by Kihm Winship
This article first appeared in a press kit for Blue Moon Abbey Ale in 1997. It was rewritten in 2003 and posted here with the permission of the author.

To understand Abbey Ales, and how religion and brewing came to exist in such an unexpected and beneficial harmony, one has to journey back to the early days of Christianity and the dawn of the monastic tradition.

In the fourth century, monastic orders sprang up all around the Mediterranean. In Italy, St. Benedict laid down the first rules of monastic life, declaring that each monastery would have an abbot as its leader -- and hence be known as an abbey -- and that manual labor would be as much a part of the day as prayer. He also required that the monks grow and make everything they need within the abbey walls, and thus be safe from the outside world with its snares and temptations.



During the Middle Ages, hundreds of these self-sufficient communities thrived as places of holiness and learning. The monks grew their own crops, and prepared their own food and wine. And as they ventured north to establish monasteries in cooler climes, they began to make their own beer.

Beer and wine were staples for good reason. In the ages before modern sanitation, water was a dangerous beverage, sometimes even fatal. But wine, by virtue of its alcoholic content, and beer, because the water had been boiled in the brewing process, did not carry disease. Thus they were the safe and common beverages of the day.

A brewery was as common a feature in an abbey as a bakery, kitchen or garden. But the monks not only participated in brewing, they also studied it, recorded their observations and passed on their knowledge. Even when royal and city breweries began to flourish in the tenth and eleventh centuries, it was monasteries that made the best beer.

The ninth century Abbey of St. Gallen, not far from present-day Zurich, had three breweries, as well as a malt house, milling room, kiln and storage cellars. Each brewery brewed a different beer: a prima melior for distinguished visitors and for the fathers themselves, a secunda for lay brothers and other employees, and a tertia for the many pilgrims who came seeking bed and board. The prima melior might be brewed to be even more sustaining during Lent, when it had to serve as "liquid bread" for the brothers. These full-bodied ales are the ancestors of today's abbey ales.

For those with varied tastes, monks were also the first to make champagne, liqueurs such as Benedictine and Chartreuse, and Parmesan cheese. They even saved Western Civilization, but not without a struggle. Through the centuries, their abbeys were repeatedly sacked and destroyed by Vandals, Visigoths and Vikings, rebuilt to be sacked again during the French Revolution and two World Wars. The Belgian monastery at Orval, for example, was founded in 1130, but has been destroyed and rebuilt at least four times.

Today, Orval is one of five Trappist monasteries in Belgium and the Netherlands that brews Trappist ale. The others are Chimay, Rochefort, Westmalle and Westvleteren. The broader title of "abbey ale" goes to any beer that is brewed for an abbey, or in tribute to an abbey, by a commercial brewery. A single abbey might have two or three beers, and it is estimated that there are between 75 and 150 abbey ales brewed in Belgium today.

Because one of the main characteristics of an abbey ale is its individuality, abbey ale is not so much a beer style as it is a family of beers whose aroma and palate make clear the source of their inspiration. Top fermented, highly distinctive, fruity and aromatic, these are beers that are full of flavor, able to stand by themselves but equally at home as an accompaniment to a good meal.

Blue Moon Abbey Ale is inspired by a famed Trappist beer, Orval, with a deep amber, copper color, a hoppy aroma and a moderate alcohol level. All abbey ales have a fruity, aromatic touch, and Blue Moon is no exception, with subtle hints of currents, raisins and dates. Keith Villa, Blue Moon's master brewer, notes that Blue Moon Abbey Ale is "a unique yet serious beer, and true to the style."


You won't have to join a monastery to enjoy it, but it might be appropriate to raise a glass to centuries of dedicated abbey brewers who made it possible for the family of abbey ales to be a living reality today.