Some encounters take centuries to happen. Kombine is one of those: a thousand years walking into Watou. The world’s oldest continuously operating brewery drops in on the youngest of the great Belgian néo-trappiste houses — and what comes out of the deal is at once a style exercise, an act of historical reverence, and a rather elegant conceptual gesture.
An unfiltered Helles is, by definition, a contradiction. We find this tension incredibly intriguing. — St. Bernardus, launch note, 2025.
Two monks, a thousand years apart, one glass
Weihenstephan was founded in 725 by Saint Corbinian — Korbinian in Flemish — a Frankish bishop who arrived in Bavaria with twelve companions. By 768, a hop garden near the monastery was already paying its tithe to the monks. In 1040, Abbot Arnold obtained from the town of Freising the official right to brew and sell: this is the date the house claims as its brewing birth, and it earns them the title — never seriously disputed — of the world’s oldest continuously operating brewery. Secularised in 1803, renamed Bayerische Staatsbrauerei Weihenstephan in 1921, it lives today on the campus of the Technische Universität München. A little short of two thousand years.
At the other end of the line, St. Bernardus is a newborn by comparison. Founded in 1946 by Evariste Deconinck in Watou, West Flanders, it brewed for nearly half a century under licence the Trappist recipes of the Saint Sixtus monks of Westvleteren, using their yeast strain. In 1992 the Trappist law changed: only a monastery could bear the name. Bernardus then became itself, under its own patronymic, twelve kilometres from the abbey that had taught it everything. Nor is the Freising link accidental: St. Bernardus is today the official Belgian importer of Weihenstephan.
The brewing pact
Kombine 2025 is not the first collaboration: Braupakt 2024, brewed in Freising, opened the conversation with a 6.5% Blonde Ale already respecting the Reinheitsgebot. For round two, the workshop moves to Watou. And that move commits three ruptures for a house that, since 1946, had brewed nothing but top-fermented, bottle-refermented ales. Kombine is its first bottom fermentation. It is also its first beer without bottle refermentation — clarification therefore comes from cold conditioning, not from live yeast. And it is finally its first composition rigorously conforming to the Bavarian Purity Law of 1516: water, malted barley, hops, yeast — and nothing else. The grain comes from Bavarian malt, the hops from a bilateral blend — cones from St. Bernardus’s own field mingled with those of the Hallertau hills —, the yeast is Weihenstephan’s proprietary lager strain, ferried a thousand kilometres to Watou for the occasion. On the label, drawn by Belgian illustrator Xavier Truant — the same hand behind the fresco of the brewery’s elevator shaft —, Bernardus and Korbinian raise a stained-glass glass to each other like two old friends who have finally found a decent excuse to meet.
Visual analysis
A straw-gold body, frank yet light, veiled by the matte haze characteristic of the unfiltered style: the malt proteins and lager yeast in suspension refuse the crystal brilliance that the word Helles seems to promise. The contradiction is fully assumed; it is beautiful. A fine, creamy head rises in a collar, lays down a few lace marks, then subsides without apology — as Bavarian Helles have always done, with discretion. Moderate, steady carbonation sustains a fine chain of rising bubbles that carry the aromas without jostling them.
The nose
The nose is clean, frank, disarmingly simple — and therein lies its mastery. Fresh cereals up front, like a handful of barley pressed between the fingers; soft biscuit, sandwich bread just out of the tin, a nearly cracker crispness. Behind, the hop signals without shouting: floral notes from noble German varieties, fine herbal lift from Flemish hops. In the background, Weihenstephan’s lager signature — that barely sulphurous, cleanly fermentative touch that remains the mark of the great Bavarian lagers. Nothing ostentatious, everything in its place.
The palate
The attack is fresh, clean, immediate: a sip that does not lie. Light body but perfectly draped — this is the “full-bodied blond” the brewers promised, less through density than through texture, coated by the residual sugars the non-filtration keeps in play. Cereals lead, carried by a touch of toasted bread and a discreet caramel note likely from a small dose of Munich malt. The malty roundness is balanced by a noble herbal bitterness dosed to perfection: present, never biting. The six degrees fade with rare elegance. Dry, clean, long-but-restrained finish — the Bavarian school channelled by Belgian precision.
Doctor Beer’s perfect pairing
The brewers suggest bratwurst and sauerkraut, mild Alpine cheeses, herb-roasted chicken. Doctor Beer approves and adds a pinch of salt: a bloomy-rind brie de Meaux, barely oozing, converses wonderfully with the malt sweetness and the roundness of the body; the lactic ferments of the cheese resonate with the Weihenstephan yeast while the herbal bitterness cleanses the palate between bites. Another path: a soft Munich pretzel and mild Bavarian mustard to stay true to the Purity Law — or, for the geographical wink, Poperinge ham, a few kilometres from Watou.
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Seventeen out of twenty: an unfiltered Helles that owns its contradictions like a signature. When the doyenne of world breweries and the younger daughter of Flemish Trappism decide to brew together, they don’t write a compromise — they write a pact.
