red) one of the best Belgian Trappist bottled beers around and one on the ones you can easily get hold of at your local supermarket! ABOUT MONKS AND BEER Chimay is probably the most famous of the increasingly few monasteries that still make some of the finest bottled ale. In all the remaining monasteries that still brew beer the art of brewing goes back a long way to the middle ages when monasteries were always associated with beer making. The monks tried to be self-sufficient and as well as growing crops on the land they included bakeries, tanneries, ...  Read the complete review

I was introduced to the delights of Belgian beers in the small cafés in France during my first year at the university of Toulouse. Used to drinking what would be classed as lager, I was strangely but pleasantly surprised by the variety of tastes and flavours found in Belgian beers. A monastic community brews one of only six beers in Belgium that can carry the appellation Trappist, Chimay. Now, there are three types of beers brewed by Chimay Triple,Bleu and Rouge but I’ll try to talk a bit about the later and how you might want to drink it to get the full impact of flavours. Chimay Rouge is the better known of the Chimay beers and my personal favourite. ...  Read the complete review

The Abbey of Scourmont, eight miles south of the southern Belgian market town of Chimay, is one of only seven Trappist abbeys and cloisters that are approved to use the term Authentic Trappist Product to describe their beers. This is because the beers are made within the confines of the abbey. Unfortunately those confines are so small that as popularity has come - and with it a welcome boost for the abbey's charitable funds - more and more beer-making has had to be crammed into a tighter and tighter footprint. Working the brewhouse 24-7 is not possible because this is a genuine monastery wherte quiet contemplation is the order of the day. This ...  Read the complete review