Glynn Cardy: Brewers offer a clear truth

Opinion

The World's Best Beer: It's a coveted accolade that would put the froth on any brewer's smile. It would translate into huge sales and huge profits.

Orders would come in from around the world. Tourists would seek it out. Travel brochures would proudly proclaim the local origins of the beverage. Imagine the billboard: The world's best right here.

The best beer is found in Flanders, Belgium, not far from the French border, just outside the town of Poperinge. The beer is called Westvleteren Abt 12. (You can tell that no one in marketing created that name.) Indeed, probably few in marketing have tasted it.

It is sold only where it's made. It isn't distributed to retail stores in Belgium, let alone exported. Worst of all, local demand has been so great that they brewers have run out. You can't buy the beer.

Abt 12 is made by a little boutique brewery that doesn't want to expand. While the brewers are happy to receive accolades, they don't want to grow. Even before their Abt 12 achieved fame, the customer was limited to 24 bottles. The brewers wanted to share their beer around. They didn't even charge astronomical prices.

Being a small-time consumer of fine beer, the news about this superior product caught my eye. Yet it was the brewers who intrigued me. From a commercial perspective they were doing everything wrong.

They had a great product but they weren't branding, expanding, charging, and making millions. Indeed, and this is the shocking thing; they didn't want millions. They just wanted enough profit to live. We don't live to make beer, their spokesman said, we make beer to live.

You might ask, are these people religious nutters or something? Well, yes, they are. Abt 12 is made at St Sixtus Monastery. The Abt is short for Abbot. They are Cistercians, a silent order who live a contemplative life. They embody a spirituality of simplicity and balance.

Probably the most famous Cistercian was Thomas Merton, an extraordinary man who managed to rattle the pro-Vietnam War regime from his monastery in rural America.

He spoke a clear truth in a time when people too easily believed in self-serving deception. You can find out more about him at Merton.org (see link below).

Merton's beer-brewing brothers at St Sixtus are again offering clear truth. The meaning of life is not to work. The meaning of life is not to achieve fame. The meaning of life is not to make millions. Notoriety and accolades, while nice for a season, can bloat the ego.

The brothers started brewing in 1863 in order to fulfil their obligations to the labourers building the monastery. The labourers were entitled to two glasses of beer a day.

In time, they refined their brewing craft to finance the needs of the monastery. Now they are carefully trying to balance fame and need, money and spirituality.

Balance is not just a monk thing. It's a human thing.

And the economic orthodoxy of more, money and growth has tipped us off balance.

As Thomas Merton wrote, "What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous."

We need a potent, full-bodied reminder that prayer, community, work, leisure, and service, held in balance, are values that go to the heart of what it is to be human.

The creators of Westvleteren Abt 12, with its 10.2 per cent alcohol content, are one such potent reminder. I'd love to shout the world a round of that.

* Glynn Cardy is Vicar of St Matthew-in-the-City