Photo by Christopher Lux/Speci
June 03, 2011 6:03 PM
BELMONT — Crafting of homemade beers within monastery walls dates back to the Middle Ages. Monks drank the filling, grain-based beverage with their meals to
make up for limited amounts of food or to ease their hunger pangs during fasting.
Today, the ancient tradition continues at Belmont Abbey, where Brother Tobiah, a Benedictine monk, crafts and bottles limited quantities of the brew in the monastery’s basement or kitchen late into the evenings.
Brother Tobiah began brewing beer in 1987 after talking with his uncle, who had brewed in the 1970s.
“The passion continued — it’s a passionate art,” he says.
Some monasteries have brewed beer for commercial purposes, but the main purpose has been for the monks’ own consumption.
Benedictine monks, including those at Belmont Abbey, are governed by The Rule of St. Benedict. Among the Saint’s precepts are rules that lay out the appropriate amount of beer to drink while reminding the monks “to drink moderately, and not to the point of excess.”
Brother Tobiah is a quiet, down-to-earth South Carolinian with a quick wit. When asked about his life before he entered the monastery, he responds: “I could sum it all up in one paragraph.”
He came to the Catholic faith and his monastic calling at a late age. For years he served in the U.S. Coast Guard, where he lived in Alaska, New York, Japan and Hawaii. He grew up Baptist, yet he was drawn to the Lutheran Church as an adult because of its more liturgical feel. Within a few years, however, he began looking for something different because, he says, “it was nice, but something was missing.”
He looked into Catholicism, and he entered the Catholic Church in 2002. Within three years after that, he became a monk at Belmont Abbey.
Brother Tobiah briefly left the monastery in Belmont with the intent of finding, perhaps, a more contemplative monastery. He went to the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. This Trappist monastery is in the Order of the Cistercians of the Strict Observance, a Catholic order of contemplative monks. He then “had, you might say, a mid-life crisis, and I drove across the country to Las Vegas for a Coast Guard reunion.” Upon his return to South Carolina, he began working 10-hour shifts on the BMW assembly line in Greenville. But he could not forget his former home at Belmont Abbey, and he soon returned.
The principle external work of the monks is Belmont Abbey College, a Catholic liberal arts institution. Brother Tobiah, however, tends to focus on the monks’ primary vocation: praying and working together according to the teachings of the Gospel and the wisdom of St. Benedict. He has taken temporary vows and openly recognizes, “I am still discerning my vocation.”
Brother Tobiah makes about two batches of beer a year, and his brews range from pale ales to porters. He brews only ales, he explains, because lagers require a maintained temperature of 55 degrees during the fermentation. Lagers are more difficult to make, but he may attempt to make a lager-batch in the future. A taste of his beer is assurance that he takes his beer-making seriously.
Still, when asked to describe the taste of one of his beers, he simply says, “it tastes like beer.”
Besides brewing beer, Brother Tobiah enjoys photography, caring for the monastery’s bushes, plants and trees, and “sitting on the porch of the monastery’s lake house, watching the waves come in.”
Some monks, like those of Scourmont Abbey (the brewers of Chimay beer) produce their beverages commercially. Unfortunately, though, Brother Tobiah’s beer cannot be purchased. If you are looking to get a taste, your best bet is to make this monk your friend.
