Monastic Brewing Comes to Oregon: Mt Angel's Benedictine Brewery

When I first visited Mount Angel Abbey last summer, the monks had already been considering a new brewery for a year.  In the beer world that looks like glacial pace, but Mount Angel is a Benedictine abbey, an order that date back nearly 1500 years.  Throughout the centuries, monks have survived wars, plagues, financial collapses, and they didn't do it by acting hastily.  When the Oregon monks began considering a source of revenue to replace the old press they once ran, they wanted to give it a full vetting.

The Benedictine monks, like the Trappists, trace their origins back to the Rule of St. Benedict in 529.  (The Cistercian and Trappist orders were formed by monks who had stricter readings of Benedict's rules.)  The Rule was actually a set of guidelines drawn up to govern monastic life.  Among the larger effects, it exhorted monasteries to be self-sufficient and monks to be industrious (and cheery). Furthermore, it encouraged an outward focus of welcoming guests.  They had to produce their own food and beverage and offer it to guests who visited.  In the monastic boom that developed particularly under Charlemagne, monasteries took up brewing and at one point there were six hundred making beer across Europe.  Beer-making is a very old monastic art.

After a long period of deliberation, the monks at Mt Angel agreed unanimously to join this old tradition.  It's an especially good fit for the abbey, which owns land on which hops are now grown commercially.  They're still some ways from having actual beer, but they've gone through the decision-making and permitting process and are now ready to start assembling the brewery.

In the nearly two years of deliberation to date, they've spoken to a number of people in the Oregon beer industry for guidance.  They invited Stan Hieronymus and me to the abbey.  (I had hoped Stan, who literally wrote the book on monastic brewing, would get to break the news, but he's swamped in Philadelphia--that's him second from right in the upper photo.)  The monks have sampled lots of beer.  When Stan and I were there, we got to sit in on a meeting where they considered how a "brand" would work, and how a beer might help communicate their mission.  I haven't been privy to most of the conversations, so I assume a lot more than that has happened as well.

Since they haven't built the brewery yet, questions about the beer are still preliminary and provisional, although the current thinking runs like this:

• They were originally considering a 15-barrel brewery, but are leaning instead toward a smaller five-barrel system.
• The beer is liable to be at least informed by the Belgian tradition, but "tailored toward Oregon" in the words of Chris Jones, the Director of Enterprises of the abbey.  Jones, who's not a monk, has spent a lot of time thinking about what it means to be a monastery brewery in Oregon.  He and the monks believe the beer should reflect both the monastic tradition--strongest in Belgium--as well as the Oregon brewing tradition (and I think "Oregon" can be read at least shorthand for "hoppier than Chimay").
• They will have a standard stable of beers--perhaps starting with a dark and light one to begin with--and have some seasonals as well.  They will begin the process of recipe development soon, and the monks will guide selection.  In the meeting I sat in on, all the monks expressed a strong desire to have the beer be exceptional--it's a kind of ambassador to the world.
• The brewery will go in a building known at the abbey (for reasons no one knows) as "the Fort."  There will be a tasting room; at least in the short term, Mt Angel is planning to go with the Westvleteren model of selling beer only at the abbey.  This is another reason it needs to be a beer Oregonians will like.
• Monks may or may not brew the beer themselves, though there's at least one monk who has homebrewing experience.  
• Don't expect beer for a year, maybe more.  (Unlike a commercial enterprise, this isn't the only activity on the monks' plate.  Mt Angel is, in addition to a monastery, a seminary.)  All in good time.

 I hope to have much more for you as this all develops.  Tomorrow the abbey is hosting the 7th Annual Festival of Arts and Wine, where they will go public with this news.  The monks will be auctioning the first tangible item from the enterprise--a sweatshirt with the brewery logo.  If you happen to be in the neighborhood, stop by and congratulate them.  Folks at the abbey are happy to answer questions and if you aren't in Mt Angel tomorrow, you can send inquiries to benedictine.brewery(at)mtangel.edu. 

There aren't very many monastic breweries in the world.  For the past year or so, I've been really excited by the prospect that Mt Angel might become the newest. It will be a bit more time before we get to go buy our first crates, but we can move it from the "prospective" column to "actively happening."  Very cool news. 

"The Fort" at Mt Angel Abbey.  Perhaps in a couple years
they'll call it "the brewery."

Westvleteren Versus the Competition -- In a Blind Tasting

About a week ago, I got an intriguing email from Evan Cohan, the mastermind behind Beercycling (more on that in a bit).  He and a select group of invitees would be gathering to do a blind tasting of eight (!) strong dark abbey ales.  Among these would be the famous Westvleteren 12, a beer that is regularly rated the best beer in the world.  How would it stack up in our tasting?

[Nerdly digression.  Strong dark abbey ales are typically grouped in a category called quadrupel by American beer geeks.  There is an intuitive way in which this makes sense, owing to the existence of dubbels, tripels, and even--though far more rarely--enkel (single).  These are monastic designations, and monastic beers are ancient, and La Trappe is a monastery that makes a quadrupel.  So surely the style is ancient.  It sort of is.  Strong, dark beers go back a very long time, particularly in Flanders.  The name, however, was invented by La Trappe in 1991, long after other very strong abbey ales already in production.  I have no problem calling them quads as a class, but it's worth knowing the history.  Especially if you happen to encounter one of those people who does have a problem with the name.)

We met at Bazi Bierbrasserie on a balmy Thursday night and settled in for the tasting.  Evan had concocted a two-step blinding process so that everyone could taste the beers and not know which was which--though we did know in advance seven of the eight beers we were trying (he hid from us that one would be a domestic quad).  We tasted:

• Westvleteren 12 [BeerAdvocate rating 100]
• Chimay Grande Reserve (Blue) [95]
• Rochefort 10 [99]
• La Trappe Quadrupel (Trappist) [91]
• Straffe Hendrik Quad [89]
• Saint Bernardus 12 [99]
• Urthel Samaranth [90]
• Ovila Quad [87]

There were, as with all blind tastings, miraculous discoveries.  Of the twelve tasters, nine preferred three beers (three each called them the best): Rochefort 10, Straffe Hendrik, and Ovila (my choice).  Only one selected Westvleteren (and that one, to her shock, was Sally--who was nonplussed when we tried it at the monastery).  When I tried beer #5, I was taken aback by how mediocre it was.  I did ask if anyone liked it and got lots of "no, it's lame" in response.  I can't say the group was unanimous on the point, though we may have been.  That beer?  Chimay.

For what it's worth, there were three standouts according to my tasting notes.  Of the Ovila I noted "Layered yeast character--phenols and spice.  A dry beer with leather, almost oaky.  Light body, but boozy; more balanced than some of the sweeter examples."  I was doing quickie ratings so I could sort them later and gave it five stars.  Two beers got four starts.  Urthel, a brewery that hasn't always impressed me, did that night.  I wrote: "English barley wine.  Less yeast character than others, more body.  Boozy aroma and HUGE booze kick.  Rich, nutty malt."  Finally, the original quad, La Trappe's, also impressed me.  "Very phenolic, rich raisin/date sweetness.  Surprising amount of roast.  Pepper and beets.  Sharp alcohol, medium body."  I expected to admire St Bernardus--I love the brewery's beers, but it just missed that top group, getting 3 1/2 stars.

Strong dark abbey ales have never been my favorite style.  They usually have less character than their little brothers and are pretty sweet and heavy.  Tasting eight in a row confirmed this view.  Yet as a group, only imperial stouts get anywhere near the same kind of love from beer geeks.  I think the romantic idea of monks cooking up pots of heavy beer wins people over.  You can certainly see this in the way they rate them.  Westvleteren is currently rated second among all beers on BeerAdvocate and is RateBeer's highest rated.  Yet in a blind test, only one person thought it was the best of just eight beers in its group.  Two of the three highest rated beers in our group get relatively "meh" scores by BeerAdvocates--but they are not boosted by the luster of monks.  Finally, and I think this is most revealing, Chimay--a "world-class" beer on BeerAdvocate--was demonstrably the least interesting beer at our table.  Without the monkish luster, no love.

This is exactly why blind tastings are so valuable and revealing.  I rarely flog my Tasting Toolkit, but the moment is irresistible.  You don't need it to conduct blind tastings, but it is pretty damn handy.  And you should be doing blind tastings.  I encouraged Evan to continue this and maybe even expand it, and I hope he does.  We had a fabulous time, tasted fabulous beer, and walked away much the wiser.

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Speaking of Evan and plugging, let me put in an additional plug for Beercycling.  The concept is right there in the title.  He curates two trips, one in Belgium, one in the Netherlands, and guides 12 people on a bike tour of breweries.  Biking is apparently the way to do Belgium--I literally had a half dozen people ask if I would be doing any biking when I went.  But the real value here is that throughout the ten-day trip, you tour a bunch of breweries.  Every beer geek who loves Belgium really needs to go on a tour.  Americans can make exceptional beer, even exceptional Belgian-style beer.  But what they can't do is show you their ancient breweries and equipment and talk about decades of family brewing.  You can feel the history of brewing when you tour the breweries of Belgium, and it will change the way you think about beer.  So go have a look if it sounds like it's up your alley.

The Unholy Abbey Beers

One of the reasons you go to a country is to understand the beer from the inside. It's not enough to find bottles on a shelf in Oregon to understand a country. So much of what makes it to the United States goes through a filter of nostalgia and expectation. To sit in a cafe and discover how hard it is to find the kinds of beers Americans think of as Belgian--good luck finding a saison anywhere--while be assaulted by Jupiler and Leffe signs is a revelation. Our tidy belief in regional brewing is shattered, too, by visiting a village and failing to find the beer brewed there. And then talking to breweries is fascinating, too, because you hear what it's like to inhabit a market not on skewed by industrial titans (every country has that) but ones that disguise their beers in the homespun fabric of the humble monastery. This is uniquely Belgian.

Indeed, everywhere you go, you'll find dubbels and tripels and sints and saints, and brewery brands with dates like "anno 1023." Belgian consumers believe themselves very educated about beer, but as one brewer told me, "ask ten Belgians where Leffe is brewed, and nine will say in an abbey." The Trappists have done an amazing job of bringing attention to Belgian beers, but their success has skewed the market so that authenticity is often seen through the crack in a monastery cloister, not the slow development of style and process in actual commercial breweries. Huge industrial breweries make arrangements to associate a bland product with a non-brewing abbey in some cases; in others, the mere existence of a historical abbey is enough to justify the name on a label and a date that has nothing to do with brewing operations.

I heard this complaint again and again in the breweries I visited. I mean to do a post on Rodenbach soon, and it's a great example of the contrast. This is a brewery that has been making beer in the same way for decades and which has a tradition of cask-aging red ales that goes back nearly two hundred years. It is one of the most impressive breweries in the world, and certainly one of the most traditional, and yet it is easily dismissed for a lack of "abdij" provenance. Meanwhile, Grimbergen enjoys the halo of sanctity.

In the United States, this isn't such a big problem because it's easy enough to shift products around. If you happen to have a brewery that makes a traditional ale--particularly if, like Rodenbach, Cantillon, or Boon, the brewery has been designed only to make a certain kind of beer--you're not in a position to chase fads.

Unlike the British market, where breweries are now feeling excited about a rejuvenated market, in Belgium they are gloomy. Traditional breweries depend on foreign markets like the United States to meet capacity, and they're not sure how to increase sales locally. Some, like Dupont and St. Feuillien (which I visited yesterday) are thriving and growing. But others are finding it much harder. I'll follow up with a post about what strategies these traditional breweries have adopted, and what their prospect for success is, later on. But since I'll be visiting two Trappist monasteries tomorrow (Orval and Rochefort), it's worth mentioning how they've managed to monastacize the Belgian specialty beer market.

Probably we have Stan Hieronymus to blame.

Goose Island Matilda

Goose Island is, in craft brewing terms, an old-timer. Good beer arrived later to the Midwest, so when Goose Island set up shop in Chicago in 1988, it was a pioneer. Despite its early founding, it was hampered by Midwest palates that still considered Grain Belt a decent beer. I was dimly aware of it when I arrived in Wisconsin a few years later, but the Badger state breweries were already leading the way (New Glarus and Sprecher were standouts). A friend of mine referred to Goose Island's beer as "swamp water."

Things have changed. Chicago's beer palate has grown up, and Goose Island has become a brewery associated--at least nationally--with its Belgian and barrel-aged offerings. Bourbon County Stout has been available on the West Coast for awhile, and now Goose Island is rolling out their Belgian line. This is an interesting moment in the development of craft beer. For years breweries just toyed with Belgian styles, but now a few are actively seeking a market for them--in front of demand, as far as I can tell. Consumers still seem enamored of big, burly American ales (hoppy or black and barrel aged); Belgian styles still command only a niche audience. Yet with this expansion of their Belgians, Goose Island is gambling that the niche will grow and that they'll be first in line. A trend to watch.

First up is Matilda, which the brewery was kind enough to send my way.

Inspired by Orval
Although the brewery calls it a "Belgian style pale ale," Orval is the inspiration for Matilda. If you recall, a legend animates the Abbaye Notre-Dame d'Orval. The story holds that a young countess was sitting beside a spring near where the monastery is located. Her wedding ring fell off; distraught, she prayed until a trout appeared, ring in mouth. The countess' name? Matilda.

If the monastery's name is an homage to this legend, then Goose Island's Matilda is an homage to Orval. Their version, like Orval's, is made with pale and caramel malts, is both fairly hoppy (32 IBU) and similarly-hopped (both use Styrian Goldings, Goose Island substituting Saaz for Hersbrucker), and both use sugar to enhance the alcohol without adding body. Orval, famously, employs multiple yeast strains--a regular ale yeast in primary fermentation, and then a blend of yeasts for secondary that includes brettanomyces. And apparently, so does Matilda. Or did, anyway--more on that presently. Owing to the brett, Orval has variable strength depending on age--6-7%. Matilda is 7%.

Tasting Notes
As you can see from the photo, Matilda approximates Orval in color as well--though it's less orange and more copper. The head on my pour wasn't tall and fluffy like this, though--I got just a skiff. The nose is alcoholic and a touch phenolic, with a slight clove note and just a (pleasant) hint of sulfur. It is much as one would expect from a fortified Belgian.

I was surprised at how thin the body was. The sweetish sugar-alcohol note is contrasted nicely by a very dry finish. There's a bit of spice on the palate, but not a lot. With beers like this, I hope for some layered complexity, but Matilda is straightforward: gentle, alcoholic, dry.

All of this comes with a caveat. If the brewery still uses brettanomcyes, it hasn't had a chance to express itself in this young 2010 vintage. I found absolutely no evidence in my bottle. This may well be intentional: young Orval is principally hoppy and wet; but once the brett starts to munch sugars in the bottle, it matures until it is bone dry, lemony, austere. Perhaps Matilda is designed to change with age, too.

Because Matilda is inspired by and apparently modeled on Orval, it's impossible not to compare the two, and this is not to Goose Island's advantage. Orval is easily one of the best beers in the world (I'd put it in the top five). Matilda, while pleasant and enjoyable, is not particularly distinctive. It seems a bit like what it is--an early example of a transplanted style being brewed in a new country. A respectable outing, but not a home run.

Stats
Malts: Pale, caramel
Hops: Styrian Goldings, Saaz
ABV: 7%
Availability: Newly available on the West Coast. 12-ounce 4-pack $11-14.
Rating: B-


Postscript
I don't actually get (or solicit) much in the way of promotional samples. I know from reading Jon's blog that breweries regularly include wowza packaging when they send these to reviewers. Cardboad boxes, okay. Even wooden boxes, not surprisng. But check out Goose Island's packaging. It's a wooden box, but the wood is cut thin and rolled like parchment, sealed with a leather strap. Two photos below try to capture it. Packaging is usually meant to send certain messages about brand or product, but damned if I know what to make of this.




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