Cause and Effect
The beer that many consider to be the best in the world, Westvleteren 12, is not easy to buy. Australian Broadcasting tells us: Monks run short of ‘world’s best’ beer.
“Our shop is closed because all our beer has been sold out,” said a message on the abbey’s answering machine, which it calls the “beer phone”.
The abbey has no intention of boosting its capacity to satisfy market demand.
“We are not brewers, we are monks,” the father abbot said on the abbey’s website. “We brew beer to be able to afford being monks.”
Monk Mark Bode told De Morgen newspaper: “Outsiders don’t understand why we are not raising production but for us life in the abbey comes first, not the brewery.”
If you’re not a fan of the brewer’s art you may not be aware that every time you increase the size of the brewery you decrease the quality of the beer. Not every system “scales”, and breweries definitely don’t. All a modern megabrewery can guarantee is consistent mediocrity.
The monks have been using the same formula and methods to brew beer for a very long time. They pay attention to what they are doing and produce a superior product. If they became a business they would start to cut corners and the quality would disappear.
