Van Assche pulls from a cupboard samples of campaigns for commercial Abbey beers: a picture of women in monks’ habits and suggestive copy such as “the red-head with character,” pointing out this is the sort of thing the monks would never allow.
Many Trappist brewers go no further than providing beer mats and glasses and a cafe at their doorsteps.
“Some argue we are like cuckoos — we have no bars of our own, but we’re still present,” said Van Assche, referring to the birds’ habit of using the nests of others.
Chimay, the most internationally recognized Trappist beer, has pushed the hardest commercially, exporting around 45 percent of its 160,000 hectoliter output.
DELICATE BALANCE
“We do a little more than the other breweries. We have posters and road signs,” commercial director Philippe Henroz said. “The beer doesn’t sell by itself.”
Chimay’s larger scale is partly because the monks were keen to revive a local economy battered by World War II. Beer sales help to support 95 lay workers and abbeys abroad.
“I can imagine that there are people asking whether the commercial activities have become more important than the life of the abbey community. It’s a delicate balance,” said Francois de Harenne, director of the Orval brewery, with a purely lay staff since its foundation in 1931.
Westvleteren has gone to the opposite extreme, with a limited 4,500 hectoliters still brewed by monks. Its beer is only sold in crates to individuals at the gates on the understanding that they do not resell it commercially.
It has faced problems, such as in 2005 when demand exploded after an aficionados’ Web site declared one of its beers the best in the world. Even today, commercial operators flout its ban on reselling with some mark-ups as much as 10-fold.
RECRUITING
“There used to be huge traffic congestion on days of sale ... Now people must reserve in advance, so now it’s the telephone line that’s jammed,” said brewery chief Brother Joris.
Given that Trappist beer is a means to an end, few of the brewers seem agitated by the prospect of it dying out with aging monastic communities.
“We can hardly recruit with an advert in the newspaper,” said Brother Antoine, the former head of the Rochefort brewery.
Westvleteren’s Brother Joris said it was not a near-term issue: other abbeys might send their monks to help.
“We would also have to take into account the socio-economic significance,” he said, pointing out the risk of lay unemployment.
Koningshoeven’s Brother Bernardus said another possibility was for brewing to shift to reflect monk demographics. Religious vocations are on the rise in Africa and India.
“Maybe our brothers in Africa will start an African Trappist brewery,” he said. “That would be a fascinating future.”
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