Westvleteren

In 1814 Jan-Baptist Victoor settled as a hermit in the woods of Westvleteren, where monastic communities had already living long before. The history of the Saint-Sixtus Abbey started when some monks of the French abbey Mont-des-Cats joined the hermit in 1831.

Aside their monastic activities the monks also cultivated the fields around the abbey, produced cheese… in order to be self-supportive. Already in the early days beer was brewed in small quantities, not for sale but just for their own consumption. The Saint-Sixtus Abbey’s archive reveals that the first expenses for a brewery were made in June 1838.