The conveyor belt was ready, the empty bottles were stacked and the machines were about to come to life. But one more step was needed before beer bottling could start.
That last step required a monk.
Within a minute or two, Father Joseph Delargy, dressed in the white robes of the Cistercian order, appeared to bless the ceremonies in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And soon bottles of Britain’s only Trappist ale were rattling fast through the small production line.
Only beers brewed in monasteries with the active involvement of Roman Catholic Cistercian monks are classified as Trappist products, and there is only one in Britain: Tynt Meadow, a dark English ale celebrating its fifth anniversary.
At Mount Saint Bernard Abbey – outside the town of Coalville in the lush countryside of East Central England – the blessing is part of the bottling routine that even unbelievers say is dangerous to skip.
“If it’s a day when it’s not blessed, you can bet it will all go wrong,” said Ross Adams, a professional brewer who isn’t religious but was recently hired to help the monks find their place within an elite group. to keep. “It will throw beer everywhere, parts will fall.”
There are only a dozen Trappist breweries worldwide, most of them in Belgium and the Netherlands. The sole US producer, St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, said last year it would cease operations.
To be recognized by the International Trappist Association, products must be made in the vicinity of an abbey under the supervision of monks or nuns, and the proceeds must be donated to the monastic community, the Trappist order or to development projects and charitable works.
Tynt Meadow, named after the nearby field where the founders of the abbey settled in a cottage in 1835, is a malty ale, somewhat like a cross between a stout and an English bitter, with a faint taste of chocolate.
That flavor has proved popular, with enough brewing success that local volunteers help with bottling to ease the burden of the abbey’s 17 monks.
The smell of yeast, familiar to anyone who has visited a brewery, fills the air outside an ivy-clad building on the abbey grounds. But the differences with a secular operation quickly become apparent. Step inside and from the wall, gaze at the statue of St. Arnulf of Metz, the patron saint of brewers.
And forget about a 9 to 5 work day, at least for the monks.
Every morning, Father Delargy and his fellow monks rise at 3:15 am for the vigil, held at 3:30 am, the first of seven sets of prayers that conclude at 7:30 pm with Compline, the Night Prayer. Lunch is eaten in silence, except for a lecture.
The brewery is separated from the parts of the abbey where silence is observed and from the church, designed by Augustus Welby Pugin.
A dairy farm used to support the abbey, which was founded in the 19th century when religious tolerance allowed Cistercians to return to England after an absence of three centuries. There were 86 Cistercian houses until the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII.
But what sustained the community in the 20th century proved unviable in the 21st as milk prices fell. Cistercian monasteries had a long tradition of brewing, especially in Belgium, so making beer seemed an obvious alternative, especially since records show that the monks of this abbey brewed in the 19th century, unfortunately without writing down their recipe.
“We certainly had a great discussion about the moral aspects of brewing beer,” Father Delargy said, adding that monks “are not ignorant of the difficulties that alcohol can cause.”
But they concluded that they could in good conscience brew a quality product whose full-bodied style could discourage most drinkers from overindulging. Still, at 7.4 percent, the beer’s alcohol content is higher than most mass-produced brands.
A sizable endowment funded the purchase of top-notch brewing equipment from Germany, yet in those early days there were “many times when we thought we wouldn’t get there,” remembers Father Delargy, whose responsibilities include ensuring the brewery meets to all religious requirements of the International Trappist Association.
Now that the beer has found its fans, Father Delargy attributes its success to the spirit with which the drink is brewed—and infused with it.
“It’s a gentle product and we hope that when people drink it at home they can tap into the abbey a little bit,” he said.
Tynt Meadow uses locally sourced ingredients wherever possible, and with generous amounts of barley malt and hops, it borrows from the tradition of Belgian Trappists who believe that beer should be “liquid bread rather than colored water,” says Peter Grady, operations and brewery manager.
The monks “never expected Tynt Meadow to become as popular as it is today,” says Grady, who is now helping develop a second, lighter beer.
Tynt Meadow is not widely known in Britain, and about 65 percent of the 966 hectoliters (25,500 gallons) produced last year were exported, much of it to Belgium and the Netherlands, with 64,260 bottles going to the United States.
When the monk in charge of brewing left last year, the abbey hired Mr. Adams as its first professional brewer – an adjustment for someone more used to working in craft breweries under city railway arches than in a quiet abbey.
Occasionally, the ringing of the church bells can still be startling. “Sometimes you forget where you are,” Mr. Adams said.
The volunteers who help with the bottling seem less motivated by religion than by community spirit and affection for the product.
Steven Horsley, 67, a Trappist beer aficionado who worked in UK healthcare procurement before retirement, is not religious and said the blessing surprised him when he first volunteered. But now he finds it attractive.
“I think it gives something special,” he said.
Andrea Wood, 53, from nearby Whitwick, who runs a kennel and breeds German Shepherds, grew up in Coalville, a town that suffered economically when the mines closed in the 1980s.
“The Monastery has always been that precious gem,” she said, adding that she enjoys Tynt Meadow in moderation. One glass is very tasty, and “like a three-course meal,” she said.
This was Mrs Wood’s first volunteering session and when asked if she planned to continue, she joked that it would depend on how many bottles she dropped.
It turned out there was a breakage – not caused by Mrs. Wood, but by an ill-fitting replacement machine part that crushed several bottles.
Although the procedure was blessed, an hour of work was lost, with a daily total of 4,000 bottles well below normal. However, that does not change the routine at Mount St. Bernard Abbey.
“If we hadn’t had the blessing,” said Mr. Grady, “it could always have ended worse.”
