Trappist and Abbey Breweries
There are beers that happen to be brewed by monks, and there are beers whose identity is inseparable from that fact. The Authentic Trappist Product (ATP) label, administered by the International Trappist Association since 1997, is the formal mechanism that tells the two apart. Understanding what it requires — and which breweries currently hold it — is the starting point for any serious engagement with the monastic brewing tradition.
The three criteria
The International Trappist Association has set three requirements for the ATP label. First: the beer must be brewed within the walls, or the immediate surroundings, of a Trappist monastery. Production cannot be contracted out to a separate commercial facility. Second: the brewing operation must be subordinate to the monastic way of life, carried out under the supervision of the monks. The monks do not have to do the physical work themselves (lay workers and professional brewers are permitted), but supervision and decision-making must sit with the community. Third: profits must go primarily to the needs of the monastic community, to solidarity within the Order, or to charitable works; the brewery is not meant to be a profit-making venture.
These three criteria are the reason ATP is a genuine designation rather than a marketing category. Any brewery can make a dubbel or a tripel. Not every brewery can put the hexagonal ATP logo on the label.
The active ATP holders: Belgium
Belgium holds five of the world's eight active Trappist breweries, the highest concentration of any country.
Westmalle (Abdij der Trappisten van Westmalle, Antwerp Province) has been brewing since 1836. Its Dubbel (7.0% ABV) and Tripel (9.5% ABV) are the style-defining versions of both categories; Westmalle is credited with creating the modern tripel, and both names became generic style descriptors across the beer world. A lighter Extra (4.8% ABV), long brewed for the monks' own table, is now sold more widely too.
Westvleteren (Sint-Sixtusabdij, West Flanders) brews only what the abbey needs to support itself, and sells it through its own webshop to registered buyers and at the In de Vrede café opposite the abbey. The 12 (10.2% ABV) is probably the most mythologised beer in the world; the monks have never sought the ratings or the hype, and have had little success discouraging either.
Chimay (Abbaye Notre-Dame de Scourmont, Hainaut) is the most commercially distributed ATP brewery, selling globally through normal retail channels. Chimay Rouge (7% ABV), Bleue (9% ABV), and Blanche (8% ABV) are the three classic products, joined by the lighter Dorée (4.8% ABV), once reserved for the monks and the abbey's inn but now also sold in bottles.
Orval (Abbaye Notre-Dame d'Orval, Luxembourg Province) produces one beer for general sale, Orval at 6.2% ABV, but it is a beer that changes character profoundly over time thanks to the Brettanomyces added after primary fermentation, during maturation and bottle-conditioning. Fresh Orval and aged Orval are effectively different beers.
Rochefort (Abbaye Notre-Dame de Saint-Rémy, Namur) is the most reclusive of the Belgian Trappist producers: no visitor access, no tours, limited distribution. The 6, 8, and 10 (numbered on the now-obsolete Belgian density scale) are among the most sought-after regularly produced beers in the world, and since 2020 a blond Triple Extra has made the range four.
The active ATP holders outside Belgium
La Trappe / Koningshoeven (Abdij Onze Lieve Vrouw van Koningshoeven, North Brabant) has brewed since 1884 and, since Zundert's closure, is again the only Dutch Trappist brewery. The Blond, Dubbel, Tripel, Quadrupel, and Witte cover the main Belgian styles; the Isid'Or and Oak Aged are specialty releases. La Trappe lost the right to use the ATP logo in 1999, after a deal with the commercial Bavaria group, and regained it in 2005 once the monks committed to a more active role in the brewery. It is covered in more detail in our guide to the top breweries in the Netherlands.
Tre Fontane (Abbazia delle Tre Fontane, Rome, Italy) became the first Italian ATP brewery in 2015. Its Tripel (8.5% ABV) uses leaves from the eucalyptus trees the monks planted on the abbey grounds in the nineteenth century to help drain the malarial marshland, giving the beer a distinctive herbal character tied to the monastery's own history.
Tynt Meadow (Mount Saint Bernard Abbey, Leicestershire, England) became the first English ATP brewery in 2018. Its single beer, Tynt Meadow (7.4% ABV), is a dark, strong English Trappist ale named after the field where the community first settled in 1835.
Former ATP breweries
The roster has shrunk in recent years, almost always for the same reason: too few monks.
Achel (Achelse Kluis, Limburg, Belgium) held ATP status from 1998 until early 2021, when its last monks left the community. Brewing has continued at the site, but without a living monastic community it can no longer carry the logo. Achel was the first ATP brewery to lose its status because of a declining monastic population; it has not been the last.
Spencer Brewery (St Joseph's Abbey, Spencer, Massachusetts) was the first ATP brewery in the United States, certified in 2013. The monks closed it in May 2022, concluding that brewing was no longer a viable industry for them in a crowded craft market.
Engelszell (Stift Engelszell, Upper Austria) became the first Austrian ATP holder in 2012, known for the honey-laced Gregorius (10.5% ABV) and the Benno. In 2023 the Order dissolved the dwindling community, and the beer lost the ATP logo.
Zundert (Abdij Maria Toevlucht, North Brabant, Netherlands) began brewing in 2013. In May 2025 the abbey announced it would close for lack of monks; the last brothers left that summer, and the beer can no longer be sold as Trappist.
Mont des Cats (Abbaye du Mont des Cats, northern France) is worth a note because it is so often listed by mistake. Its Bière Trappiste, an amber ale launched in 2011, is brewed for the abbey at Chimay. Mont des Cats is a Trappist abbey and holds the ATP label for its cheese, but because the beer is not brewed at the abbey it cannot carry the ATP logo.
Abbey beer: the imitation tradition
Abbey beer is a legal but distinct category from Trappist. Leffe (brewed by AB InBev at its Leuven brewery, not at an abbey), Grimbergen (brewed under licence from the Norbertine Abbey of Grimbergen by Alken-Maes, part of Heineken, for Belgium, and by Carlsberg for export markets), and dozens of similar products use abbey imagery, style names (dubbel, tripel), and Belgian brewing conventions without monastic production. Grimbergen's canons did reopen a small brewery of their own in 2021, but the beer on supermarket shelves still comes from the big brewers. In Belgium, the "Certified Belgian Abbey Beer" (Erkend Belgisch Abdijbier) logo, introduced by the Belgian brewers' federation in 1999, requires a licence from an existing or former abbey, some abbey say over the commercial side, and a share of the profits for the abbey or its charities, but this is separate from and weaker than the ATP framework. The practical distinction for drinkers: if the hexagonal ATP logo is absent, the monastic production claim is either absent or unverified.
Visiting the Trappist breweries
All the ATP breweries are on the map, and the Belgian five are clustered close enough to tour; our top 10 breweries in Belgium covers several of them in more depth. Access varies enormously: Westvleteren sells through a reservation webshop with strict allocation limits; Chimay and Westmalle have visitor facilities nearby; Rochefort admits no visitors to the brewery. La Trappe near Tilburg offers the most complete visitor experience of any Trappist brewery outside Belgium, with tours and a tasting room on the monastery grounds. Orval's ruined medieval abbey is a heritage site open to visitors separately from the brewery.
The monastic context is not incidental to these beers. The three ATP criteria exist because the brewing tradition and the religious community are understood to be inseparable. Visiting one of these breweries is not the same as visiting a craft taproom, and it deserves a different approach.