Monastery Runs Out of Beer

The brothers at Saint Sixtus of Westvleteren in western Belgium have just taught the world a beautiful lesson, but one wonders if less enlightened spirits are able to learn it, let alone live it. It seems this rather small body of men, 30 Cistercian and Trappist monks, brew the best beer on planet Earth -- Westvleteren 12. When it got that rating from the RateBeer website, sales shot through the roof. Now, there is no more beer to be had, but are the brothers going to boost production? No, they closed the shop.

The brothers actually have three types of brewski on hand: Westvleteren 12 (10.2% alcohol by volume), Westvleteren 8 (8%) and Westvleteren Blonde (5.8% and a lager). There are 24 bottles in a crate, and the prices are €19 for a crate of the lager, €23.80 for the 8, and €27 for the best beer in the world, the 12. There’s also a deposit on the bottles and the crates – no, that wasn’t made up.

A businessman who gets his product rated #1 in the world by anybody will feel pretty good about things, and when he runs out of product, he’ll probably do two things. First, he’ll raise his prices, and second, he’ll make more. But not the monks. The Father Abbott explained on the monastery website (again, that is not made up):

As every man we must be able to live. So we have to try to earn our living and let others share in what we have to abstain from. Indeed, we have to live 'from' and 'with' our brewery. But we do not live 'for' our brewery. This must be strange for business people and difficult to understand that we do not exploit our commercial assets as much as we can. We are no brewers. We are monks. We brew beer to be able to afford being monks.